Fujitsu Demos USB 3.0-SATA Bridge ICs

Fujitsu Semiconductor America, Inc. demonstrated its newest USB 3.0-SATA controller products at the annual Intel Developers’ Forum.  

FSA will presented throughput and interoperability tests between the Fujitsu USB 3.0 host controllers and various motherboards and devices. The MB86C31 series was demonstrated with a single-port reference HDD/SSD system to highlight the transfer speeds attainable with the Fujitsu USB 3.0-SATA bridge controller IC. A second demo, featuring the recently announced MB86E50 series and a RAID 0-configured dual-port reference HDD/SSD system, illustrated the potential performance gains of pairing USB 3.0 with RAID-enabled external drives.

                                      MB86E50:
               USB 3.0-SATA RAID Bridge Controller IC

The MB86C31 and MB86E50 series are new additions to the Fujitsu USB 3.0-SATA bridge IC family. The two new bridge ICs integrate a 32-bit RISC MPU, and are available with hardware-based high-speed encryption. Both the MB86C31 and MB86E50 series deliver throughput rates up to 5Gbps, permit hot plugging of devices, and support the USB-attached SCSI (UAS) and Bulk-only Transport (BOT) protocols. Both chips also offer full legacy support for high-speed USB (480Mbps) and full-speed USB (12Mbps) devices, as well as for ATA, SATA Gen2i (3Gbps) and SATA Gen1i (1.5Gbps) drives.

"The USB 3.0 SuperSpeed standard represents an exciting step forward for high-performance external storage applications," said Yoshi Masuda, senior manager of marketing, Fujitsu Semiconductor America. "The Fujitsu MB86C31 and MB86E50 series allow developers to provide their customers with a robust and flexible plug-and-play method of external storage with blazingly fast throughput while maintaining legacy support."

The MB86C31 series has earned the USB-IF certificate of compliance with SuperSpeed USB. Available in two small packages – a 64-pin LQFP (7mm x 7mm) and a 48-pin QFN (6mm x 6mm) – the MB86C31 offers manufacturers a design flexibility.

The MB86E50 series supports RAID 0 (striping) and RAID 1 (mirroring) as well as JBOD and dual LUN configurations. Available in a compact 68-pin QFN (0.4mm pitch, 8mm x 8mm) package, the MB86E50 is a choice for RAID storage applications that use external hard disk or solid state drives.