USB 3.0 Ups Peripheral Bandwidth

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USB 3.0 Hubs And Interface Availability

USB 3.0 will, of course, also require new USB hubs to allow connecting several devices through one physical connection. USB 3.0 hubs will be more sophisticated than USB 2.0 devices, as they will include two separate hubs in one single device: one SuperSpeed hub for USB 3.0 operation, and a second one for USB 2.0. This will be entirely transparent to the user, as all ports will be connected to both hubs. However, this approach does not increase the maximum amount of devices per USB host port, which remains 127.

Will USB 3.0 Hubs Be More Expensive?

The implementation of such a double-feature hub will most likely have a negative impact on first-generation USB 3.0 hubs, although we expect future product generations to be based on unified silicon, meaning that one controller supports both hub functions. We also want to point at compatibility issues with USB 1.1, as USB 3.0 devices are not supposed to maintain compatibility with the old 12 Mbit/s standard. Hence, USB 3.0 hubs will not cooperate with old USB 1.1 controllers.

Market Penetration by 2010

The specification is set now, but it will take a few more months until devices are available in any significant quantities. The USB 3.0 Promoter Group expects USB 3.0 consumer products to be available by 2010, which is a year later than expected. Most companies will be busy implementing USB 3.0 for the rest of this year, but we expect controllers to be ready before 2009 closes out.

Windows 7 Without USB 3.0 Support?

Microsoft has already announced that it won't be supporting USB 3.0 natively when Windows 7 ships. The time between finalization of the USB 3.0 specification and the completion of Windows 7 appears to be too short to fit support into the Windows 7 production pipeline. However, Microsoft will definitely add USB 3.0 support via updates. It remains to be seen whether or not Windows XP or Windows Vista will be upgraded with USB 3.0 support, allowing current users to benefit from SuperSpeed technology.

The delays also impacted the product development of other manufacturers, such as Intel. First, rumors said that the Ibex Peak chipset (P55) would be supporting USB 3.0, which is definitely not the case. Users will have to wait for Intel’s 2010 platform to get integrated USB 3.0 hardware support.

Marcel Binder
Marcel Binder
48 Comments Comment from the forums
  • tacoslave
    now external hard drives will be more useful. porn stash = supersafe (even fuckin cia sont know where it is.)
    Reply
  • apache_lives
    i wonder if power is still an issue with some heavy external devices (hdd's etc) - still see alot of issues even today.
    Reply
  • Casper42
    Why is it that articles like this continue to perpetuate the rumor that USB 2.0 does 480Mbps. Connect an external HDD and try copying a large file over to it. You wont see more than 35MB/s and in most cases its right around 30MB/s.

    This is because the 480Mbps (60MB/s) is for both directions AT THE SAME TIME.
    If your copying data from 1 USB device to another, this is helpful, but the fact still remains the transfer rate between the PC and either of the drives is still going to be limited to 30MB/s

    I would venture to guess that the 4.8Gbps transfer rate in USB 3.0 will be the same and therefore a file copy to/from a USB3 HDD will be limited to around 300MB/s. While this sounds great, and will likely satiate the needs of the traditional HDD market, this is basically the same speed as SATA 3Gbps that has been on the market for a few years now and will soon be replaced by SATA 6 Gbps in the next 12 months.
    Reply
  • bin1127
    good new, externals can now make full use of their transfer speed without SATA. Hope intel and MS implements 3.0 soon.
    Reply
  • thartist
    has anyone here ever had a 4mb song transfer in 0,1 secs to a pendrive?? or a 40mb album in 1 or 2 seconds?? ...i guess the chart is about theoretical limits.
    Reply
  • archange
    According to my book, speed is NEVER enough... So, "Is 5 Gbit/s Too Much?" - definitely not, not with the current progress rate of flash drives. Casper42 has a good point.
    Reply
  • zdzichu
    It would be nice to note that Linux supports USB 3.0.
    Reply
  • moe2freaky
    The only con I can see is that it supports 3 meter cable max. 5 meters would have been great.
    Reply
  • apmyhr
    I hope most external hard drives will be able to operate without AC power now. Hopefully, even the big ones. Although the increase in power sounds kind of moderate, so I wont get my hopes up.
    Reply
  • belardo
    The power issue with 2.5" external HDs is not so much the USB spec itself, but the chipset. Intel made the original USB, Apple made it marketable by having it on all their computers and then AMD makes it work better on their motherboards.

    I have both intel and AMD CPU/Chipsets. And noticed this at some of my clients offices as well.
    - ALL the intel systems required two USB connectors to power a 2.5" HD.
    - The AMD systems (32bit, 64bit single / dual cores) did not. A single cable works fine.

    The other issue... performance.
    When backing up Gigabytes of info... backing up about 170GB of data with an AMD64 system takes about 2hrs. With an intel Q6600/P35 (and the other Core2 systems)it takes about 5 hours! Same Ext. USB drive. It sucks... nobody has explained why this happens.
    Reply