NEC’s more or less the only company manufacturing USB 3.0 controllers. Its SuperSpeed USB 3.0 controller (NEC µPD720200) is said to already have sold 3 million units. With motherboard manufacturers fighting about getting the biggest supply of USB 3.0 ready motherboards and expansion card manufacturers supplying USB 3.0 cards to the users with older PCs, NEC has decided to step it up a notch by doubling the number of manufactured circuits per month to 2 million.
In a press release earlier, NEC compared the launch of the new USB 3.0 standard to the launch of its predecessor USB 2.0. Saying that it took almost 1.5 year before it had shipped 3 million USB 2.0 circuits compared to the six months it took for USB 3.0.
The NEC µPD720200 – Soon in every home computer?
NEC believes that the interest for the USB 3.0 standard will increase sooner than expected before, which is why production speed is increased earlier.
“We are very pleased to continue to contribute to the promotion of the USB standard and technology. Moreover, it is very exciting to push the standard and technology up to the next level, the 5Gbps-SuperSpeed-USB era, with NEC Electronics’ host controller,” said Osamu Matsushima, general manager, Industry and Network Division, NEC Electronics Corporation.
Now we can just hope for AMD and Intel to produce some USB 3.0 controller. Hopefuly with support for more connectors, as the NEC µPD720200 is still limited to only two connectors.
