Inter-Chip Supplement to the USB Revision 3.0 Specification, Revision 1.02

USB is the ubiquitous peripheral-interconnect of choice for a large number of computing and consumer applications. Many systems provide a comprehensive set of software drivers to support commonly available USB peripherals. In addition there is an existing USB ecosystem that includes USB silicon suppliers, design IP houses and verification and testing vendors that lowers the cost for product manufacturers of USB hosts and peripherals.

These advantages have made USB attractive as a chip-to-chip interconnect within a product (without use of cables or connectors). This usage has been validated by the adoption of the High Speed Inter-Chip Supplement [HSIC] in mobile platforms. HSIC leverage the benefits of High Speed USB while optimizing the link for power, cost and complexity. However the 480 Mbps bandwidth limitation of HSIC poses a limitation for the next generation of applications that require higher bandwidth.

The USB 3.0 specification adds support for transfer speed of 5Gbps to address the need for higher bandwidth. However the USB 3.0 specification as-is does not meet the requirements of embedded inter-chip interfaces with respect to power and EMI robustness. To address this need, this supplement describes Super Speed Inter-Chip (SSIC) as an optimized inter-chip version of USB 3.0.

Specification