14 DAY TRIAL // VIA Labs already has one of the most impressive USB 3.0 chip lineups in the industry, but, this year, the company plans to increase its portfolio with the addition of at least three new products, a pair of SuperSpeed USB 3.0 bridge chips and a new USB 3.0 hub.
Although these chips are only improved versions of products the model already has on offer, all of them feature some really nice improvements, that should make the upgrade worthwhile.
The first solution we are going to talk about is the VL701 USB 3.0 to SATA 3Gbps bridge chip which is a low power version of the current VL700 and offers pretty much the same features as its predecessors, including UASP support.
Also called USB Attached SCSI Protocol, this is used to move data to and from USB storage devices such as hard drives, solid state drives, and thumb drives and, among others, it enables command queuing and out-of-order completions for USB mass storage devices.
Next in line is the VL710 which is also a USB 3.0 to SATA bridge, but, this time, it offers support for the SATA 6Gbps mode, making it ideal for connecting SSDs and other high speed storage devices.
In addition, the VL710 also offers hardware RAID support (presumably RAID 0 and 1) for the two SATA devices that can be attached to it.
Finally, the last product we are going to talk about today is the VL811 4-port USB 3.0 hub which is an improved version of the previous VL810.
Compared to its predecessor, the new chip adds support for the USB Battery Charging standard.
This enables it to deliver extra power to various portable devices, such as smartphones and tablets, thus speeding up the charging process (provided that the connected device also supports this standard).
VIA Labs is already sampling the VL811, while the VL701 and VL710 are expected to arrive sometime later this year. (via SemiAccurate)