Fujitsu has expanded its lineup of USB 3.0-SATA bridge controllers, introducing the new MB86E50 series for external USB 3.0 RAID storage devices.

The Fujitsu MB86E50 is specifically designed for external USB 3.0 dual-port RAID and non-RAID configurations. It supports RAID 0 (striping) and RAID 1 (mirroring) as well as JBOD ("just a bunch of disks") and Dual LUN configurations. An available integrated encryption hardware engine makes the controller an ideal design choice for demanding RAID storage applications using external hard disks or solid state drives.

In addition to RAID, the MB86E50 features transfer speeds up to 5Gbps, hot plugging of devices, and support for the USB attached SCSI (UAS) and Bulk-only Transport (BOT) protocols. The controller incorporates a high-performance 32-bit RISC MPU and an embedded SSCG to optimize SuperSpeed performance while reducing EMI. The MB86E50 includes full legacy support for high-speed USB (480Mbps) and full-speed USB (12Mbps) devices, and supports SATA Gen2i (3Gbps) and Gen1i (1.5Gbps), ATA, and ATAPI drives.

The MB86E50 is fabricated using the Fujitsu 65nm CMOS technology. The bridge controller supports GPIOs including pulse width modulation, provides native command queuing (NCQ) functionality, and includes a serial peripheral interface (SPI) for serial Flash ROM and multiple SPI devices. The MB86E50 features a Pb-free (RoHS) design, customizable product and version identifiers, and a compact 68-pin QFN (0.4mm pitch, 8mm x 8mm) package for greater flexibility. Only one external crystal (25MHz) is required.