A 10x faster USB 3.0 will be released next year 2008

The transfer speed for USB 2.0 is 480Mbps
The transfer speed for USB 3.0 will be 4.8Gbps.
10x faster than before.


EE Times (09/18/2007 11:06 H EDT)

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. — Intel Corp. announced it is working with a handful of companies on a specification that could push the USB's theoretical throughput beyond 4 Gbits/second, ten times its current rate. The USB 3.0 spec aims to deliver 300 Mbytes/second of usable data at the applications level and add new quality of service capabilities that could challenge the 1394 interconnect also known as Firewire.

At their inception in the early 1990's, USB aimed at keyboards and mice with a 1.1 spec running at less than 12 Mbits/s. Firewire targeted audio and video applications such as camcorders at 100 Mbits/s and faster.

But over time USB has seen widespread adoption and swung to speeds approaching 480 Mbits/second while Firewire has been much less broadly adopted. With the latest move announced at the Intel Developer Forum here USB aims to leapfrog Firewire.

Aiming at long term expandability, Intel engineers have tested a basic version of the new protocol in software simulations at 5 and 25 Gbits/second, said an Intel engineer. The link is media agnostic and will run over copper and optical cables.

The interconnect, also called SuperSpeed USB, aims to serve any flash-based device including USB drives, camcorders and media players. One design goal is to keep abreast of the transfer speeds of flash chips.

"We don't want to be the bottleneck in the system," said Jeff Ravencraft, an Intel executive overseeing the USB 3.0 initiative.

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