Renesas – Compact hub controller offers industry-leading low power consumption (μPD720210)

Renesas Electronics has announced the availability of its SuperSpeed USB (USB 3.0) hub controller system-on-chip (SoC), the μPD720210, for use in hubs that enable connection of multiple devices supporting the USB 3.0 standard, such as PC peripherals and digital TVs.

The USB interface standard has been widely adopted worldwide. The recent proliferation of video content and large-capacity recording media has increased demand for interfaces capable of handling higher data transfer rates. In response, new products are coming to market with support for USB 3.0, which delivers speeds 10 times faster than the 480 megabits per second of USB 2.0 speeds. Adoption of USB 3.0 in non-PC products, such as digital consumer electronics, is growing due to factors such as the appearance of solid state drives (SSDs), which allow reading and writing of data at faster speeds than conventional hard disk drives (HDDs), and chipsets with a built-in USB 3.0 host controller.

A USB 3.0 hub device supports the proliferation of USB 3.0-compatible peripheral devices by allowing multiple such devices to connect to a single host device. The needs for the products with built-in USB 3.0 hubs are increasing, including docking stations, monitors, and digital TVs, enabling high-speed data transfer with a variety of peripheral devices. Featuring compact packaging and integrated peripheral components, the new μPD720210 hub controller SoC was designed to meet the need for hubs with low standby power consumption and small board size, says the company.