The new storage interface USB3.0 will offer up to 10 times higher transfer rates than today’s USB2.0 interface. This makes it easier for the next generation external storage units to cooperate with today’s internal storage technologies, like Serial ATA. The first bridge chip for USB3.0 to SATA II has been announced by LucidPort, which enables users to connect a SATA harddrive to the USB3.0 interface. Install a SATA harddrive and LucidPort’s USB300 chip in a case and voila, you have an external storage solution with rigorous performance.
LucidPort claims that its USB300 controller will enable speeds up to 210MB/s with Windows Mass Storage driver. If you choose to use USB Attached SCSI (UAS) drivers you can achieve speeds over 300MB/s.
The USB300 links a SATA disk, hard disk (HDD) or solid state disk (SSD), to a USB host at Full Speed, Hi- Speed, or SuperSpeed. It works with both existing mass storage drivers (BOT) and the new USB Attached SCSI (UAS) driver. It also features AES 128/256 encryption, numerous general purpose IOs with pulse width modulation, and SATA Native Command Queuing (NCQ) support.
Now that we have seen the world’s first USB3.0 to SATA II bridge chip we would like to see the first products that can actually make use of the technology, since performance is enough to pulverize the USB2.0 interface.
