Sep 16, 2010 13:58 GMT  ·  By

VIA has been dealing in a variety of hardware products, from motherboards to x86 CPUs to various controllers, and it seems that the company is ready to launch tis latest product, namely a SuperSPeed USB to NAND Flash controller.

Essentially a new processor, the chip is intended for use in the next generation of USB flash drives and is expected to dramatically increase transfer speeds.

To be more specific, the company claims that USB flash drives featuring this controller are supposed to be able to operate at over 100 MB/s.

The product goes by the name of VL750 and is, of course, backwards compatible with USB 2.0 and USB 1.1 ports, though the top speeds will be of 35 MB/s on 2.0.

What's more, the chip has global wear-leveling and ECC, as well as support for the Bulk-Only Transport (BOT) protocol andUSB Attached SCSI protocol (UASP) standards, for 20nm and 30nm-class NAND chips that is.

“VIA Labs is ahead of the pack by some distance when it comes to offering a complete USB 3.0 eco-system that now includes host, hub and NAND flash controller products,” said David Hsu, Associate Vice President, VIA Labs, Inc.

“The VIA Labs VL750 will pave the way for fast, affordable, and large capacity flash drives of 32GB or more. Large files will become infinitely more manageable with most transfers completing in just a few seconds,” he added.

“In addition to high performance, the VIA Labs VL750 is also designed for ease of implementation and support,” states the official announcement.

“Powered by multiple, advanced in-house PHYs, VL750 offers outstanding signal integrity characteristics and supports popular 2X-3X nm flash memories while consuming minimal power,” the press release adds.

VIA has only started sampling this processor, so there are, as of yet, no actual products powered by it on sale. The first models should show up either before the year is out or in early 2011.