My last appointment of CES was a good one. We all know USB is good for a lot of things. HD transfer is not one of them. SuperSpeed USB is about to change all that.
Jeff Ravencraft is the president of USB Implementers Forums, Inc. This organization is responsible for overseeing, publishing, maintaining, and certifying everything USB. Over a period of more than 1/2 hour, Jeff explained and demonstrated the USB 3.0 standard.
To put it mildly, I was quite impressed with the speed of USB 3.0. I was quite impressed with the forethought that was put into making the connectors backwards compatible. To improve throughput, the new standard has increased the number of data paths, which requires new cables, while allowing “older” USB cables to plug into the new connectors. You may not get USB 3.0 speeds with old devices, but you can still use them with USB 3.0 connectors.
A couple of examples of ‘B’ ends
and a couple ‘A’ end pictures
I watched a demo of a folder of pictures being copied from a USB 3.0 to a USB 2.0 device and then USB 3.0 to 3.0.
3 to 2: it took about a minute to copy the files over.
3 to 3: perhaps 10 seconds to do the same operation.
Basically, USB is now limited by HD transfer rates in lieu of the other way around.
And right now, USB 3.0 is fact. We have motherboards shipping from
- ASUS
- GigaByte
notebooks shipping from
- HP
- Fujitsu
electronic devices shipping from
- I/O Interconnect
- RATOC
- SIIG
- Western Digital
Device Silicon from
- ASMedia Technology
- Fujitsu
- LucidPort
- Sumwave
I am sure by years end, USB 3.0 will be the predominant/standard shipping USB connections on all new computers and components. USB is so universal, it will be interesting to see if eSATA will survive. That may all depend on how many HD’s one can install in an enclosure and then transmit data over a single USB 3.0 cable.
More information can be found at http://www.usb.org/home.
