Star NEC Introduces World's First USB 3.0 Controller
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 19th May 2009 14:34 UTC, submitted by James B
Hardware, Embedded Systems NEC has introduced the world's first USB 3.0 controller. "The muPD720200 device is a host controller for PCs and other digital devices, and is based on the new version of the SuperSpeed USB standard. Supporting the world's fastest USB transfer speeds of up to 5 gigabits per second (Gbps) of data, which is 10 times faster than previous USB 2.0 transfer speeds. The NEC Electronics device, as well as the standard, is fully backward compatible with the USB 2.0, 1.1 and 1.0 versions of the USB standard."
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Free Windows device drivers, but...
by Thomas2005 on Tue 19th May 2009 19:50 UTC
Thomas2005
Member since:
2005-11-07

...no mention of Linux/*BSD drivers. I can understand them wanting to get their host controller into shipping products before the competition does, but how soon can we expect some documentation? In other words, how friendly is NEC Electronics with the FOSS community?

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christian Member since:
2005-07-06

...no mention of Linux/*BSD drivers. I can understand them wanting to get their host controller into shipping products before the competition does, but how soon can we expect some documentation? In other words, how friendly is NEC Electronics with the FOSS community?


Well, it implements the xHCI interface, so I guess it will just use the standard xhci linux driver being implemented by Intel:
http://sarah.thesharps.us/2008-12-07-13-35.cherry

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kaiwai Member since:
2005-07-06

...no mention of Linux/*BSD drivers. I can understand them wanting to get their host controller into shipping products before the competition does, but how soon can we expect some documentation? In other words, how friendly is NEC Electronics with the FOSS community?

Well, it implements the xHCI interface, so I guess it will just use the standard xhci linux driver being implemented by Intel:
http://sarah.thesharps.us/2008-12-07-13-35.cherry


I wonder where the wireless USB will fit into all of this and to what degree will we eventually see the USB specification/logo/working group will become the 'jack of all trades' with the attempt to come up with a single body to 'rule them all'. I know it will be of some benefit to have some consistency within the IT world but at the same time the attempt to try to be all things to all people will eventually leave no one happy as with any compromise.

Regarding USB 3.0, I'd like to see more things standardised; for example, there are usbvc 'compliant' cameras, but many don't operate unless you load a firmware into memory before hand (as with the case of many webcams bundled with computers) - things like that should be avoided by making vendors who want to use USB compatible to actually make their device conform to the specifications without the need of loading special 'drivers' and 'binaries' and 'firmware' but instead can be accessed using a bog standard driver that doesn't require any special tweaks.

This also goes for USB printers, there needs to be a single language which all printers support if they are going to be USB based; to avoid the problem of driver hell - heck, if it means developing the , "USB Printer Language" then I say go for it.

Basically what I am asking for is more standardisation of hardware so that there are basically no vendor drivers required simply to access hardware sitting on a USB port.

Edited 2009-05-21 03:06 UTC

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