Does anyone use this chip before? I'm a beginner who intend to use it for my project. I have read a lot of pages regarding this chip. However, I'm confused on how to actually operate this chip. Do I need a programmer to program this chip? How and where to program/initialize the chip? Do I need a driver to drive this chip and what is the code to write in the driver? Please clarify me~! Thanks~~!
This USB chip is designed to be connected to the External memory bus of a microcontroller. Most 8051s have this bus and there are a couple AVRs with it too- its a fairly standard bus. The easiest way to interface with the chip is to buy a microcontroller with this bus and you will be able to connect the two directly with no extra hardware.
You don't need to program the chip but the micrcontroller does need to initialize the memory in the chip correctly - you'll have to look at the datasheet to find out how to do this. Writing USB drivers is difficult and not something for a beginner. Philips might have a reference design driver that would work though.
You probably should start out using RS232 to interface with the computer and when you have a bit more experience you can try USB.