MSI Demonstrates USB 3.1 and Prototype SATA Express Drive

In addition to its regular product line-up, MSI has showcased a number of new techniques at its Computex booth. Among other things, usb 3.1 and sata express, both technologies that will be used in coming generations of hardware, were already on display at the Taiwanese company.

Not only did the hardware manufacturer demonstrate a hard drive that was connected with the new SATA express interface, but it also had a motherboard with the successor to the current USB standard, USB 3.1, hanging on the wall. The controller of that USB 3.1 interface came from Asmedia: the ASM1142 was soldered to the prototype motherboard. The USB 3.1 standard enables speeds of up to 10 Gbit/s: twice the speed of the current USB 3.0 standard. The chip was shown on an unspecified Z97 motherboard.

SATA express was demonstrated in collaboration with Western Digital. The 4TB drive was supplied by WD and is a modified WD Black drive. SATA express allows drives to use a faster interface than the bandwidth provided by a SATA-600 connection. In addition to two SATA 600 ports, drives can be connected to PCI Express lanes via SATA Express, giving them more bandwidth: with two PCIe 2.0 lanes, approximately 1000MB/s is available, while PCIe 3.0 lanes double that capacity. In addition, drives can be controlled via sata express according to the faster ahci alternative nvme, which should further improve the performance.

It is not yet known when the drives will actually be available: many motherboards with Intel’s Series 9 chipset are already equipped with SATA express connectors.