ASMedia Readies Controllers for Thunderbolt Devices

[btarunr]

ASUS-subsidiary ASMedia made its mark as a vendor of high cost/performance 2-port USB 3.0 SuperSpeed host controllers, 2-port SATA 6 Gb/s controllers, and PCIe-PCI bridge chips, with good adoption by PC motherboard vendors. The company now eyes the emerging Thunderbolt-IO market. Thunderbolt will begin seeing adoption by the PC market starting this year, and the adoption of the interconnect by data storage device manufacturers, particularly of fast external storage, for use in the content-creation industry.

Thunderbolt host controllers are yet to receive widespread adoption due to three factors:

• Cost of the controller. Intel is yet to bring its Thunderbolt host controllers down to an a reasonable price.
• Deficiency of alternative controller providers, high scope for price-reductions the moment there are alternative providers
• A looming transition from Thunderbolt copper-electric to fiber-optic medium, which could make current 10 Gb/s-over-copper standard obsolete

ASMedia could address at least two factors here, it could provide an alternative to Intel-made controllers, and could offer a competitive price (or at least price-performance ratio). ASMedia president Lin Che-Wei told DigiTimes that his company will be ready with Thunderbolt-compatible SATA 6 Gb/s controllers, by the second half of 2012.

Sources: DigiTimes, VR-Zone

[Jizzler]

#4, a reason to use it.

Been trying to find some "wow" news about Thunderbolt. I know it's new-ish and can certainly grow, but so far it looks like it's biggest feature is port reduction on mobile devices.

[TheLostSwede]

Turns out Digitimes didn't understand what ASMedia was talking about.
ASMedia is NOT launching any Thunderbold device chipsets, what they were talking about is that their PCI Express controllers for various devices work with Intel's upcoming Cactus Ridge Thunderbolt chips.
Update here http://vr-zone.com/articles/asmedia-...ons/15409.html