Go west, young man

Some years ago, the pc industry faced a problem. Interface standards were growing exponentially and pc processor manufacturers couldn’t keep up with the changes. The solution was the development of North and South bridges; the North bridge handled memory interfacing, whilst the South bridge looked after slower I/O requirements. Now, at least in Cypress’s opinion, a similar situation is developing in the embedded world. It’s response is the creation of an interface concept which it refers to as the West Bridge. Herve Letourneur is West Bridge product marketing manager within Cypress’ data communications division. He said: “It’s a simple concept. It’s an interconnection chip with an interface to different peripherals. Whilst this allows developers to support new standards, it also allows connection between peripherals independently of the main processor. This brings better performance.”