IDF 2008: "SuperSpeed" USB 3.0 Demoed At IDF

San Francisco (CA) - We’re drowning in data and sometimes USB 2.0 just isn’t fast enough to move all those bits around. At the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, we were shown prototype USB 3.0 boards and cables that were transferring at more than 307 MB per second.

On paper USB 3.0 promised to be ten times faster than 2.0 and has the potential to transfer 600 MB per second. The USB 3.0 coalition proclaims this is fast enough to transfer 27 GB in just 60 to 70 seconds.

The USB 3.0 port is backwards compatible with USB 2.0 devices meaning you’ll be able to plug old devices into the new hubs/ports. Several companies were showing off their protocol analyzers which help test the signal integrity and speeds of end-user products.

A rep from ellisys said flash memory and hard drive storage capacities are outstripping USB 2.0 transfer speeds. Case in point, I often fill up 4 and 8 GB Compact Flash cards while photographing car shows and these things take forever to empty on a USB 2.0 card reader.

  • This is great but... Isn't it going to be hard to find an external HD that supports those kinds of bandwidth? Can you name an HD that goes beyond the 200MB/s transfer rate mark?
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  • This is great development...

    Great for certain applications.

    Where can I find an external drive that has over 600MB/s in sustained transfer?
    Reply
  • Chinkers
    Firewire zealot in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1...
    Reply
  • V3NOM
    firewire ftw, pity the dumb end users didnt catch on. if only Apple had pushed it more with its original iPod instead of giving in and using USB... and wtf flash drives far outstrip hard drives in performance!
    Reply
  • Single Seagate 1TB drive easily reach 100MB/s. Put three of them in external enclosure and suddenly you have >300MB/s available.
    Reply
  • eklipz330
    i have a firewire port in the front of my pc but never found anything to use it for =
    Reply
  • pogsnet
    Speed always starts from the ports then the devices attached will follow. Probably next year we can see devices that can use this potential.

    Anyway, how about the LAN? why dont they upgrade it? 1000Mbits = 128Mbytes/secs only
    Reply