Laptop models with USB ports connected to more than one controller

[spigge]

A trend is that new laptops are delivered with all USB ports connected to the same controller. In the specs, it never says how many controllers are available for the ports. In our application, we use two Kinect cameras and each need dedicated USB controller. How can we get this information beforehand or what are the alternatives? Will docking stations generally provide ports on a separate controller from the laptop unit? Other ways of producing extra USB controllers? Any help here woud be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Fredrik

 

[hang-the-9]

Contact the laptop vendor and ask about how they are built if you need to find out if they have more than one USB controllers. The Dell Latitude I am using now has a USB2 and a USB3 controller listed in device manager.

 

[spigge]

Even though several controllers appear in the device manager, all the USB ports may still be connected to one and the same controller, which means insufficient bandwidth in our case. Knowledge about how the ports are configured is beyond most support technicians. I need to get hold of the guys who have overview of the motherboard architecture for each model and that's not an easy task. Perhaps there is an easier way to generste an extra controller. Expresscards are getting rare but what about USB-C, is that on a separate controller? Or what about USB ports on dockning stations? Any experiences on the forum?