Cypress’ Rodgers sees WirelessUSB as standard

Cypress Semiconductor Corp.’s WirelessUSB technology is poised to become a standard, with a large number of equipment makers planning to announce products using it, according to T.J. Rodgers, the company’s president and chief executive officer.

Cypress is positioning its WirelessUSB technology as an alternative to Bluetooth in several markets. WirelessUSB costs less, has lower latency, consumes less power and is less susceptible to interference than Bluetooth, said Rodgers Monday during a trip to Bangalore, India. A “cut-the-cord” communication technology between systems and peripherals in computers, video games and other devices with a USB (Universal Serial Bus) interface, WirelessUSB LS enables communication at distances of up to 10 meters, with an average latency of less than four milliseconds, and a transmission rate of 62.5K bps (bits per second).

“We already have several of the biggest manufacturers in the world that will announce that they will use WirelessUSB (in their products) in the next few months,” Rodgers said. The company started shipping its WirelessUSB 2.4GHz radio system-on-a-chip last quarter, but these were primarily prototypes. “Last quarter we shipped several hundred thousand units, and this quarter we will ship several million units,” Rodgers said.

Cypress has also tapped an undisclosed U.S. semiconductor maker as a second source to supply its WirelessUSB chips, Rodgers said.

“There are two competitors to WirelessUSB,” said Rodgers. “One is Bluetooth and the other is 27MHz wireless, which really doesn’t have a name. Bluetooth is an excellent technology for what it is meant for, which is a small network. You don’t need a network for a mouse and keyboard.” WirelessUSB offers a point-to-point wireless connection. “Bluetooth is also twice as expensive as WirelessUSB,” added Rodgers. “Bluetooth is currently at five dollars, while we are introducing WirelessUSB at two dollars.”

Cypress was not attempting set standards when it developed WirelessUSB. The company wanted an optimized wireless technology that worked well with USB, which Bluetooth did not, according to Rodgers. Cypress currently works with the Wireless USB Promoter Group, the industry consortium that is working on an Ultra-Wideband (UWB) wireless interconnect for USB 2.0.

Rodgers also announced Monday that the San Jose, California, company is increasing staff at its Indian design centers to 315 employees from the current 160 people by the end of the year. The additions will come at the company’s Bangalore and Hyderabad design centers.

“India graduates three times more engineers than does the United States,” said Rodgers. ” When people complain about offshoring jobs, it is a foolish discussion, because when one country develops three times more engineers than another country, you have no choice but to offshore. If you have to hire engineers you have to go where the engineers are, which is why we are here in India.”

As Indian salaries increase, the cost advantages of doing design in India may decrease, but the availability of talented engineers will continue to attract companies like Cypress, Rodgers added.

Cypress Semiconductor Technology India Private Ltd., the Indian design subsidiary of Cypress, has designed and developed a variety of products, including network search engines, USB controllers, micro controllers and complex memories. Cypress India is also helping drive Cypress’ data communications market strategy. The company’s most complex logic chip, a packet-over-SONET (Synchronous Optical Network) integrated circuit framer, with 15 million transistors, was designed in India. Cypress India is also involved in application development.