14 DAY TRIAL // While USB 3.0 has been slowly but surely building up support for itself, the truth of the matter is that most computers out there (especially older PCs) don't come equipped with such high speed communication ports, so PLX and Fresco Logic joined forces and developed a reference design kit capable of adding SuperSpeed USB 3.0 to older PCI-based PCs.
Until now, all the USB 3.0 adapters available on the market relied either on PCI Express or ExpressCard in order to deliver the high data transfer speeds associated with USB 3.0.
But now, this is going to change since PLX has taken its PLX ExpressLane PEX 8112 chip, a PCI-to-PCI Express bridge, and combined it with Fresco Logic’s FL1000, a USB-IF certified single-port PCI Express-to-USB 3.0 host controller chip.
As a result, a new PCI-to-USB 3.0 host card was born that is able to deliver impressive transfer rates using the regular PCI slot that is found in about 400 million PCs, according to a senior analyst at the Linley Group.
“Our lab tests confirm excellent performance results of 139 Mbytes/s when reading data from a USB 3.0 SSD,” said Jimmy Chou, PLX marketing director for USB products.
“This is faster than IEEE 1394B and eSATA drives. Additionally, this performance meets or exceeds that of most PCI Express-to-USB 3.0 host boards in the same test environment”
“Most desktop and server motherboards in the market today offer PCI slots,” said Robert McVay, chief technology officer, Fresco Logic.
“Designers seeking a cost-effective, low-power yet high-performance solution for these existing legacy platforms can implement this reference design and provide a path to upgrade the I/O on these platforms to state-of-the-art SuperSpeed USB, breathing new life into these older designs,” concluded Mr. McVay.
PLX Technology says the new host adapter is available right now, although the company didn't state when we should expect these solutions to reach retail.