We have an application where we need more than 3m cable between our USB-3 device (Cypress FX3) and the host. So our idea was to use a USB-3.0 repeater cable (also called "active cable") for this scenario. The cables we had here for testing are build with a SN65LVPE502 Chip.
It works if both sides support USB-3 or both sides only support USB-2.
But if the host side only supports USB-2 and the device supports USB-3, no connection is established (no device shown in Windows/device manager). We found out that in this case the SN65LVPE502 does not hold the input terminations at HiZ, causing the peripheral device only to try to connect in USB-3 mode. If we force the SN65LVPE502 in sleep mode (connect EN_RXD to ground), it works (but of course the configuration USB-3 device <-> USB-3 host not).
Configuration:
USB-2 Host-Controller <-> SN65LVPE502 <-> USB-3 Device
Questions:
a) Is the SN65LVPE502 designed/applicable for repeater/active cables, espescialy with USB-2 Host and USB-3 device?
b) Does this scenario work with the new SN65LVPE502A Version?
Thanks,
Simon