Wednesday, July 28th 2010
AMD Readies New Southbridge Chipset with Native USB 3.0 Support
Although USB 3.0 and SATA 6 Gb/s served as features central to new motherboard models by manufacturers for an entire year, their adoption by chipset vendors has been rather slow. While AMD has integrated SATA 6 Gb/s into its SB850 southbridge, which features a 6-port SATA 6 Gb/s RAID controller, neither Intel nor AMD have USB 3.0 integrated, with no real indication Intel doing so in the foreseeable future. Sources in the motherboard industry, however, reveal that AMD is designing a new southbridge that integrates a USB 3.0 controller, just like present chipsets have USB 2.0.
AMD's move follows a recent announcement of collaboration with Renesas, the company behind the popular NEC uPD720200 controller, to promote USB 3.0 as an industry standard, and a new universal UASP driver model for USB 3.0 controllers. The new southbridge is codenamed "Hudson D1", which will release along with AMD's 40 nm Ontario Fusion APUs in Q4-2010. The company also plans to release the Llano Fusion APU in 2011.
Source:
DigiTimes
AMD's move follows a recent announcement of collaboration with Renesas, the company behind the popular NEC uPD720200 controller, to promote USB 3.0 as an industry standard, and a new universal UASP driver model for USB 3.0 controllers. The new southbridge is codenamed "Hudson D1", which will release along with AMD's 40 nm Ontario Fusion APUs in Q4-2010. The company also plans to release the Llano Fusion APU in 2011.
21 Comments on AMD Readies New Southbridge Chipset with Native USB 3.0 Support
Maybe this will be a B?
I think AMD might make another revision to the NB (& maybe SB while they're at it) when PCIe 3.0 is ratified too.
If they're implementing the Renesas controller you'll still only get two ports.
Renesas is working on a four port host controller, so it's possible AMD will go for that design.
Considering how much bandwidth full USB 3.0 speed takes up, I doubt we'll go beyond four ports until PCI Express 3.0 comes out.
At least AMD has Hypertransport, unlike Intel's antiquated DMI bus which the company just doesn't seem to be able to retire, so there should be any bandwidth issues on the bus, like you get with most Intel chipsets.
Q4-2010 ?
That would mean that AMD will be way ahead of Intel in this regard.
Very good. I was looking forward to seeing mobos with all native USB 3.0 ports, not a mix of SB 2.0 and discrete 3.0
The only chipset maker that used HyperTransport as a chipset bus is NVIDIA. It used a HyperTransport 1.0 8-bit link between the SPP and MCP with a massive bandwidth of 8 GB/s or 4 GB/s per direction, and that they did back in 2006.
NVIDIA needed the kind of bandwidth HyperTransport have because the PCI-Express resources were split up between the SPP and MCP in older versions of nForce (like nForce 4, 5 series, and 6 series). So each chip gave out a PCI-Express 1.1 x16 port for graphics cards in 2-way SLI.
www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=opera&hs=dsp&rls=en&q=intel+usb+3.0+chipset&aq=1&aqi=g4g-c2g2&aql=&oq=intel+usb+3.0&gs_rfai=
On top of that, if you're going to be able to provide full bandwidth to each of the USB 3.0 ports, then you need to have the same bandwidth available from the chipset to the CPU or you're going to run into some serious problems. It's not a matter of external PCI Express lanes running out of bandwidth, as there's no such issue, it's a matter of there being enough bandwidth from the southbridge to the CPU in the case of AMD's chipsets. AMD has not suffered from poor PCI Express bandwidth like Intel, so that's a non issue in this case.
And no, Intel will NOT have integrated USB 3.0 support at all in 2011 and only a pair of SATA 6Gbps ports on top of that, with some chipsets only featuring a single port.
Besides, when AMD is able to manage its bandwidth budget to accommodate a 6-port SATA 6 Gb/s controller (which is actually more bandwidth intensive since bandwidth isn't shared between ATA channels), then it can accommodate a USB 3.0 controller.
Maybe there will be one 2-port USB 2.0 controller integrated into the southbridge (just like SB850 packs one 2-port USB 1.1 controller) to leave at least two ports for the front-panel (since most PC cases have front-panel/header designed for USB 1.1/2.0, and that USB 3.0 has a different front-panel header layout).
So a USB 3.0 embedded southbridge controller will at most need 960 or 1440 MB/s of bandwidth. ALink III has 4096 MB/s, so it's very much within the bandwidth budget, and can coexist with that meaty 6-port SATA 6 Gb/s AHCI/RAID controller.
This is also the standard that Intel controls, also referred to as xHCI and this is what Intel doesn't want to move from revision 0.9x to 1.0 as then Intel would have to implement USB 3.0 into its chipsets.
As such you need a lot more bandwidth available per pair of USB 3.0 ports than you claim, in fact, each EHCI pair requires the full 5Gbps worth of bandwidth. This is also why it's so hard to implement USB 3.0, not counting the physical board implementation, as a single lane of PCI Express gen 1 bandwidth isn't enough. As I said, I very much doubt we'll see more ports, although four shouldn't really be a problem for AMD, especially as Renesas and TI are already working on solutions for this and VIA allegedly has a solution ready...
Forgot to say that USB 3.0 also has much better data routing than USB 2.0, as in it's more like a smart switch than a dumb hub in terms of getting the right bits to the right place as fast as possible.
I want single-bridge designs with an updated IGP!
With more interigated, you get less heat and more power. ofcourse, those parts getting it all interigated gets harder and harder to cool!
but thumbs up for amd here
In my case (Intel P55 PCH), the PCH is needing to set aside just 192 MB/s in case the USB controllers are populated to the max with bandwidth-intensive devices, not 14 x 48 MB/s. That much is within P55's bandwidth budget.
It's the same way AMD organises its USB 2.0 controllers, and USB 3.0 supports the same standard of port multiplexing USB 2.0 does, which is why companies like VIA (VLI) have been able to come out with multiplex (hub) chips in no time.
www.techpowerup.com/111945/VIA_Group_Launches_World_s_First_USB_3.0_Hub_Controller.html With the port hierarchy model of USB 2.0, like I said AMD will have to allocate 960 or 1440 MB/s for 8 to 12 USB 3.0 ports, and SB8xx southbridge has a PCI-Express 2.0 hub. The SB8xx has a 4 GB/s chipset bus. So it's doable for AMD to have 8~12 USB 3.0 ports. True, that indicates that with some multiplexing you can reduce the bandwidth requirement of your southbridge controllers.
you dont get more power at all, and you wont have any extra heat... they're swapping 2.0 ports for 3.0 ports...