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Appeared on: Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Renesas Introduces First USB 3.0-SATA 3 Bridge SoC Supporting The UASP Protocol

Renesas Electronics today announced the availability of its new SuperSpeed Universal Serial Bus (USB 3.0) SATA3 bridge system-on-chip that enables data transfer between a USB3.0 host system and a Serial ATA (SATA) device in external USB storage equipment.

The new SoC is the world's first USB 3.0 Bridge SoC that supports the UASP (USB Attached SCSI Protocol) protocol that significantly speeds up data throughput for large volumes of data.

USB 3.0 achieves data transfer speeds more than 10 times faster thanthe previous version of the standard.

The new µPD720230 bridge SoC, combined with Renesas' host-controller technology and UASP driver software, achieves industry-leading data transfer performance.In addition to Renesas USB 3.0 host controllers, the UASP driver
operates with AMD's A70M and A75 chipsets. Renesas also plans to support AMD's future USB 3.0 chipsets.

Key features of the new µPD720230 SoC:

The µPD720230 USB 3.0-SATA3 bridge SoC supports SuperSpeed USB transfer speeds of up to 5 gigabits per second (Gbps)—as well as the SATA Revision 3.0 6Gbps bit rate achieving maximum data transfer performance of USB 3.0.

In addition to the BOT standard for mass storage devices using USB2.0, it also supports the UASP protocol standardized in USB 3.0 for improving the performance limits of the BOT standard. When connected to an SSD that supports 6 Gbps SATA3, the µPD720230 device achieves data transfer performance in excess of 370 MB/s in UASP mode asverified by the ATTO Disk Benchmark, version 2.46.

The µPD720230 USB 3.0 SATA3 SoC is provided in a 48-pin QFN package, incorporates a voltage regulator, and also supports bus power modes,which contribute to miniaturization of the end products.

Although only two states, the U0 normal state and the U3 suspend state were stipulated in the USB 2.0 standard, the USB 3.0 standard also stipulates the U1 and U2 power states to provide even finer-grained suppression of power consumption. The new USB 3.0 SATA3 SoC reduces overall power consumption by approximately 40 percent (when the system is in the idle state) via the new USB 3.0 U1 and U2 power states, as compared to when stipulating only the U0and U3 power states.

Additionally, the USB 3.0 is capable of supporting data transfer rates of up to 5 gigabits per second (Gbps), which is 10 times faster than the previous USB 2.0 transfer speeds. Therefore, the USB 3.0 can reduce the data transferring time to 10 percent from that of the USB 2.0 and automatically extends the idle time. As a result, by stipulating the U1 and U2 power states, the new SoC realizes even more power conservation effect.

Renesas' UASP driver runs not only on the Renesas µPD720200 USB 3.0 host controller and its follow-on products, the µPD720200A, µPD720201 and µPD720202, but also on AMD's A70M and A75 chipsets. In addition, Renesas also plans on achieving compatibility with future AMD USB3-supporting chipsets with this driver.

Renesas UASP driver is available for license to companies making USB 3.0 to SATA3 bridge devices. A license of Renesas' UASP driver is included with the company's µPD720230 USB 3.0 to SATA3 Bridge and is available for license to other SATA bridge manufacturers. Renesas has already concluded a licensing agreement with Japanese LSI supplier Media Logic.

Samples of the µPD720230 device are available now, priced at $3.5 per unit. TDK plans to start mass production in October 2011 with a combined production volume of 500,000 units per month.



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