i/oZONE Products for the week of July 12, 2004
Cypress Semiconductor Says…
SOS: Satan On Silicon - Cypress Media Transfer Protocol
"Data Pipe" Protects Content On Next-Generation Portable Media
Players
Solution Combines USB 2.0 Controllers, Drivers and Firmware,
Enabling Seamless Transfer Of Music, Movies, and Photo Content Protected
by Digital Rights Management Technology
Cypress Semiconductor Corp. has announced a new USB 2.0-based solution designed to support Microsoft's soon-to-be-released Media Transfer Protocol (MTP). MTP will enable the secure transfer of music, video and photos between PCs and portable media players, including next-generation MP3 players and Microsoft's Windows Mobile-based Portable Media Centers, due out in the second half of this year.
Cypress's new MTP solution combines the high performance of its EZ-USB FX2 (CY7C68013) controller, its new WinCE Driver for MTP and an Intel PXA255 microprocessor-based reference design to accelerate development of leading-edge media players.
Large digital media files today are normally transferred with mass storage class (MSC) drivers embedded in Windows operating systems. This method of transport, however, does not provide the level of protection requested by content providers. MTP will allow digital rights management-protected content to be transferred to a host of future mobile audio and video platforms, including MP3 players with video screens, digital still and video cameras, PDAs and cell phones.
"Consumers want to be able to take purchased digital content such as songs, games and movies with them wherever they want, and to transfer content at will, but content creators are very concerned about the release of their Intellectual Property to unprotected systems," said Trevor Davis, product marketing manager for Cypress' Personal Communications Division. "MTP will change the way content is shared. By serving both consumer and business requirements, it will promote wider availability of content.
"MTP is the 'next big thing' to happen to media players and we are well-positioned to become the data pipe of choice for these designs," said Davis. "With multiple high-bandwidth USB 2.0 controllers in our product portfolio, Cypress is able to offer a number of devices that support today's MTP requirements."
About EZ-USB FX2
Cypress's EZ-USB FX2 is a fully integrated peripheral controller, including
an 8051 microprocessor, a serial interface engine, a USB transceiver, on-chip
RAM and FIFO and a general programmable interface. Its unique architecture
handles all basic USB functions, enabling the host system's microcontroller
to focus on application-specific functions and ensuring sustained high-performance
data transfer rates.
analogZONE Says . . .
I have mixed feelings about reviewing a product that helps enable quick and economical deployment of consumer gear that complies with the draconian Digital Millennium Copyright Act, but given the tremendous market potential for a part like this, I had to do it. In essence, Cypress has created a turnkey, hassle-free code download for the embedded 8051 on their EZ-USB FX2 USB 2.0 transceiver and allows it to support a strictly enforced pay-per-view channel. The EEPROM that drives the device's on-chip 8051 processor can be downloaded with the code necessary to run the MTP protocol and establish a secure data pipe that observes the full digital rights management protocol. Compatible with Microsoft's new WinCE Driver for its Media Transfer Protocol (MTP), the code running on the FX2 should minimize the time a design team spends on non-value-add engineering tasks involved with providing secure data pipes between any kind of media player and its output device.
Cypress stresses that they have gone to great lengths to understand both the SIE protocol and the Windows MTP interface to create a USB driver that works seamlessly in any system -- something that they say only one other company has been able to deliver. It cannot support even a large fraction the full raw data rate of a USB 2.0 pipe (480 Mbit/s), but it can deliver rates of up to 8 Mbyte/s, more than enough for a studio-quality video stream, plus several CD-quality audio streams -- good enough for most consumer applications. If you can stand a further drop in throughput for your particular application, you can even use the remaining code space in the external EEPROM to run some of your own code for packet processing or whatever.
Personally, I have some grave reservations about both the legality, and the social utility of locking up creative properties and placing them permanently beyond the reach of anyone but a tightly-defined group of "paying" customers. While not as socially devastating as the "Bono Act" that places most copyrighted materials out of the public domain for a century or more, the DMCA is so restrictive that it will inhibit much of the normal diffusion of ideas and artistic influences that propel a healthy culture forward. Heck, I'm just glad that libraries were invented before all this IP brouhaha arose, or we'd all be paying by the page to check out books!
I'm not an expert on the subject, but many folks who are, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, noted intellectual property lawyer Lawrence Lessig, and many others have written extensively on the unintended consequences and potential illegality of the DMCA's provisions.
If you are interested in protecting your digital rights, I suggest you familiarize yourself with the issues by reading Lessig's fascinating books, The Future of Ideas and Free Culture. If you're moved to act further, you should check out the activities of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Creative Commons organization. As for me, I'll also put off buying DMCA-enabled products as long as I can in hope that that our legislators come to their senses and modify it, and the Bono Acts, to more closely reflect a balance between the need for profit and the need for the free exchange of ideas. And if that does not happen, I'm already following columnist Scott Brylow's advice by stockpiling a couple of DVD/VCR combo players, plus at least one DVD burner that ignores the "broadcast flag," before they go off the market (sometime in 2005) as a hedge against the impending media lock-up.
Be that as it may, consumers will continue to buy increasing numbers of products with embedded media players, and until the DMCA is amended, those devices will need cost-effective and easy means to secure the content. Cypress has wisely filled this niche by developing this USB-based device which can be added to existing designs with a minimum of hassle. At $4.45 each, Cypress is taking advantage of being "the first on the block, and keeping its price a bit higher than feasible for many $100-$200 applications, but this should rapidly tumble to a realistic level as market pressures and volumes increase. In fact, conversations with Cypress indicate that a purpose-built chip (instead of this code download to an existing part) scheduled for late this year will enable designers to plan on getting a cost-reduced, drop-in replacement. This could allow some of the most aggressive manufacturers to be able to start producing products that play secure digital media for the Christmas season, and then go through a cost-reduction cycle as the new parts become available.
Although I expect that eventually some media players will create and manage their secure media pipelines in software running on their host processor, not all devices have the spare MIPS to support the protocol, and this could also make them susceptible to hacking. I expect that they'll even continue to sell significant volumes of this chip and its descendants as DMCA-compliant connections become embedded cores in some high-volume ASIC-based designs.
The EZ-USB FX2 is available now, and priced at $4.45 in 10-k piece lots.
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