14 DAY TRIAL // Japanese company Renesas Electronics will present a new USB 3.0 HUB controller during this year’s IDF event. The new controller has a remarkably low-power consumption and will enable many interesting external devices with multiple USB 3.0 ports.
Renesas started out in Japan in 2003 as a joint venture between Japanese companies Hitachi and Mitsubishi Electric.
In 2010, it merged with NEC Electronics and this made the company become the fourth largest semiconductor manufacturing company in the world at the time.
Currently, Renesas has a working agreement with TSMC, and it is outsourcing production on the 90nm manufacturing level and is planning to expand the manufacturing collaboration.
The new controller is assembled in a small QFN package that’s short for “quad flat no-lead.”
It only measures 9 by 9 millimeters (0.35” by 0.35”) and will enable manufacturers to make USB 3.0 devices with low-power consumption and a very small size.
The new µPD720210 hub controller consumes a maximum of 0.35 watts when active and idles at just 0.005 mW.
The pricing is slated at just $3.5 (2.73 EUR) and the company projects sales of over 1 million units per month from April 2013 on while mass production will start in September 2012.
USB 3.0 controllers are quite expensive now when compared with USB 2.0 models and that’s somewhat expected, but what’s undesirable is the fact that the price has not gone down fast enough since the introduction on the market.
The new µPD720210 hub controller will most likely drive the prices to more acceptable levels.
Renesas’ launch during IDF is in stark contrast with Intel’s very expensive ThunderBolt technology that is actually reason enough to drive the price of the average computer mainboard up by 50% on its own.