Coming to support the industry's accelerated adoption of new technologies, NEC Electronics has recently announced the introduction of the world's first Universal Serial Bus (USB) host controller to support the new SuperSpeed USB 3.0 standard. According to the company, the new controller has been designed to provide upcoming PCs, external hard drives, portable electronic devices and thumb drives with support for a higher-performance transfer solution. Thanks to the technical specifications of the new SuperSpeed USB 3.0 standard, the new µPD720200 chip from NEC is fully compatible with versions USB 2.0, 1.1 and 1.0 of the USB standard.

The industry's next-generation USB standard, also known as the USB 3.0, has been designed to amplify the performance of the USB 2.0 one available on the market, while also maintaining backward compatibility with existing standards. According to available details, the new standard is capable of supporting transfer speeds of up 5 gigabits per second (Gbps), which is essentially a 10-time boost in speed over previous USB 2.0 solutions. The technology can allow for 25GB of video content to be transferred to a Blu-ray Disc, which basically translates into a noticeable performance increase over the current USB 2.0 standard, featuring a speed of 480Mbps.

NEC's dedication to the development of the world's fastest USB standard goes back to 1996, when the company joined the USB Implementers Forum. Since then, NEC Electronics can also pride itself with having been the first company to launch a USB 2.0-compliant host controller chip, with the introduction of the μPD720100 device, back in 2000.

With the launch of the new µPD720200, NEC further offers its support for the new standard and enables PC vendors and device builders to take advantage of the new and improved USB 3.0 technology. This solution should further increase the performance of some PCs and other USB-based devices.