14 DAY TRIAL // The industry appears to be rallying up around the new generation of USB 3.0 devices, as several companies are announcing their latest compatible solutions. Such is the case with x86 processor designer, VIA, which announced today the debut of its new VL700 USB 3.0-SATA Controller, a chip that has been designed to provide customers with support for the new interface. According to the Taiwanese company, the highly integrated chip can deliver speeds of up to 5Gbps, allowing users to improve the transfer performance for their latest USB 3.0 devices.
"As the storage capacity of hard drives increases, the need for better data transfer technology arises," said Richard Brown, vice president of Marketing, VIA Technologies, Inc. "SuperSpeed USB offers a big leap forward in transfer speeds and the VIA VL700 gives PC users a way to apply this performance advantage to their existing SATA storage devices."
The chip has been developed by the wholly owned subsidiary, VIA Labs, offering support for both SATA 3Gbps and 1.5Gbps data transfer rates, as well as Native Command Queuing (NCQ). Taking advantage of the USB 3.0 specifications and the aforementioned NCQ functionality, the controller enables better transfer performance, allowing users to transfer large files in less time than was available for USB 2.0-based devices.
The chip maker also announced that it planned to demonstrate the new controller at the Lunch@Piero's media event, which will be held during the CES, in Las Vegas, on January 7th and 8th. The launch of the new controller only emphasizes the company's commitment towards the adoption of the new interface. The USB 3.0 specification is currently one of the main interest points for a number of companies, ranging from chip makers to device vendors. The interface is expected to replace the current USB 2.0 technology in a number of devices, including SATA HDDs, SSDs, ODDs and more.