Fujitsu Microelectronics America (FMA) has started shipping its first USB 3.0 SATA bridge IC, which the firm said will start appearing in gadgets by the end of this year.

The MB86C30A supports data-transfer rates of up to 5Gb/s - the maximum speed available over a USB 3.0 connection, FMA claimed.

The SuperSpeed bridge IC incorporates USB communication control circuits, SATA communication control circuits, and protocol control and command control circuits onto a single chip. The Advanced Encryption Standard is also present, FMA added.

Data transfers using USB 3.0 operate at roughly 10 times that of USB 2.0. To put that into context, FMA said that between 10GB and 30GB of video data could copied onto a 3.5in HDD in around one-third of the time that the same transfer would take using a USB 2.0 connection. ®