Renesas Electronics today announced that the cumulative total shipment of the company's SuperSpeed Universal Serial Bus (USB 3.0) host controllers has reached 30 million units worldwide as of 19 May 2011. This achievement comes a year and a half after starting mass production of the world's first USB host controller (µPD720200) in September 2009. The company also announced that to further address increasing orders from customers, it plans to double production of USB 3.0 host controllers to a monthly production of six million units starting this June.

In May 2009, Renesas Electronics (then NEC Electronics) introduced the industry's first USB 3.0 xHCI host controller and, after four months of its release, the company became the world's first to earn the "Certified SuperSpeed USB (USB 3.0)" certification from the USB-IF, and also started mass production of the µPD720200 host controller. In the following year, the company released its second USB 3.0 xHCI host controller (µPD720200A) and passed the compliance and certification testing in only two months. These host controllers have become the de facto USB 3.0 host controller standard realising the best interoperability between PCs and PC peripherals that support USB 3.0.

Following these devices, two new host controllers joined the Renesas USB 3.0 product lineup in March 2011 to deliver even faster transfer speeds, better power efficiency, and more compact size than the company's previous versions of USB 3.0 host controllers.

Renesas is claimed to be the world's largest producer of USB 3.0 host controllers and provides complete USB 3.0 solutions, which include device drivers for Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7. Renesas Electronics also licences both host and device-side USB 3.0 IP and offers USB host- and device-side building blocks within its custom ASIC libraries for companies wishing to design and market their own USB 3.0 integrated circuits.

"The fact that our USB 3.0 host controllers surpassed the 30 million cumulative shipment mark in just one-and-a-half years serves as a clear demonstration that Renesas Electronics is the leader in the USB 3.0 market," said Yukihiko Matsuda, associate general manager, industry and network business division, Renesas Electronics. "To address the increasing adoption and orders from both new and existing customers in a timely manner, we decided to ramp up our production, and in the meantime, our product lineups will continue to evolve, expanding their possibilities by adding new features to further respond to customer requirements."

All the USB 3.0 host controllers mentioned above are available now. More information about Renesas Electronics' USB 3.0 host controllers can be found at http://www.renesas.com/prod/usb/.