OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory and flash-based storage and Symwave, a leading silicon supplier of system solutions for SuperSpeed USB devices, today announced a partnership to deliver next generation USB 3.0 solutions at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada from January 7-10, 2010. The first outcome of this partnership is the industry's highest performance external Solid State Drive (SSD) storage product, ideal for consumers demanding uncompromised leading-edge technology. By working with Symwave, OCZ was able to leverage its flash technology expertise and develop even faster cutting-edge solutions making use of the new USB 3.0 standard.

"Thanks to Symwave's industry leading USB 3.0 storage controller, our external SSD device delivers 10x the transfer rate of USB 2.0 at 5Gb/s, as well as several 'green' improvements including superior power management and lower CPU utilization," said Eugene Chang, Vice President of Product Management at the OCZ Technology Group. "We are determined to be at the forefront of the market by offering products with unparalleled performance, reliability, and design to unleash the potential of flash-based storage."

Symwave, a semiconductor supplier of high-performance analog/mixed-signal connectivity solutions for the PC, consumer and mobile devices, today announced collaboration with Seagate to demonstrate Symwave's USB 3.0 storage controller device designed to comply with the SuperSpeed (USB 3.0) specification revision 1.0. The technology demonstration is the world's first consumer product application of USB 3.0 and will take place at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada from January 8-11, 2009. The demonstration will showcase streaming data to and from a commercially available external storage device at speeds previously unattainable with legacy USB technology.

A major update and commercial introduction to the USB technology has been long overdue. While most devices such as printers, MFDs and other office automation equipment seem fairly comfortable with the bandwidth USB 2.0 offers, with storage solutions where large amounts of data transfer is involved, USB needs a facelift, so much so that companies are slowly gaining interest in technologies such as eSATA.

At the upcoming CES event, Symwave is planning a demo of an external storage solution based on the new USB 3.0 "SuperSpeed" technology. The device it plans to demo could be an external hard-drive or an enclosure with USB 3.0 compliancy. With 10 times the available bandwidth (4.8 Gbps or 600 MB/s), the new technology looks to provide devices with both performance and backwards compatibility with older USB standards. The Symwave storage solution will be one of first devices the technology kicks-off with.