Judging by the reactions of the media outlets, everyone seems to be overly excited by the rumor that Intel intends to launch its first native USB 3.0 silicon and to ship it with the Cougar Point reference motherboard. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean Intel will integrate USB 3.0 into the chipset level. The reason for the change of heart could be that Intel sees Light Peak still has a long road ahead before it becomes a standard and that the chip giant probably wants a share in the lucrative discrete USB 3.0 solution market that is largely dominated by Renesas. To date, Renesas and Fresco Logic are shipping USB 3.0 host silicons in significant quantity.
In fact, nearly all the USB 3.0 host chips shipped to Asus, Gigabyte and ASRock are from Renesas; only a small quantity comes from Fresco Logic. ASMedia, VLI and other IC makers seem to be having some problems with USB 3.0 driver stack, a major obstacle before they can get their chips approved by the USB-IF. Of course, if the rumor (i.e. chipset integration) is true, this coupled with AMD’s confirmed plan to support USB 3.0 will most likely push the SuperSpeed interface towards mainstream a year earlier than expected. We are keeping our fingers crossed until IDF 2010.Permanent Link
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