USB 3.0 Spec Finalized (PICS INSIDE)

USB 3.0 spec finalized

By Wolfgang Gruener
Monday, November 17, 2008 11:33

San Jose (CA) - The USB 3.0 Promoter Group today announced the completion of the USB 3.0 specification. The new interface technology provides ten times the bandwidth of its predecessor and is expected to be integrated in future designs of consumer electronics and PC peripheral devices. But even if hardware designers are adopting the technology immediately, don’t expect USB 3.0 to appear anytime soon on store shelves.






Following Apple’s decision to abandon its Firewire technology at least in some of its systems and acknowledging that USB is ubiquitous in today’s computer and electronics landscape paves the way for a simpler interface technology in the future. And it is exact at this time when USB begins to surpass the bandwidth of Firewire (IEEE1394).

The USB 3.0 Promoter Group today announced that version 1.0 of the USB 3.0 specification has been completed and is transitioned to the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), the managing body of USB specifications. This move effectively opens the spec to hardware developers for implementation in future products. At the most recent IDF, we got a first taste how these devices will work and perform. The technology will provide a maximum bandwidth of 5.0 Gb/s, which is more than six times what is offered buy USB 2.0 (480 Mb/s), which was released more than eight years ago in April of 2000. For those who have been around for some time, USB 1.0 was introduced in 1996 and described an interface that transferred data at 1.5 Mb/s. USB 1.1 followed in 1998 with a 12 Mb/s spec.

USB 3.0 will remain backwards compatible with USB 2.0 as far as the Type A connector is concerned. The technology of USB 3.0 is vastly different, though. While USB 2.0 is based on uni-directional data flow with negotiated directional bus transitions, USB 3.0 supports simultaneous bi-directional data flows through the use of dual-simplex four-wire differential signal wiring as compared to half-duplex two wire differential wiring in USB 2.0. Other interesting innovations in USB 3.0 include new power management features that support idle, sleep and suspend states.

Last month, Tektronix was first to announce test tools for USB 3.0, which enables developers to verify silicon compliance with the specification and test hardware designs.

USB 3.0, which will be called USB SuperSpeed in commercial devices, is expected to be available in commercial controllers in the second half of 2009. Consumer products are expected to become available in 2010.

Major industry players such as Apple seem to have lost interest in Firewire. However the IEEE recently approved the IEEE 1394-2008 specification, which increases the interface bandwidth of IEEE1394, also known as Firewire and i.Link, to 3.2 Gb/s.

http://www.tgdaily.com/html_tmp/content-view-40225-135.html

 

cool, but it will be more than 3-4 years till we really start using them

 

2010 is pretty close.

 

more photos from an older post at Engadget

 

yummy!!

 

Wow if they are serious about the 27gb in 70 seconds we're looking at a 370-400MB per second transfer rate.

Thats going to rock!

Too bad we're going to have to wait a whit to have it at decent prices... i can remember the days of 2000 dollar 64gb usb 2.0 flas drives

 

So which one does USB 3.0 look like?
The first image or the images from engadget?

I hope some company makes usb 3.0 to usb 2 adaptors, or else every usb 2 device we have is going to be useless when 3.0 becomes a standard.

With speeds that fast, cpu usage just from transferring files is going to be extremely high. I cant imagine what the USB hub would look like with USB 3.0, it is probably passively cooled, with speeds like that.

K-TRON

 

The very first image of stewie 's post is not a type A USB 3.0 connector (backward compatible one shown in Engadget photos). That looks like type B or whatever the USB 3.0 equivalent of type B USB 2.0.

As far as type A connectors are concerned you don’t need any adaptors, a standard USB 2.0 connector will work with a USB 3.0 socket and vice versa. New contacts are further inside the connector than older 2.0 contacts. Look at the following pictures.





( source)

 

Cool, so even older notebooks will be able to use them. Great.

Now the questiuon is. Is the USB 2 device or the USB 2 connection the larger bottleneck.

I'm wondering if the USB3 devices will be able to max out usb2 connections as its rare for a usb2 device to ever reach the max data rate that they are "supposedly" capable of

 

What are you talking about... USB2 is maxed at 480Mbit/s which is theoretically only 60MB/s. Any current 5400 or 7200 RPM hard drive can hit that easily.

 

Sorry thats not exactly what i ment.
I ment find a flash drive that will actually be able to accept a 60MB/s transfer. I think the fastest USB flash drive i've ever gotten a hold of is like 37MB/s

But seeing as how I totally forgot that USB hard drives exist; I didnt even think about that, and was only thinking about thumb drives

I retract my question, due to not thinking a question through and being spoiled by eSATA

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=321695

Flash drives can be faster. They're being capped by the bandwidth. Realistically, I don't think USB can sustain more than 35MB/s. The link shows a hard drive being capped lower than 30MB/s (depends on USB controller too).

 

Wait, so if USB 3.0 has a bandwidth of 5Gbps, then wouldn't that make eSATA obsolete? 5Gbps > 3Gbps or eSATA. I guess when USB 3.0 controllers are out for the public, then laptops won't have eSATA anymore and the hard-drive connection will be USB 3.0?

 

I want to know what they are going to build that can actually use this band width...

Even the fastest solid state drives havent made SATA II a bottle neck, and this is supposedly able to transfer at 100ish megs faster a second than that.

Wonder if this connection is going to revoluitionize hard drive tech for faster drives?

 

uhm the intel slc is running around the sata2 bottleneck actually. i'd bet they could let it run faster if the connection would allow it.

 

I thought the Intel SLC was running at 240MB/s read?

Which it is getting close to the SATA II limit, it isnt there yet. I'm pretty sure they could get 300+ MB/s reads, but looking back at the SSD thread it seems that a 60mb jump is probably another generational build away.

This connection is giving 130-160 MB/s faster than even the fastest drives (assuming i'm correct on the 240 reads of the Intel SSD) So thats a pretty big mark up on current speeds.

Heres to hoping by 2010 that SSD's have made the USB3 connection a bottleneck

 

300MB/s is the theoretical maximum. The reality is that the speeds are capped lower than that. eSATA can be maxed out by the fastest consumer SSDs. I hope USB 3.0 makes eSATA obsolete, eSATA has no powered connection which sucks.