Company/Writer : JMicron ,	Friendly Print
Date : 2010/05/21 Contact : sales@edom.com.tw

Waiting for long hours to copy a big file into a USB flash? You will probably never have to worry about this in the future. According to the official specification from the USB-IF, the maximum transferring speed of USB 3.0 will be 5Gb per second. It is ten time faster than that of the existing USB2.0, which is the specification usually seen in every USB device at the maximum speed of 480Mb per second. Let’s make a real-life example to compare the two specifications. To transfer a 3D high-definition video between devices, it would take 7 to 10 minutes to finish the copying in USB2.0, with USB 3.0 high-speed transferring interfaces; the total time will be reduced to less than a minute.

The most significant advantages of USB 3.0 are the high-speed data transferring and the power supplying. In addition to the power-on and power-off functions, newly included features like idle, sleep and suspend power management modes are added into the specification to fulfill the pervasively new concepts of environmental protection and green energy. We can say that the USB 3.0 not only has the power supplying features but also energy saving ones. Please refer to the chart to have a quick review of the USB 3.0 features.

USB version comparison chart (by JMicron)

Applications and Market Penetration of USB 3.0 Products

The phase transition issue of products from older USB versions to a newer one will be the major challenge that USB 3.0 will have to face. The enormous amount of older USB products in stock will need a long time to clean up, and the compatibility issue will need to be solved between the host and the device. USB 3.0 has the advantage of full compatibility with USB2.0; however the uncertainty of exact release schedule of Intel-supported USB 3.0 Southbridge Chipset is hampering the popularity of USB 3.0 products. The host supporting will be the key to the success of the prosperity of USB 3.0 interface, which the peripheral device can be connected to for full functions. There are other existing solutions in the market already to support the USB 3.0 host controlling chip from NEC and Fresco Logic to connect the device products, which can burst the USB 3.0 to its maximum speed.

How popular will the USB 3.0 be and how big will the market be? You can get an overview from the USB TechZone in the CES (Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas) earlier this year. In addition to chipset solutions, device manufacturers were trying to show off USB 3.0 products and devices including hard disk, SSD, flash disk, hub, NB peripherals, monitors, digital cameras, media players, setup boxes, game consoles, TV, wireless devices and cloud computing applications. According to a recent report from IDC research, 2010 will be the booming year for USB 3.0. The total sale of USB 3.0 market will reach a hundred million units in 2010, which will be a huge business opportunity for the USB 3.0 vendors.

To successfully put the very first step in the USB 3.0 share, manufacturers have to consider the right entry timing of the market. However the ability of system integration and PHY designing will be the core competences for the vendors. JMicron has been devoting itself to the designing and development of the transferring interfaces. Compared to its competitors, JMicron is able to provide a full product lines to the partners. JMicron has its own development and technical support center in Taiwan, while some of the competitors are still using authorized PHY. JMicron’s technical center can provide the real-time PHY, system research & development integration support and other solutions to its partners. These advantages can not only help the partners have a better cost efficiency, but also a faster time to the market. JMicron is providing several categories application interfaces of USB 3.0 products including peripherals, PC, NB and SSD. Future products will be integrated the hottest trend of cloud computing interface applications.

USB 3.0 to SATA II – JMS539 Product Introduction

JMS539 is a bridge controller, which translates the communication protocol between SATAII 3.0G and USB 3.0 command. The integrated 60MIPS 8051, SATA II enable users to perform high-speed, large size transferring between USB 3.0 and SATA II 3.0G.

eSATA & Hi-Speed USB combo to dual SATA Bridge application

SuperSpeed USB + 1394B combo to SATA II

JMS539 Features

• Complies with Gen2i/Gen2m of Serial ATA II Electrical Specification 2.6
• Supports SATA II Asynchronous Signal Recovery (Hot Plug) feature
• Complies with USB 3.0 Specification, USB Mass Storage Class, Bulk-Only Transport Specification
• Supports USB Super-Speed/High-Speed/Full-Speed Operation
• Supports USB HID operation
• Supports USB2.0/USB3.0 power saving mode
• Supports AES-128/256 for data encryption over USB2.0/USB3.0 
• Supports external SPI NVRAM for Vendor VID/PID of USB2.0/USB3.0 device controller
• Supports ATA/ATAPI PACKET command set
• 12 GPIOs for customization
• Provides hardware control PWM
• Provides software utilities for downloading the upgraded firmware code under USB2.0/USB3.0
• Design for Win 2000, Win XP, Win Vista, Win7, MAC 9.2 or later version.
• Supports 25MHz external crystal
• Embedded 3.3V to 1.2V voltage regulator
• 64 LQFP package (10x10) and 64 QFN package (9x9)

For more JMicron product information, please mail to : sales@edom-tech.com