Description

VIA Lab’s VL701 is a high performance, low power single chip USB 3.0 to SATA 3Gb/s bridge controller designed for new generation external storage devices that connecting Hard Disk Drive (HDD), Solid-State Drive (SSD), and Optical Disc Drive (ODD). Its integrated in-house USB PHY enables VL701 to run in USB Super-Speed, High-Speed, and Full-Speed modes. Supporting USB mass storage class Bulk-Only Transport (BOT), VL701 based devices can work on Windows 8, Windows 7, Vista, XP, 2003/2000/ME, Mac OS X and various Linux kernels without additional driver. Besides Bulk-Only Transport, VL701 also support USB Attached SCSI Protocol (UASP) that allowing mass storage command queuing and out of order data transfers to further enhance read/write performance. Its integrated in-house SATA 3Gb/s host controller can work with all SATA based storage devices and can connect at either SATA 3Gb/s or 1.5Gb/s automatically. Built-in all required linear and switching voltage regulators, highly integrated VL701 work perfectly with single power input from USB 5V bus power to save customer BOM cost. 11 GPIO pins are available for push button, operation LEDs, driverless capacity LEDs, device power down control, and other special usage. The SPI interface can support external flash for firmware upgrades or additional software enhancements.

Block Diagram

Key Features

• Super-Speed USB (5Gb/s) and High-Speed USB (480Mb/s)
  - Compliant to Universal Serial Bus 3.0 Specification Revision 1.0
  - Compliant to Universal Serial Bus Specification Revision 2.0
  - Mass Storage Class Bulk-Only Transport (BOT)
  - Integrated in-house Super-Speed PHY and USB 2.0 PHY
• Serial ATA 3Gb/s and 1.5Gb/s
  - Compliant to Serial ATA Specification Revision 2.6
  - Integrated in-house SATA 3Gb/s PHY
  - RBC command conversion for ATA device
  - MMC-2 command pass-through to ATAPI
  - Support 48-bit LBA
  - Support multiple LUN
• Fast 8051 Macro cell 80C32-Compatible Microcontroller
  - Standard 1T 8051 instruction set

• Built-in Voltage Regulators
  - 5.0V to 3.3V LDO
  - 5.0V to 1.5V switching DC-DC 
• GPIOs for Special Function Usage
  - 11 GPIOs in LQFP64 and 7 GPIOs in QFN48 for special usage
  - 2 dedicated BUSY/POWER LED indicators
• Misc
  - Support device power down function
  - Support external SPI flash for firmware upgrade
  - Support EEPROM for customized PID/VID/SN…
  - Support F/W based capacity LEDs (LQFP64 only)
• Software
  - Support Microsoft Windows 8,Windows 7, Vista, XP, 2003, 2000, and ME
  - Support Mac OS 10.X
  - Support various Linux kernels