FTDI Intros USB-to-RS232 Cabling Solution

Future Technology Devices International Limited (FTDI), a company offering design and supply of silicon and software solutions for the Universal Serial Bus (USB), has recently unveiled X-Chip, belonging to company’s converter cabling solutions portfolio.

The company is currently offering the new X-Chip cables with or without enclosures and its components used in the construction are fully RoHS compliant. The new X-Chip cables measures a length of 10 cm, and works as a USB-to-RS232 level full-handshake UART cable with a male DB9 connector.

Built for sturdy operations, the X-Chip cable backs USB 2.0 Full Speed operation and can easily cope with data transfer rates from 300 bits/s to 250 kbits/s at RS232 voltage levels.

“This latest cable release emphasises FTDI’s ability to not only produce leading edge silicon, but also to provide it in a form that makes it easy to implement even in harsh application scenarios,” stated Fred Dart, CEO and founder of FTDI. “By utilizing the newly released X-Chip device, the user is getting FTDI’s latest technology which delivers high performance and robust operation at a low cost of ownership.”

This cable can be an ideal resource for industrial environments to safeguard against electrostatic discharges (ESD). Currently the X-Chip’s RS232 I/Os exceeds ±15 kV IEC1000-4-2 air gap discharge, ±15 kV for human body mode (HBM) and ±8 kV IEC1000-4-2 contact discharge. Protection on the USB lines exceeds ±2 kV for HBM, ±200 V for machine mode (MM) and ±500 V for charged device mode (CDM). A wide operating temperature range, spanning from -40 °C to 85 °C, is also supported, said the company officials.

FTDI is a fab-less semiconductor company, headquartered in Glasgow, UK with R&D centres in Glasgow and Singapore and has regional sales offices in Oregon, Shanghai, China and Taipei, Taiwan.

In other news, Altium, developer of next-generation electronics design software and services, recently announced that the full range of board-level IC component solutions from Future Technology Devices International is available for its electronics design software, Altium Designer, through the AltiumLive portal.

Electronics designers using Altium Designer will now have direct access to new components that include a comprehensive range of FTDI Chip devices to meet their USB connectivity needs.