Thursday, May 19th 2022
ASMedia to Launch USB4 Host-Controllers This Year
Taiwanese ASMedia appears to become the first peripheral chipset company to launch a USB4 host-controller chipset, based on reports from an event the company held this week. ASMedia is at least the first company to get certified by the USB-IF, as its ASM4242 host-controller is the first of its kind to get certified. The ASM4242 was certified alongside the ASM2464PD device controller, although it's unclear exactly what type of device controller this is, but the PD in the model name indicates that it has native support for USB PD power delivery, without the need of any additional chips. This should allow for simpler implementation, as well as it would be saving some PCB space that the extra components no longer take up.
The ASM4242 is said to have a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface and does as such support up to 64 Gbps of bandwidth. As this is a two port controller, it's still not quite enough to enable both ports to operate at the full 40 Gbps that USB4 Gen 3x2 supports, but it should be enough for most consumer implementations. ASMedia has also added support for DP Alt Mode and USB4 is of course also backwards compatible with Thunderbolt 3. ASMedia is already sampling its partners. We should hopefully get a better look at what ASMedia is working on next week, but DigiTimes mentions that ASMedia has also developed PCIe 5.0 controllers of some kind and have finished the tape-out of said products.
Sources:
Apple Daily, DigiTimes
The ASM4242 is said to have a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface and does as such support up to 64 Gbps of bandwidth. As this is a two port controller, it's still not quite enough to enable both ports to operate at the full 40 Gbps that USB4 Gen 3x2 supports, but it should be enough for most consumer implementations. ASMedia has also added support for DP Alt Mode and USB4 is of course also backwards compatible with Thunderbolt 3. ASMedia is already sampling its partners. We should hopefully get a better look at what ASMedia is working on next week, but DigiTimes mentions that ASMedia has also developed PCIe 5.0 controllers of some kind and have finished the tape-out of said products.
33 Comments on ASMedia to Launch USB4 Host-Controllers This Year
EDIT: i guess ASMedia always worked just not very well for me were as VIA i found them very troublesome.
I've only had good experiences recently (and previously to the best of my memory)
I have a SATA RAID card and USB controller card, and both couldn't work better
About this article: I have a card with their 3242 on it, plugged into the x4 slot supplied by the chipset my z390 motherboard. Gives my machine USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 support!
It works quite well - perfectly in fact. I use it for an external NVMe drive
If the 3242 is any indication of how the 4242 will be when released, it will be GREAT!
edit: I wonder if they will support USB 3.2 Gen2x2 (20Gbps) on the 4242, because it's optional to.
It is mandatory for all USB 4 controllers to support 10Gbps single lane USB (plain USB 3.2 Gen 2), but since USB 4 doesn't use both sides at once for data (it's reserved for display and such), it's something that would take a little bit of work to implement. A very little bit of work, not much work at all really, no reason why all USB 4 controllers shouldn't support 3.2 Gen 2x2. When USB-IF were putting the standard together, they should have just made it mandatory for ALL USB4 controllers to support 20Gbps USB 3
If the ASM4242 supports 20Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 I will definitely buy it and replace the 3242 in my z390 (which I plan to keep as my primary system for the next 3 years and a secondary for 4 or so after). The 3242 would go into another system.
If the ASM4242 only does 10Gbps USB 3.2, I don't know how I'd add it to my system. My 3080 takes up all 16 PCIe 3.0, and it's 3.0 so running at x8 is would probably affect performance
IIRC, PCIe encapsulation (like ThunderBolt) is 'optional' in USB 4. I didn't see a direct mention in the article of the feature, so I assume this will be a rather underwhelming USB controller.
Wasn't X570 was supposed to have USB4 as an option? I think *ONE*, maybe 2 ultra-premium workstation boards had it; not a good start for USB 4. (Not to mention the (now-popular) non-sense naming schemes: Wi-Fi 6, USB # Gen# #x#, HDMI and DP also now have non-standardized 'standards' too.)
"THE NUMBERS MASON, WHAT DO THEY MEAN?!"
they mean nothing....
Going to have a meeting with them, but it got delayed until next week, so we'll be posting more details after that.
X570 was not meant to have USB4, as USB4 wasn't ratified when X570 launched, so that would've been impossible.
Some later boards had Thunderbolt 4, but Intel screwed up Thunderbolt 4, as TI couldn't supply an additional part that was required for USB4 support and there was no second source. Hence a lot of Intel notebooks and systems have Thunderbolt 4 support, but can't support USB4...
Thank You for the info. Wasn't aware it hadn't been ratified yet.
In fact, outside of Intel's TB4 chipset, that is said to support USB4 as well, yet I haven't seen a single implementation that does, the ASM4242 is the first USB4 host controller.
TB4 ports ARE compliant with USB4 specification. If you have TB4 port, you have USB4 port. TB4 is simply more featured than USB4.
Minimum requirements for USB4 port are: 20 Gbps speed, USB 10 Gbps, one display and 7.5W of power. This is far less than TB4 requirements.
Please see below.
www.igorslab.de/en/goes-with-intel-for-tiger-lake-and-thunderbolt-4-bald-the-lights-out-what-chip-shortage-really-means-exclusively/
It's terrible for consumers who cannot easily check which TI chip is inside.
It'd be good to see which models were affected and whether anyone created a list.
You're obviously correct about how the controllers from Intel work, but I never mentioned anything about the controller lacking USB4 support.
What did you have written before? I was just busy this past week
There's no less than four different USB4 variations, of which only have marketing names. They even use different data encoding...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB4#USB_3.x_%E2%80%93_4.x_data_transfer_modesI mean, I will be seeing ASMedia, which got pushed to next week, so I'll ask them about your question.
Has there been any follow-up on TI chip supply?Out of curiosity, since Zen 4 CPUs support PCIe 5.0 on all lanes from the processor, why is it that chip vendors produce chipset for AM5 and USB4 chips with PCIe 4.0 only? Did they not have time to develop PCIe 5.0 solution with wider bandwidth? Or perhaps we should expect such enhancements in the next gen of peripheral controllers?
I'd imagine a successor of 4242 chip to have 5.0 x4 interace and TB5 the same.
The issue in reality, is that until Intel certifies a different PD chip, or TI fixes their supply problem (which they might not), Intel can't certify its Thunderbolt 4 controllers as USB4, but they are technically compatible. However, as Intel hasn't certified them for USB4, they can't market or sell them as USB4 and it's possible that some edge cases, for example a USB 3.2 2x2 device, will end up only working at 10 Gbps speeds rather than 20 Gbps, as Thunderbolt only supports 10 Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2. Then again, so does USB4, but at least in ASMedia's case, the ASM4242 will support 20 Gbps speeds natively. What a mess...Time, complexity, heads up, cost, lots of factors. Keep in mind that PCIe 5.0 is a lot more complex to design chips and PCBs for. Also, Intel doesn't even have a PCIe 4.0 Thunderbolt controller as yet. PCIe 5.0 will take time, but ASMedia is working on products that supports PCIe 5.0, but none of them will arrive in the market until next year.
Keep in mind that ASMedia is a comparatively small company with only about 250 employees.
I'm working on a longer piece about USB4, that should be up next week, but it's a lot more complicated than you'd think, of which some is politics, even if it's between different companies.