ACADEMIA

Point Grey  announced a new addition to its growing family of SuperSpeed USB 3.0 products, the U3-PCIE2-2P01 host adapter card.

Designed and manufactured by Point Grey at the company's headquarters in Richmond, BC, Canada, the U3-PCIE2-2P01 is a low-profile PCI Express Gen 2.0 USB 3.0 card that incorporates a Fresco Logic FL1009 Extensible Host Controller Interface (xHCI) chip. The PCIe Gen 2.0 x1 serial link provides data transfer speeds of 5 Gbit/s, and the FL1009's unique hardware architecture offers a distinct performance improvement over other available chipsets.

Each U3-PCIE2-2P01 card is equipped with two (2) SuperSpeed USB ports, an internal power connector for ensuring reliable power delivery to connected USB 3.0 devices, and both standard and low profile PCIe mounting brackets. Point Grey also offers its own low-level USB 3.0 xHCI driver, which can be optionally used in place of chipset manufacturer drivers to improve streaming performance and provide enhanced bus diagnostics for Point Grey USB 3.0 cameras. Diagnostics can be viewed using the Point Grey FlyCapture image acquisition and camera control SDK. The U3-PCIE2-2P01 is compatible with all Point Grey USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 cameras, as well as third-party USB devices.

"Manufacturing our own interface card is another key step to providing users with a fast and reliable USB 3.0 imaging pipeline," says Michael Gibbons, Product Marketing Manager at Point Grey. "We selected the Fresco Logic USB 3.0 host controller based on its throughput and communication performance over other chipsets. By pairing our card with our own PGRXHCI driver, we minimize our customer's reliance on chipset or OS vendors to resolve issues or provide driver support."