Oxford Semiconductor is committed to providing quality software to assist our customers in meeting their quality and time-to-market goals. As we point out in our white paper, Implementing USB Into Your System Design , creation of a USB stack is not for the faint of heart, nor those on short schedules.

The software support for Oxford's USB controllers can be divided into two categories - drivers for operating systems that already provide a USB protocol stack, and a full-featured USB stack for operating systems that do not already offer one.

Support for Native USB Stacks
Linux and Microsoft WinCE are the most common operating systems that include a full USB stack with their distributions. Both operating systems (as of Linux kernel 2.6 and WinCE version 5.0) provide both host and peripheral capabilities. In these cases, the only software needed is a low-level driver to allow the native USB stack to utilize the Oxford USB controller hardware.

A host controller driver (HCD) and peripheral controller driver (PCD) are available for both Linux 2.6 and CE 5.0 for most of our controllers. These drivers are provided at no charge, but they do require a sales agreement and the signing of a Non-disclosure Agreement. All driver distributions include documentation providing an overview of the software and installation and use instructions.

Oxford does not offer upper-level class drivers for either WinCE or Linux. Customers must utilize the classes that come with the operating systems, or use those provided by third-party developers.