Renesas Electronics Collaborates with AMD to Accelerate Promotion of USB 3.0 Standard

[btarunr]

Renesas Electronics Corporation, a premiere provider of advanced semiconductor solutions, today announced its collaboration with AMD to promote the new SuperSpeed Universal Serial Bus (USB 3.0) standard.

In December 2009, Renesas Electronics (formerly NEC Electronics Corporation) released its USB Attached SCSI Protocol (UASP) driver, supporting the new industry-standard, highly efficient mass-storage protocol suitable for use on SuperSpeed USB to overcome the performance boundaries of the Bulk Only Transfer (BOT) protocol. The new UASP driver will be used with Renesas Electronics' USB 3.0 xHCI (eXtensible Host Controller Interface) host controller, which entered the market as the world's first USB 3.0 host controller in June 2009. Having shipped over three million units of the host controller, as a dedicated promoter of USB 3.0 standard, Renesas Electronics is now targeting monthly production of two million units starting April 2010 and aims to continually contribute to advancement and standardization of USB.



To continue to drive market leadership and meet the demand for USB 3.0, Renesas Electronics has been collaborating with AMD to accelerate the promotion of USB 3.0. Adopting Renesas Electronics' USB 3.0 xHCI host controller to its reference design, AMD successfully implemented USB 3.0 data transfer speeds onto its motherboards. Renesas Electronics and AMD are also partnering to achieve interoperability of Renesas Electronics' UASP driver with AMD's motherboards to provide a standardized UASP driver into the market. AMD successfully enhanced the data transfer rate by around 20 percent compared to the conventional BOT., while minimizing design-cycle time.

"We're very pleased with the performance and cost ratio of our USB 3.0 portfolio that we've been able to achieve due to our collaboration with Renesas Electronics, and how this can offer even more value to our customers," said Mike Wisor, Senior Director of System Software Development at AMD. "By combining both companies' innovation and expertise, we were able to enable the USB 3.0 ecosystem for UAS support, further increasing the performance of these USB 3.0 solutions." "We are pleased to share our USB 3.0 host controller and technologies with AMD to develop their USB 3.0 product portfolio by reducing time-to-market, lowering power consumption, and improving price-performance," said Kazuyoshi Yamada, senior vice president, Renesas Electronics Corporation. "Starting with AMD's motherboards, AMD and Renesas Electronics will continue to work together as the industry leaders to expand the USB 3.0 marketplace offerings with the highest quality and significantly advanced data transfer speed to provide added value to our customers in consumer and portable electronics."

Renesas Electronics' USB 3.0 Host Controller
The USB 3.0 standard is a next-generation interface to be used in a wide range of electronic devices including PCs, PC peripherals and digital appliances, and is capable of supporting data transfer rates of up to 5 gigabits per second (Gbps), which is 10 times faster than the previous USB 2.0 transfer speeds. With its higher speeds and enhanced power efficiency, external hard disk drives are expected to be the first USB 3.0 devices to appear on the market.

As a member of the USB-IF since 1996, the Renesas Electronics (formerly NEC Electronics) has played a leading role both in defining USB standards and in developing USB technology. In 2009, the company introduced the industry's first USB xHCI host controller. The host controller is the industry's first certified USB 3.0 commercially available product and represents the first step to broad adoption among host and peripheral device manufacturers.

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[Mussels]

this is that codec thingy i've mentioned a few times in threads, without being able to remember the details enough to google it. (the 20% boost due to using some other method)

 

[Yellow&Nerdy?]

I hope we will get a motherboard chipset soon that will support USB 3.0 natively. From what I have read though, we will have to wait quite long, since the Intel "6-series" LGA1155 chipset for Sandy Bridge doesn't have native USB 3.0 support.

 

[WSP]

just about time.considering more and more motherboard maker implementing usb 3.0 on their latest mobo. be it intel/amd mobo.

Intel just too pride to support/use something it doesn't design on its own.just like QPI

 

[Mussels]

just about time.considering more and more motherboard maker implementing usb 3.0 on their latest mobo. be it intel/amd mobo.

Intel just too pride to support/use something it doesn't design on its own.just like QPI

even AMD doesnt have native USB 3.0 yet, they just teamed up with NEC to make sure all their new mobos had an NEC 3.0 controller on them.

 

[MadMan007]

Rather than this how about INCORPORATING IT IN TO SOME FREAKING CHIPSETS. Come on AMD and Intel! I understand the 800 series chipsets and current LGA1156 and 1366 may have been too far in development to incorporate it but if the next set of chipsets don't have it..

 

[cool_recep]

When the hell did NEC changed to renesas?

 

[LAN_deRf_HA]

Intel has their own connector technology, that's why they're shunning off USB 3.0 hoping it will go away. It's moronic though because not only is their technology not ready but it won't be backwards compatible. It has no chance of breaking into the market.

 

[btarunr]

Intel has their own connector technology, that's why they're shunning off USB 3.0 hoping it will go away

Called what?

If it's Light Peak, that technology is still very nascent, and there's no indication that it will be out in time to compete with USB 3.0. Light Peak can't even be as durable an interconnect as USB.

 

[LAN_deRf_HA]

Yes it's light peak. I mentioned that it's not ready, but Intel seems to think they can stall USB 3.0 adaption till it comes out. The whole thing is idiotic on their part. They expect it to be in hardware by the end of the year but even if they integrate it into the cpu die I doubt companies will adopt it.

 

[jessicafae]

When the hell did NEC changed to renesas?

Renesas Technology Corp was always a separate company but signed merger with NEC Electronics last December 2009. Officially merged last month (April 2010) and new company is called Renesas Electronics.
http://www2.renesas.com/news/en/archive/0912/1501.html?src=rss_ir_en

NEC is still NEC. NEC Electronics was the chip making division (microcontroller units MCUs, System on chip-SOCs, and discrete chips like the USB3 chip). Technically NEC Electronics is the "surviving entity" but is now called Renesas Electronics.

NEC Electronics worldwide used to be here www.necel.com but this now redirects to renesas.
But NEC is still here http://www.nec.co.jp

 

[TheLaughingMan]

Should this switch to a host controller style system instead of the old protocol drastically improve two way comminuication on USB 3.0? For instance, say I start a transfer of a 5 GB file to the drive on a USB 3.0 connection and I am running a virus scanner using Portable apps that is stored on the drive. These two things should now, not effect each other nearly as mush as USB 2.0 did.

 

[pr0n Inspector]

Yes it's light peak. I mentioned that it's not ready, but Intel seems to think they can stall USB 3.0 adaption till it comes out. The whole thing is idiotic on their part. They expect it to be in hardware by the end of the year but even if they integrate it into the cpu die I doubt companies will adopt it.

Thanks, I can see the conspiracy clearly now.

 

[Apocolypse007]

Pretty much every 800 series AMD motherboard sold on newegg I've seen has usb 3.0. Mine has 4 of them.

 

[Mussels]

Pretty much every 800 series AMD motherboard sold on newegg I've seen has usb 3.0. Mine has 4 of them.

yes... and they use NEC chips to do it.

 

[Melted Rabbit]

Called what?

If it's Light Peak, that technology is still very nascent, and there's no indication that it will be out in time to compete with USB 3.0. Light Peak can't even be as durable an interconnect as USB.

I don't see Light Peak amounting to much any time soon. Acceptable light transmitters for Light Peak are too expensive as of yet.

Any practical implementation of Light Peak couldn't use standard LEDs or laser LEDs, which would be least expensive type of transmitters. The switching time (on/off time) for LEDs are so high that the fastest LED transmitters are limited to data rates of 125Mbps. To be usable for speeds advertised for Light Peak, LEDs would have improve in performance around a 100 times, which won't happen tomorrow or ever potentially.

On the other hand, a few years ago Intel did demonstrate in a research capacity, the ability to make silicon to produce a laser. Of course, this demonstration was derived from a silicon on insulator(SOI) wafer. SOI is used by AMD, Global Foundries, and IBM among others. Intel still uses bulk silicon, however, so another dead end.

One type of laser that would actually work would be a type known as Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Laser(VCSEL). VCSELs that transmit at 10Gbps and above are available, cost however is an issue. The 10G Ethernet transceiver described here: http://www.mergeoptics.com/datenblaetter/MergeOptics_SFP_SR_GBE.pdf will run you $170 at Digikey, which is actually a fairly reasonable price. Each computer and device capable of using Light Peak would need to have equivalent hardware to the 10G transceiver mentioned above. However, $170 is still roughly 100 times more expensive than a conventional end-user device like USB using copper wires. Higher production and any high markup by Digikey would not lower the cost of Light Peak using VCSELs down to anything close to two orders of magnitude.


Also, licensing IP from other companies is not unusual, in AMD's case the much maligned SATA controller used in the SB400, SB450, SB600, and possibly the SB700 series was licensed from Silicon Image.

 

[Imsochobo]

Called what?

If it's Light Peak, that technology is still very nascent, and there's no indication that it will be out in time to compete with USB 3.0. Light Peak can't even be as durable an interconnect as USB.

Intel designed USB3.0.

Didnt release specs.

Everybody else said, "fuck it" and went on and made usb 3.0 and released it a year before intel planned on launching theirs.

Intel had plans to get ahead, but got left behind instead.

Anyways, looks like AMD is going more aggressively into the market, reminds me of A64 days and such, maybe its old Dirk bringing the amd spirit back? bulldozer will tell

over to light stuff, the problem:
a.\
1 optic
1 power
b.\
Big clumsy connectors.
c.\
Cost

Again, bandwith is unlimited, the term unlimited is used by mostly everyone working with fiber optic, the limit is equipment.
At the moment 100gigabit is the highest standard throughput allthough ethernet.( a draft, but quite done)
We use 40Gbit through our proxy and 4 of the core switches at work, with 100 gigabit support for core switches.
So huge amounts of bandwith is doable.
Almost no USB device peaks the "lane", some SSD's manage to max out a USB2 quite good.
No rush

 

[WSP]

more bandwidht although useless (for now) is better than having a device choke on bandwidht and limits its performance.

and I heard that Intel's future chipset doesn't implemented USB 3.0 too...pity

 

[Mussels]

Almost no USB device peaks the "lane", some SSD's manage to max out a USB2 quite good.
No rush

i hope you meant USB 3.0 there, a wet fart from the early 90's can max out USB 2.0's bandwidth.

 

[Imsochobo]

Mixing in my head...