Renesas Creates SATA 6Gbps to USB 3.0 Bridge Chip

Renesas has begun to branch out as far as interface compatibilities go, having designed what qualifies as its first ever SATA 6Gbps to USB 3.0 bridge controller, complete with UASP support.

Renesas is a very prominent name on the USB 3.0 market, especially the segment of SuperSpeed host controllers.

The company has now decided to expand its horizons and start making other sorts of chips as well, in this case USB 3.0 to SATA 6Gbps bridge controllers.

Simply put, such chips will let an USB3.0 host system communicate with a Serial ATA (SATA) device in external USB storage equipment.

Samples are already available and mass production will begin in October, in quantities of 500,000 chips per month.

There was not much information on the performance of the µPD720230, as the small chip is called.

Though ATTO did return a transfer speed of 370 MB/s, but this benchmark is known for reporting numbers higher than those of other such programs, so users should be wary of getting their hopes up too high.

Nevertheless, the chip does have a real advantage in the form of UASP support (UASP stands for USB Attached SCSI Protocol), which allows for command queuing.

All in all, Renesas' host controllers, as well as AMD's A70M and A75 chipsets, will work better and gain versatility when the µPD720230 is involved.

“Through AMD's collaboration with Renesas, we were first in industry to offer integrated UASP via our USB3-enabled chipsets supporting our A-Series APU platforms,” said Godfrey Cheng, Director of the Client Technology Unit at AMD.

“AMD customers will enjoy fully-validated support for Renesas µPD720230 USB 3.0 SATA3 SOC supporting UASP technology.”

Those that want to get a better idea of all the benefits featured by the newcomer need only drop by the official press release, where all information is given in full.