Systems and methods for controlling rise and fall times of USB signals

A USB silicon device having controllable rise and/or fall times for universal serial bus (USB) signals, comprising:

• means for establishing a USB connection between the USB silicon device and a USB host to communicate USB signals between the USB silicon device and the USB host;
• means for monitoring communications over said USB connection;
• means for automatically determining a measure of reliability of communications over said USB connection;
• and
• means for dynamically adjusting at least one signal path, via software and based on said determined measure of reliability, that affects at least one of a rise time and a fall time for said USB signals at least one of received by or transmitted from the USB silicon device,
• wherein said means for dynamically adjusting is configured to sweep through a range of rise and fall times and wherein said means for automatically determining is configured to automatically determine a measure of reliability of communication for each said rise time and fall time in said range of rise and fall times to determine an optimal rise time and fall time for said USB silicon device.

A method for determining at least one of an optimal rise and an optimal fall time of a universal serial bus (USB) signal, comprising:

• establishing a USB connection between a USB device and a USB host to communicate the USB signal between the USB device and the USB host, wherein the USB device includes at least one silicon based chip for handling the reception and transmission of the USB signal to and from the USB host and wherein the at least one chip includes a plurality of USB signal paths through the chip;
• monitoring communications over said USB connection;
• for a range of rise and fall times, dynamically and automatically selecting, via software, at least one of the plurality of signal paths through the chip to affect at least one of a rise time and a fall time of the USB signal;
• and
• automatically determining a measure of reliability of communications over said USB connection for each of said at least one of said rise time and fall time within said range of rise and fall times to identify an optimal rise and fall time for said USB connection.