10 June 2009, 10:06

First Linux USB 3.0 drivers emerge

USB 3 logo Just a few weeks after NEC presented its first host controller chip for USB 3.0 and Fresco Logic released its USB 3.0 expansion card, and even before the first products offer the new SuperSpeed mode, a Linux driver for the xHCI (Extensible Host Controller Interface) is waiting in the wings. Intel developer Sarah Sharp writes in her blog that the patch is on the list of those due for inclusion in the 2.6.31 kernel.

The xHCI driver is already included in linux-next and since Linux 2.6.30 has just been released, it should go into the main development tree from which Linux version 2.6.31 will emerge around late August. Users that want to have a look at the new driver can find it in the Git repository.

The phrase "Copyright (C) 2008 Intel Corp." appears over and over again in the source text of the xHCI driver. Intel led the development of USB 3.0 and has the "President and Chairman" of the USB Implementers Forum (among others) on its payroll. The xHCI driver was tested with Fresco Logic's host controller.

At Computex 2009 in Taipei, ASUS and ASRock announced that they would be adding USB 3.0 expansion cards to some of their, soon to be released, P55 motherboards.

(crve)

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