14 DAY TRIAL // The fires of youth aren't something easily associated with most technological endeavors, since IT isn't exactly young anymore, but some sub-segments, like USB 3.0, do get to fan such flames, like when a new host controller shows up.
The SuperSpeed USB 3.0 interface standard is one that has already traversed at least half the way towards the mainstream level.
Regardless of how well the interface taps into the 5 Gbps bandwidth potential, however, and no matter how long USB 3.0 products have been around, they rely, in the end, on the same thing.
USB 3.0 host controllers are, ultimately, what enable USB 3.0 support, so hearing that someone invented a chip like this isn't that shocking.
Fresco Logic is the company that made such an item, with the name of FL1100, according to the formal press release.
Essentially, it is a four-port USB host controller with xHCI 1.0 compliance (ensures wide product compatibility), full UASP support (USB Attached SCSI Protocol) for transfer efficiency and the GoXtream router, which reduces latency and protects real-time data streams while still efficiently managing bandwidth.
In other words, the USB connection will be able to perform backup tasks and high-definition video streaming (or whatever else) at once.
Fresco Logic offers another advantage in the ease of integrating the FL100 into a system, since the controller doesn't have firmware.
All in all, any hardware-based multi-stream, multi-threaded parallel processing engine will get to deliver full bandwidth to all USB 3.0 ports and operate more than one device simultaneously without performance drops.
Finally, the hardware-based Link Power Management (LPM) technology enables the FL1100 to automatically put an LPM-capable device in the low power mode.
Motherboard manufacturers should already have the possibility of ordering an integrating the FL1100 into their new products. No word yet on when, and if, this will start happening.