News USB 3.0 specification finalised

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2008/11/18/usb-3-0-specificaton-finalised/1

The USB Promoter Group has finalised the specification for USB 3.0 "SuperSpeed", and is due to announce official details at a conference on Monday.

 

Is it just the hardware that's faster, or has the protocol changed?

 

How about the voltages USB 3.0 can give to devices ? Will it be 5v like USB2 ?
Just wondering whether external devices will still require a power supply.

 

I've no idea about the voltages tbh - I thought it was an optical connection. I think it's probably still 5V if they do include a power line.

 

The transfer rate for USB3 is sick. 25gb in 70s.

 

Yeah, it will be. It's backwards compatible to USB2/1.1/1.0 so it has the same power pins. Whether external devices need additional power is really a question of their current requirements rather than voltage. For example, mice, keyboards, thumb drives, some 2.5" external HDDs, scanners, webcams, wireless adaptors etc. generally don't need external power supplies because they have low current requirements, whereas heavier duty things like printers, most 3.5" drives and so on do need external power supplies because they need more current than the (IIRC) 1.5 amps that a single USB connector provides.

 

Yeah, except find me a disk that can stream data at that speed! Always good to remove a bottleneck though.

 

I think take up maybe slow mainly because this time round a lot more people have a lot more usb devices. While I welcome the speed increase I don't have any real need to replace my usb2 external hard drives yet so I won't be buying into USB3 until I eventually get a new motherboard which comes with it as standard. Of course If I replace my motherboard in the time between now and its general release (to take advantage of Core I7 or whatnot) It could be even longer.

I suppose it will benefit some who regularly make large data transfers through USB or stream via USB but as a whole I don't think the extra speed is really needed just yet. My patience can last a little longer.

Its good progress though (encase you all think I'm being too negative)

 

You know you're a geek if you get excited about this... which I kind of am excited about this.

 

Thanks. Trustedreviews says the available current is increased to 900 mA with USB 3, so maybe we will see fewer power cables with more devices able to lose their wall-wart power bricks (though these have thankfully been getting much smaller recently - the charger for my Nokia N95 8GB is smaller than a standard UK plug!). They also say USB 2.0 offers "approximately 100 mA" though, so don't know how much to believe their figures. 900 mA would be odd - why not 1,000?

Link - http://www.trustedreviews.com/peripherals/news/2008/08/19/USB-3-0-Fully-Detailed/p1

 

As I understand it, USB offers up to 100mA for non-negotiated links (So, just plugging 2 wires into V+ and GND in a USB socket). For negotiated links (Where there is a device on the line), maximum draw is 250mA for passive ports (Unpowered hubs) and 500mA from active ports (Powered hubs/root hub).

My understanding may not be correct, however.

 

So we have High Speed USB 2.0, and now Super Speed USB 3.0. Do they really need to bother with the "*** Speed" nicknames, the specification is to computer connections what Kleenex is to tissues. I eagerly await USB 8.0, "Ultra Mega Hyper Speed". Sounds like a bad Power Rangers attack.

 

I'm excited by this in the prospect of a bunch of cheap USB 3.0 thumbdrives instead of a traditional hard drive in something like a netbook.

 

as of now I don't thionk many users have a need for such throughput, but of course that's future proofing a bit because in 2014 when it's still around 250gb/s might seem a little limiting. In the sound production world USb 2.0 is sometimes known for having bad latency which was more important than transfer speed as that was rarely ever reached. I guess I could see implementation of things like usb 3.0 gigabit ethernet and other protocols that have the potential for high burst speeds.

 

So in the future I can stream/edit on the fly from the hdd camcorder?
Oh wait. I probably have to buy a new camcorder also.. damn..