Renesas Electronics Collaborates with AMD to Accelerate Promotion of USB 3.0 Standard

Renesas Electronics Corporation, a premiere provider of advanced semiconductor solutions, today announced its collaboration with AMD to promote the new SuperSpeed Universal Serial Bus (USB 3.0) standard.

In December 2009, Renesas Electronics (formerly NEC Electronics Corporation) released its USB Attached SCSI Protocol (UASP) driver, supporting the new industry-standard, highly efficient mass-storage protocol suitable for use on SuperSpeed USB to overcome the performance boundaries of the Bulk Only Transfer (BOT) protocol. The new UASP driver will be used with Renesas Electronics' USB 3.0 xHCI (eXtensible Host Controller Interface) host controller, which entered the market as the world's first USB 3.0 host controller in June 2009. Having shipped over three million units of the host controller, as a dedicated promoter of USB 3.0 standard, Renesas Electronics is now targeting monthly production of two million units starting April 2010 and aims to continually contribute to advancement and standardization of USB.

To continue to drive market leadership and meet the demand for USB 3.0, Renesas Electronics has been collaborating with AMD to accelerate the promotion of USB 3.0. Adopting Renesas Electronics' USB 3.0 xHCI host controller to its reference design, AMD successfully implemented USB 3.0 data transfer speeds onto its motherboards. Renesas Electronics and AMD are also partnering to achieve interoperability of Renesas Electronics' UASP driver with AMD's motherboards to provide a standardized UASP driver into the market. AMD successfully enhanced the data transfer rate by around 20 percent compared to the conventional BOT., while minimizing design-cycle time.

"We're very pleased with the performance and cost ratio of our USB 3.0 portfolio that we've been able to achieve due to our collaboration with Renesas Electronics, and how this can offer even more value to our customers," said Mike Wisor, Senior Director of System Software Development at AMD. "By combining both companies' innovation and expertise, we were able to enable the USB 3.0 ecosystem for UAS support, further increasing the performance of these USB 3.0 solutions." "We are pleased to share our USB 3.0 host controller and technologies with AMD to develop their USB 3.0 product portfolio by reducing time-to-market, lowering power consumption, and improving price-performance," said Kazuyoshi Yamada, senior vice president, Renesas Electronics Corporation. "Starting with AMD's motherboards, AMD and Renesas Electronics will continue to work together as the industry leaders to expand the USB 3.0 marketplace offerings with the highest quality and significantly advanced data transfer speed to provide added value to our customers in consumer and portable electronics."

Renesas Electronics' USB 3.0 Host Controller

The USB 3.0 standard is a next-generation interface to be used in a wide range of electronic devices including PCs, PC peripherals and digital appliances, and is capable of supporting data transfer rates of up to 5 gigabits per second (Gbps), which is 10 times faster than the previous USB 2.0 transfer speeds. With its higher speeds and enhanced power efficiency, external hard disk drives are expected to be the first USB 3.0 devices to appear on the market.

As a member of the USB-IF since 1996, the Renesas Electronics (formerly NEC Electronics) has played a leading role both in defining USB standards and in developing USB technology. In 2009, the company introduced the industry's first USB xHCI host controller. The host controller is the industry's first certified USB 3.0 commercially available product and represents the first step to broad adoption among host and peripheral device manufacturers.