After seeing what the first USB 3.0 to SATA bridge chip could do for external storages our interest in the new data interface has hardly reduced. LucidPort was first with its USB300 bridge chip that connects SATA drives to the USB 3.0 interface and with over 300MB/s pumping through the lines with the right drivers there is a reason it’s called SuperSpeed USB. Fujitsu has now announced its own USB 3.0 to SATA bridge.
The new MB86C30A circuit is made with 65nm technology and supports the maximal transfer rate of the USB 3.0 interface, 5Gbps, which in theory would result in data shoveling at 600MB/s.
The new bridge IC incorporates on a single chip the USB communication control circuits, SATA communication control circuits, and protocol control and command control circuits. These circuits are required to construct an external USB storage device and to realize 5Gbps data transfer to a host PC.
Fujitsu’s circuit also support several encryption technologies for protecting the data of drives using the bridge chip. It can do that without affecting performance noticeably, which through 128bit+128bit encryption in XTS mode can still achieve speeds up to 300MB/s.
The first products sporting Fujitsu MB86C30A circuit is expected to come at the start of next year.