News USB 3.0 to arrive at superspeed in 2008

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2007/09/19/usb_3_to_arrive_at_superspeed_in_2008/1

Pat Gelsinger announces the formation of the USB 3.0 promoters' group. Specification will be finalised in 1H08.

 

OOO optical interconnect!!

/me hugs toslink cables.

 

Optical... something tells me that Monoprice is going to be doing a lot more business.

 

huh well I dont see optical thumb drives anytime soon as thats a lot of tech to fit in a small profile but overall this is a great idea. ^__^

 

More than 10 x 480MBit/s = 4.8GBit/s

Current USB 2.0 devices hitting 30-40MBytes/s but I just can't see USB3.0 stuff hitting 300MBytes/s can you? For one, copying from a USB stick to your hard drive, even a 15,000 rpm drive won't be able to keep up! It would have to be a flash-to-flash transfer to really benefit

 

You got a point there Pope, Flash- to-flash-internal-drive. Maybe its the beginning of the end of harddisks..

 

there are data intensive tasks on the factory floor that might need such high data rate.

what i want to see is a little higher / or same transfer speed as USB2.0, while having a very, very low latency. so that everything will be really responsive. eg, when copying to USB HDD, it's all nice and fast, but as soon as you have multiple copy instances, it goes to a halt. so large chunks of data while having a low latency is what they should be concentrating one, not pure speed.

 

Most of my usb 2.0 flash memory only deliver about 15-25 MB/s. Why your devices get such an awesome speed?
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I totally agree that 10x speed is a tough competitor to hard disks. But with such a high speed, it would reqiure a more powerful chip. So how does USB3 get a low energy consumption?

 

This going to be just plain confusing - especially when you require different cables. Should ahve called it something else. Looks like another of those initiatives that are going to fall down on the implementation, would have been better to go for 2 to 4 times existing speeds using the same cables. Not noticed firewire 800 taking off and that's been around for years.

 

the reason firewire never took off desite in the real world been faster than usb was the liscensing. Anyone can make/buy/program an IC that interfaces using a usb HID class such as a usb audio decoder and put it in there project and the specs (all severall thousand pages of) are avaiable for free off the net. Wheras with firewire the specs can only be got at via NDA. NDA's have to be signed to get hold of the various interface IC's which can only be ordered in batches of 1000+ and the specs are closely gaurded.

A usb networking protocal like firewire has to me would be the greatest improvment.

 

optical usbs? cool.

has anyone heard about wireless usb?


edit:

how about running applications and files of an external drive? i think this would be very nice, don't you? and with some kind of network interface were you can easily link 2 pcs and share files and other stuff this could easily pwn.

 

USB 3.0
I dont even use up any of the 10 USB 2.0 ports to the limits yet, even with some SATA-II to usb drives.
Optical sound's rather cool, but how does one go about powering there usb device via optical, so I guess means the need for external power, more energy effcient they say?

 

I think your right about firewire, they do make it hard for implementors although have to say the large product manufacturer out there using these interfaces look towards selling much much more than 1000 units.

 

For my money, Wireless USB will never really take off 'til you have Wireless Power to go with it. Until then, you're going to be having at least 1 cable trailing across into the device (For power), so why not make it a combined power+data cable (You know, like USB already is).

 

From the looks of the image above, it looks like the optical is in the same plug as the data. So the power would be carried over the same copper, and the data over the optical (The two spots on the "Tongue" in the USB plug)

 

Anyone got a clue about how much power can be drawn out of a USB 3.0? Would be cool if it could give couple of amps so there would be no need for external power on external hardrives.

 

OK true, I might've been a little over zealous with my speeds. But if you agree 15-20MBytes/sec then we're still talking 150-200MBytes/sec under USB3.0

And that does still pwn even the quickest HDDs

 

USB2 in theory: 480Mbit/sec = 60 Mbytes, the 15-20Mbytes/sec limit is because flash memory is crap at sustained transfer, its not the USB2 interface that's the speedbump here. But hey, with signifigantly faster interface, there might be a market for really fast USB sticks, someone might do something about that

 

Flash is even slower then a HDD though ...

It would have to be Ram-Ram and then you would be very limited by the USB bus

 

In case you're wondering about the point of USB 3.0's transfer rate, I think the most important applications are:

• USB monitors
• USB monitors
• USB monitors

...though you could connect a gigabit ethernet connection through it too if you wanted.

I was kind of hoping they'd increase the power part by "more than 10x" as well, but sadly that doesn't look like it's happened. Mains or 12v rail bypass would be cool - kilowattage (if a little dangerous if they got the plug design wrong).