Daisy-Chain USB With Dual-Port USB Hubs

July 19, 2004

Dual-port usb 2.0 hubs are handy when a local usb device also has a downstream usb port. Most Systems that try to daisy-chain peripherals utilize two ports of a four-port hub. A four-port hub requires more space and uses more power than SMSC's USB2502 dual-port USB 2.0 hub. Savings can be significant, especially when trying to pack the hub into the tiny confines of portable devices.

The USB 2502 supports high-speed (HS), full-speed (FS), and low-speed (LS) data rates along with bus-powered operation. It has an on-chip 1.8-V regulator to support the 1.8-V low-power core. The external interface is 3.3-V I/O with 5-V input tolerances. The chip can be configured using SMBus with an external processor, EEPROM, or pin-strapping.

The USB2502 is priced at $2 in quantity. It is available in a compact, 6- by 6- by 1-mm, 36-pin QFN package. That's small enough to fit inside a cable or a compact device like an intelligent USB flash drive.

SMSCwww.smsc.com

About the Author

William G. Wong | Senior Content Director - Electronic Design and Microwaves & RF

I am Editor of Electronic Design focusing on embedded, software, and systems. As Senior Content Director, I also manage Microwaves & RF and I work with a great team of editors to provide engineers, programmers, developers and technical managers with interesting and useful articles and videos on a regular basis. Check out our free newsletters to see the latest content.

You can send press releases for new products for possible coverage on the website. I am also interested in receiving contributed articles for publishing on our website. Use our template and send to me along with a signed release form.

Check out my blog, AltEmbedded on Electronic Design, as well as his latest articles on this site that are listed below.

You can visit my social media via these links:

I earned a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Masters in Computer Science from Rutgers University. I still do a bit of programming using everything from C and C++ to Rust and Ada/SPARK. I do a bit of PHP programming for Drupal websites. I have posted a few Drupal modules.

I still get a hand on software and electronic hardware. Some of this can be found on our Kit Close-Up video series. You can also see me on many of our TechXchange Talk videos. I am interested in a range of projects from robotics to artificial intelligence.