ASMedia's Delayed USB4 Host Controller is Nearly Here

[TheLostSwede]

Regular readers of TPU might remember our in-depth USB4 article that we posted almost a year ago, but since then, very little has happened and ASMedia has as yet to make its ASM4242 USB4 host controller available to its partners and then ASM2464 USB4 to PCIe 4.0 bridge was suffering the same fate until May this year, when it was released to ASMedia's customers. It turns out most of it is related to USB-IF certification and the USB4 design documentation, as the certification wasn't quite ready for a third party host controller and the design documents were—shall we say—less than complete and relied too heavily on the Thunderbolt 3 spec. This meant that ASMedia had to retest and redo a lot of work they had done, due to a certain spec donator having assumed that other companies knew how it had designed its Thunderbolt products.

The good news is that we should see the ASM4242 in the market before the end of this year and ASMedia is busy testing it and its ASM2464 with a wide range of products to make sure compatibility is as good as possible. In the company suite at Computex, ASMedia was showing the ASM2464 connected to Apple's M2 silicon, as well as Intel's latest CPUs with integrated Thunderbolt 4 support. There had been some performance related issues from Apple's side, but this has apparently been resolved in a recent update from Apple. As far as Intel is concerned, there are no compatibility issues with the 13th and possibly 12th gen mobile chips, but older Thunderbolt hardware might require a firmware update, which may or may not exist. Older Intel hardware also doesn't perform as well as its most recent solutions, but it doesn't mean there will be compatibility issues outright. As for AMD, ASMedia informed TPU that there were no issues, since AMD has a USB4 implementation in its mobile products that follow the USB-IF spec.




ASMedia was also showing that its ASM2464 is suitable for use in docking stations, where PCIe peripheral ICs can be used, just as in a Thunderbolt docking station. The company also demoed DP Alt mode working on the ASM4242, but unfortunately, this is limited to DP1.4a, so 8K support is not on the table here. ASMedia was also demoing its new ASM3074 USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 (20 Gbps) hub, which works somewhat differently to what you'd expect. It has one 20 Gbps "passthrough" port, for a fast storage device or similar and then up to three 5 or 10 Gbps USB 3.2 ports. It's intended mainly for docking stations and it's ASMedia's first USB hub to offer speed faster than 5 Gbps.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[Chrispy_]

Yay! \o/

But also a little irrelevant since boards featuring this new controller are unlikely to hit the market until Zen5/14th Gen.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Yay! \o/

But also a little irrelevant since boards featuring this new controller are unlikely to hit the market until Zen5/14th Gen.

We might see some updated board models with the ASM4242 by the end of the year, at least based on some info I was given at the show.
On the other hand, there will be add-in cards, much like you can get Thunderbolt add-in cards.

 

[kawice]

I can see those USB4 pendrives with 10MB/s write speed, cool finaly we're getting somewhere.

 

[TheLostSwede]

I can see those USB4 pendrives with 10MB/s write speed, cool finaly we're getting somewhere.

USB4 starts at 20 Gbps or 2,500 MB/s, although I guess in theory, you could put a really slow SSD into one of the enclosures, but it makes no sense at all.
Things that don't need the speed offered by USB4 will most likely never use it.

 

[jigar2speed]

USB4 starts at 20 Gbps or 2,500 MB/s, although I guess in theory, you could put a really slow SSD into one of the enclosures, but it makes no sense at all.
Things that don't need the speed offered by USB4 will most likely never use it.

NAS comes to mind, that can use the bandwidth.

 

[Tek-Check]

NAS comes to mind, that can use the bandwidth.

NAS needs to have predominantly fast LAN ports. It's very unlikely that NAS custom board features USB4 ports. It's a network device so Ethernet ports should be at least 10GbE.

 

[rbgc]

NAS needs to have predominantly fast LAN ports. It's very unlikely that NAS custom board features USB4 ports. It's a network device so Ethernet ports should be at least 10GbE.

Yes. Therefore similar NAS with Thunderbolt 4/USB4 and 10 GbE are usually built from Mini ITX boards with Thunderbolt 4 ports and 10 GbE NIC. Nothing new, you can find boards with 10th Gen Intel CPU support.

Example - NAS/media center/video editing network storage:

1x Mini ITX Gigabyte Z590I VISION D (2x M.2 PCIe 4.0, 4x SATA with RAID support, 2x Thunderbolt 4 (USB Type-C ports)
1x 11th Gen Intel i5 CPU
2 x DDR4 DIMM sockets supporting up to 64 GB
1x 10 GbE NIC
optional cache/storage tiering software of your choice, for example from PrimoCache

USB4 starts at 20 Gbps or 2,500 MB/s, although I guess in theory, you could put a really slow SSD into one of the enclosures, but it makes no sense at all.
Things that don't need the speed offered by USB4 will most likely never use it.

For example my favorite enclosure:
ACASIS 40Gbps M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosure compatible with Thunderbolt 3/4 and USB 4.0/3.2/3.1/3.0/2.0.

SSD:
Yes, similar speed, you could put in really slow, old SSD from PC or large one up to 8TB or...

 

[Kapone33]

This will be one of the incentives to get a AMD 770E or Intel Z890 board. I will say I do miss having ESata on the board though.

 

[Tek-Check]

Yes. Therefore similar NAS with Thunderbolt 4/USB4 and 10 GbE are usually built from Mini ITX boards with Thunderbolt 4 ports and 10 GbE NIC. Nothing new, you can find boards with 10th Gen Intel CPU support.

Yes. Those are DIY home systems. All good. I meant ready-made NAS from vendors such as Asustor, QNAP, etc. It seems only high-end machines have speedier ports, so there's segmentation there, like on consumer motherboards.