Saturday, June 7th 2008
NVIDIA and AMD Vie with Intel Over USB 3.0
First-tier makers NVIDIA and AMD are dissatisfied with Intel's ownership of the USB 3.0 specification, CNET reported yesterday. The next-generation high-speed USB 3.0 specification is aiming to become standard in 2009. It will be 10 times faster than USB 2.0 and at the same time as widespread as the current USB 2.0. The USB 3.0 will also retain full compatibility with USB 2.0 and presumably USB 1.0. The main investitors behind the USB 3.0 specs include Intel as well as Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Texas Instruments, NEC, and NXP Semiconductors. "The challenge is that Intel is not...giving the specification to anybody that competes with CPUs and chipsets," said a source close to AMD who is familiar with the dispute. As a result AMD, NVIDIA, VIA Technologies and probably others could be driven to create their own USB 3.0 specification that may lead to a lot of frustration and money lost on development. "We are going to be forced to create a secondary specification ... new open host controller standard for USB 3.0." the AMD source added. "They could spend the time, engineers and money developing their own host controller spec," an Intel source said. "In the past they have chosen to let us do the work and then benefit from the fruit of our labor." Continue reading the full story here.
Source:
CNET News
43 Comments on NVIDIA and AMD Vie with Intel Over USB 3.0
Samsung announced some USB monitors a while back and im sure USB3 is gunna be the big break they needed to provide the bandwidth a USB monitor needs, but how much effort should they put into a project that will only work on certain intel platforms.
And once companies do pick up USB3 for their devices, seeing as how only certain intel platforms support the standard...it would be much easier to charge a larger premium...and its bad enough logitech wants $70 for some of their mice as it is, where do we draw the line? $150 for a wireless USB3 mouse?
Its just silly, intel should just allow a more open USB3 platform so we can adopt it quickly and move on to the next thing. Intel wants to be different, fine why dont they offer "USB 3.0 Extreme Edition" and let everyone else have USB3.0
Intel would have no choice but to support the collboration and their spec, or come to some kind of agreement.
I beleive this happened somewhat with USB at an earlier stage, i remembe the days when USB needed drivers to run... there was no autoplay or generic support you needed a driver CD for ever controller and every device. making it an open source, compatible standard is what makes USB so popular.
As to why is firewire less popular than USB? price. Firewire requries royalties to be paid and its a more complex hardware design, therefore it costs more. people are stingy, and seeing 480Mb for USB2.0 vs 400Mb on firewire, makes them think USB is faster anyway.
mac related link, but it shows evidence of how slow USB2.0 is - i have a hard drive cage with both firewire and USB2.0, and the firewire is indeed a lot faster.
Because Intel's graphics is worse than Pig's shit, if it has to survive it has to survive on other's intellectual property.
Lets see if Intel can develop a dedicated graphic chip that can compete with ATI or Nvidia.
What needs to be done is what we did as a nation over 200 years ago. Does the Boston Tea Party ring a bell? Boycotting Intel along with all those who refuse to play fare....AMD, MS, Intel etc need to get with the program and begin collaborating on the USB 3.0 standard. Then continue to provide us with fare pricing and honest goods. I hate it when the cold war begins in the technological realm. We as the consumer hold more power than the corporations do if we just had the balls to stand up and say enough is enough.