AMD is the only chipset maker that readily supports SATA 6.0 Gbps. It has now taken a great leap toward supporting SuperSpeed USB 3.0 and even if it is still not a matter of integrating into the chipsets AMD will add it to reference designs. This became clear when the cooperation with Renesas became official, Renesas makes one of the first USB 3.0 controllers commercially available.
Renesas was earlier called NEC Electronics Corporation and released an optimized USB Attached SCSI Protocol (UASP) driver by the end of 2009. This driver together with Renesas USB 3.0 xHCI controller will be baked into AMD’s motherboard reference designs.
This means that AMD will be offering assortment wide support for USB 3.0, but also also optimize performance up to 20 fold compared to the regular implementation.
“Renesas Electronics and AMD are also partnering to achieve interoperability of Renesas Electronics’ UASP driver with AMD’s motherboards to provide a standardized UASP driver into the market. AMD successfully enhanced the data transfer rate by around 20 percent compared to the conventional BOT., while minimizing design-cycle time.”
Now all we have to wait for is native and fully integrated support for USB 3.0, which neither AMD nor Intel seems to be in a hurry to develop.
