Via Technologies, a well known chip designer, has announced the industry’s first 4-port USB 3.0 controller. The device is aimed at mainboards, notebooks and other devices for which SuperSpeed USB support is a benefit.

“SuperSpeed USB not only makes transferring HD video files, high pixel count digital photos, and backing up hard drives quick and easy, but Via’s new hub controller allows consumers to get the most out of the technology by expanding the capacity of PC systems,” said Richard Brown, vice president of marketing at Via Technologies.

Via Technologies’ VL810 chip supports up to 5Gb/s transfer rate (625MB/s) of SuperSpeed universal serial bus and is also backwards compatible with previous-generation USB standards. Along with power management features that include the ability for devices to communicate latency tolerance to the host and for links to enter progressively lower power states when link partners are idle, the Via VL810 is made using advanced 80nm CMOS technology, further lowering the chip's power usage.

Via did not indicate whether the VL810 is intended for PCI Express 2.0 x1 or x4 interconnection. In the latter case all four USB 3.0 ports will have to rely on 500MB/s interconnection between USB 3.0 hub and PC itself, but in the former case about 2GB/s of bandwidth will be available for demanding SuperSpeed USB clients.

Previously the only USB 3.0 hub controller available was 2-port solution from NEC.

Tags: Via, Via Technologies, USB