You’ve heard a lot about USB 3.0 spec. You’ve heard how fast it is. How great it is. How when it arrives that everybody will want to have it (and trust me, people will.)
Well, wonder no more. Buffalo will be shipping the first USB 3.0 hard drive this month. And yes it has a controller card available to purchase with it since nobody has USB 3.0 natively in their PCs at the moment.
Should you get USB 3.0 now? No, because the availability is still very low and you’ll pay way too much for it.
The deal with USB 3.0 spec is is "SuperSpeed" bus, giving a fourth transfer mode of 4.8Gbit/s. Whether that will actually happen in real-world use is left to be seen, but chances are it won’t be as fast as that. However it will still kick the crap out of USB 2.0, no question. It will be worth the upgrade once there is wide availability for it.
When will there be wide availability of USB 3.0?
You will probably see the first available USB 3.0 products you can buy in 1st and 2nd quarter 2010, but I’d hazard a guess as to say you won’t see true wide availability until 3rd or 4th quarter.
Will the add-on card upgrade be worth it?
Once there is wide availability of consumer products that have this spec, yes. It will be particularly useful for backup drive use. Current USB 2.0 spec drives do the job just fine, but you know that transfers can take quite a while once you get into the three-digit megabyte range.
I feel sorry for anybody that has to transfer anything in the GB range. If for example you had a Western Digital MyPassport 750GB version (which does exist,) and had to transfer, say, 50GB of data over USB 2.0, you’re going to wait a good long time for that transfer to complete. Sure, it will finish, but better make a cup of coffee or three while you’re waiting.
What will the price point be?
Too early to tell. Reports conflict with each other as to how much the products will be here in the US.
It’s probably safe to say the controller card won’t cost much. The major cost will be in the actual products that have USB 3.0 ports on them.
What will USB 3.0 be able to do for you?
No doubt you’re familiar with the Universal Serial Bus – we ranked it as our top PC innovation of all time. But what do you know about the next version of this ubiquitous interface? USB 2.0 (otherwise known as USB Hi-Speed) boosted the original 12Mbps data rate to 480Mmb/s over eight years ago, and now USB 3.0 (dubbed USB Superspeed) is set to multiply that bandwidth tenfold. Intel released the Extensible Host Controller Interface to hardware partners last week after some reported disputes with AMD and Nvidia (who, afraid Intel would have a jump start in incorporating the tech in chipsets, threatened to develop their own USB standard). But how does this affect you? We dug up some new information about USB 3.0, got our hands on the new connectors, and even took a look inside the new cables.
(Edit made to clarify xHCI release)
USB 3.0 will be backwards-compatible with USB 2.0
Like the upgrade from USB 1.1 to 2.0, the new 3.0 connectors and cables will be physically and functionally compatible with hardware from the older specs. Of course, you won’t be able to maximize your bandwidth unless you’re using a USB 3.0 cable with Superspeed devices and ports, but at least plugging a 3.0 cable into a 2.0 port won’t blow up your PC. The spec’s compatibility lies in the design of the new connectors. USB 2.0 cables worked off of four lines – a pair for in/out data transfer, one line for power, and the last for grounding. USB 3.0 adds five new lines (the cable is noticeably thicker), but the new contacts sit parallel to the old ones on a different plane, as opposed to being adjacent to them. This means you’ll be able to differentiate between 2.0 and 3.0 cables just by looking at the ends.
At first glance, the USB 3.0 connector looks just like the 2.0 design
The maximum speed of USB 3.0 is 4.8Gbps
It’s true: USB 3.0 SuperSpeed will be 10 times faster than the 480Mbps limit of the 2.0 spec. The example Intel likes to give out when talking about the new speed is that transferring a 27GB HD movie to your future media player will only take 70 seconds with USB 3.0, while it would take 15 minutes or more with 2.0. Keep in mind that you’re only going to be able to take advantage of this speed if your portable storage device can write data that quickly. Solid state devices will benefit most from the speed boost, while magnetic hard disks will be limited by their RPM and corresponding read/write speeds. Also, new Mass Storage Device drivers will have to be developed for Windows to take advantage of the spec.
The USB 3.0 A and B-side connectors
Uploads and downloads are kept on separate data lanes
Remember those five new lanes we mentioned earlier? With USB 3.0, two new lanes will be dedicated to transmit data, while another pair will handle receiving data. This not only accounts for the significant speed boost, but also allows USB 3.0 to both read and write at the same time from your portable storage device. In the old spec, the pair of lanes used for data transfer weren’t split between send and receive – they only could handle traffic in one direction. Bi-directional data transfer will be very useful for syncing up information on PDAs and storage backup.
The packed guts of a USB 3.0 cable -- note that the cable will be about as thick as a ethernet cable
USB 3.0 will charge more devices, quicker
Not only will USB 3.0 cables facilitate faster transfer speeds, but they’ll carry more power, too. The USB-IF recognizes the growing number of portable devices that charge via USB (cellphones, MP3 players, digital cameras), and have bumped the power output from about 100miliamps to 900 milliamps. That means not only will you be able to power more than 4 devices from a single hub, but the increase current will let you charge up heftier hardware as well.
USB 3.0 will be more power efficient
One of the mandates of the new spec is more efficient power-usage protocols. USB 3.0 abandons device polling in favor of a new interrupt-driven protocol, which means non-active or idle devices (which aren’t being charged by the USB port) won’t have their power drained by the host controller as it looks for active data traffic. Instead, the devices will send the host a signal to begin data transfer. This feature will also be backward compatible with USB 2.0 certified devices.
A look at the mini connector that'll connect to cell-phones and other portable devices
The spec that Intel released mid-last week is only 90% complete. Ravencraft says that they expect the spec to be finalized by Q4 of this year. Hardware partners are expected to have USB 3.0 controllers designed by mid 2009, and consumers won't see the first end products utilizing the spec until early 2010 (though a late Holiday 2009 push for new products isn't out of the question).
If you currently have another PC at home acting as a file server and nothing more, a USB 3.0 enabled backup HDD can replace that outright. The entire reason for a file server is to take advantage of the speed of your LAN. It is the fastest way to send and receive files.
Even though USB 3.0 won’t be as fast as the NICs on your network, they are fast enough where a file server simply won’t be needed. Instead you can simply attach a hard drive via USB cable and get nice fast transfers that are solid and reliable. Over time this will prove to be very cost effective (especially if what you get is USB self-powered.)
Normally I don’t get all ga-ga for new technologies these days, but I can honestly say that yes, I really want to get USB 3.0 ports in my PC. I mean, heck, it’s even fast enough for primary hard drive use (under Linux, anyway.) Can you imagine using a PC with no IDE or SATA connected drives whatsoever? You can with USB 3.0 easily. True, it’s not as fast, but chances are you really wouldn’t notice it.
It’s amazing what a big speed boost can do for USB, isn’t it?
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