Last week NEC announced the first USB 3.0 controller and then it talked about possible uses. It has now shown one of the first USB 3.0 products for the retail market and the heart of the device is not surprisingly NEC’s recently announced μPD720200 chip. The controller chip measures only 10x10mm has has appear on a PCI Express expansion card and an ExpressCard add-in for notebooks.
As we’ve mentioned in the past USB 3.0, also known as SuperSpeed USB, is fully backward compatible with previous USB generations. The two USB controllers house two USB 3.0 ports each with a specified transfer speed at 4.8Gbps, enough for even the most extreme storage solution.
Since NEC uses the PCI-Express x1 standard for expansion cards the transfer rate is limited to 250MB/s, but a bigger problem might be finding devices that support the new USB standard. No less devices that can send data at over 250MB/s.
