Reconfigurable I/O interface for mobile equipments

Standardized I/O interfaces such as USB, E1A/T1A-232, PS/2, Ethernet, IEEE 1394, etc., gives us "High Connectivity" that means connections between different devices are guaranteed and users do not have to take care of the connections. However the standardized I/O interfaces are not optimized to all devices and various standards confuse users. We propose a novel I/O interface named Meta-I/O Interface in which reconfigurable LSIs such as FPGAs are used to solve these problems. In Meta-I/O Interface, peripheral devices, which are named Self-Informational Devices (SIDs), have individual non-volatile memories (ROMs) storing the I/O-circuit-configuration-data that are loaded in the FPGAs in the digital equipment through the common standardized connectors. The Meta-I/O Interface prototype is now under development and the circuit sizes are estimated using several current I/O interfaces.