NEC today claimed the honor of introducing the first commercially available certified USB 3.0 (Superspeed USB) product. The company's snappily-named µPD720200 host controller has become the first product to claim that honor.

The device has actually been on the market since May of this year, and while the specification for USB 3.0 has been available since November, the host controller is the first product to be certified, "offer[ing] manufacturers and consumers the assurance that it will function in accordance with the specification and will interoperate with the billions of USB-enabled devices that exist in the market today," in the words of a release issued today by the USB 3.0 board.

USB 3.0 offers transfer rates up to ten times faster than its predecessor.