Industry Expert Blogs

As Jeff Ravencraft puts it “Passing certification is important as it demonstrates that the IP (intellectual property) meets USB-IF interoperability standards and is compliant to the USB 3.0 specification”. And being the president and chairman of the USB Implementers Forum, he should know.

What certification tells you is that the USB 3.0 (or any standards based IP) passed protocol, electrical, and interoperability tests for both SuperSpeed (5 Gb/s) and Hi-Speed 480 Mbps modes. What this means is that you can take the certified USB 3.0 IP and integrate into your 65-nm or 40-nm SoC, comfortable in the knowledge that it will support both USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 speeds.

To get to the certification, or as the title of this post has it “What’s behind certification”, is a thorough verification methodology that ensures functional correctness.