AfterDawn: Tech news

NEC announced USB 3.0 SOC

Written by James Delahunty @ 22 Sep 2009 11:04 User comments (3)

NEC announced USB 3.0 SOC NEC Electronics has announced its new USB 3.0 (or, SuperSpeed USB) system-on-a-chip (SOC) design solution that could bring forth USB 3.0-equipped hardware very soon. The company's new SOC is designed to work with NEC's USB-IF Certified USB 3.0 Host Controller.
NEC Electronics expects rapid adoption of the solution by customers developing mass storage, display and video applications, especially as the need to transfer larger and larger amounts of information from PCs to external hard-drives, portable electronics devices, and flash-based drives continues to grow.

"NEC Electronics has earned a reputation for delivering dedicated customer service and high-quality, reliable custom products. In fact, these qualities are cornerstones of the NEC Electronics culture," said Osamu Matsushima, general manager, ASIC Solutions Division, NEC Electronics Corporation. "Combining our USB leadership with our years of experience delivering custom SOC and standard solutions, the new SOC design solution provides customers with a one-stop-shop for implementing their system solutions on time and within budget."

LucidPort Technology, a semiconductor company developing SuperSpeed USB and Wireless USB controllers, leveraged NEC Electronics USB 3.0 SOC design solution in the development of its USB300, a single chip USB 3.0 to SATA-II bridge designed for external storage devices.



"Working with NEC Electronics' USB 3.0 SOC design solution with the industry's first USB 3.0 core, we were able to bring our bridge chip to market quickly," said Reid Augustin, vice president, product development for LucidPort. "NEC Electronics provided engineering support for each stage of design and manufacturing, and ensured the interoperability of the basic building blocks, freeing up our designers to focus on developing our specific application logic."

Previous Next  

3 user comments

123.9.2009 06:33

Sweet! Now for my next computer, I will have USB 3.0, SATA 3.0, PCIe 3.0, and hopefully some other bells & whistles to go with my shiny new 32nm Westmere die-shrink of Nehalem. Gonna be one kick ass machine. See what kinds of goodness AMD/ATi & NVIDIA have cookin' for the holiday season, and who knows...? It might even be able to run 'Crysis'. Hehehe. But seriously good job NEC, USB 3.0 has been waaaay too long coming.

223.9.2009 15:29

there is no USB 3.0 equipment on the market. nobody is going to buy all there USB equipment again.

granted the extra bandwidth is good, as it means more devices can now use there maximum Performance. when they start maxing out USB 3.0 with devices that use 3/4 of the maximum bandwidth it will be USB 4.0 time.

This message has been edited since its posting. Latest edit was made on 23 Sep 2009 @ 3:30

325.9.2009 04:56

It's not that anyone will re-buy all of their USB equipment, and for most things USB 2.0 is plenty fast. However, the new 6.0Gbps SATA 3 standard can already max out the bandwidth offered by USB 2.0. Also, new generations of SSDs as well as other flash baced devices (thumb drives for instance) will benefit from the added speed. As for the lack of devices a the moment, that is always how it is. (except maybe in the case of 802.11n, where the standard was only officially ratified after products were already on the market for at least 2 or 3 years.) The devides will come, and if one happens to be in the market for some particular peripheral at that time, I don't think anyone would argue that the increased performance is a bad thing.

Comments have been disabled for this article.

News archive