Friday, August 22nd 2008
USB 3.0 SuperSpeed Demonstrated
USB 2.0 has been around for quite some time now, it's already become a serious bottleneck with storage devices where its "up to" 480 Mbps speed limits transfer-rate significantly compared to what today's devices demand. External-SATA had proven to eradicate that bottleneck by providing speeds for external storage devices on par with internal fixed drives. A newer standard of the USB is in the works, this newer interface on paper promises 10-times the amount of bandwidth USB 2.0 did, that's 4.8 Gbps, more than three times over that of e-SATA, 1.5 times over e-SATA II.
At the ongoing Intel Developer Forum (IDF) event, prototype USB 3.0 boards and cables were shown transferring at 307+ MB/s. The USB 3.0 coalition proclaims this is fast enough to transfer a 27 GB HD in just 60 to 70 seconds. This interface is backwards compatible with USB 2.0 (HiSpeed) and USB 1.1 (FullSpeed), and will be referred to as SuperSpeed. A representative from Ellisys said current flash memory and hard drive storage capacities are outstripping USB 2.0 transfer speeds.
Source:
TG Daily
At the ongoing Intel Developer Forum (IDF) event, prototype USB 3.0 boards and cables were shown transferring at 307+ MB/s. The USB 3.0 coalition proclaims this is fast enough to transfer a 27 GB HD in just 60 to 70 seconds. This interface is backwards compatible with USB 2.0 (HiSpeed) and USB 1.1 (FullSpeed), and will be referred to as SuperSpeed. A representative from Ellisys said current flash memory and hard drive storage capacities are outstripping USB 2.0 transfer speeds.
49 Comments on USB 3.0 SuperSpeed Demonstrated
but honestly i dont feel that it will... CPU, GFX cards and FSB's are way faster than any method of storage and I think it'll be that way for a long time
I spose a good application would be to use the bandwidth for something external like a GFX card or similar ;)
Sata II is only neccessary in raid setups with like 4+ disks as anything lower wouldnt be able to utilise the bandwidth or throughput... itsd be a waste.
so whats the point of saying I have a USB3 device, when all the data sent from it cannot be stored fast enough because its physically impossible... may as well use something slower... or if you need speed, use Esata .... thats all im saying
1. USB never reaches its max capacity. USB 2.0 was less than 50% its advertised speed.
2. USB 3.0 works with USB 1.1 and 2.0 devices - that means its not only for HDD's, and the ports are multiple use.
3. E-sata is a biatch to get working on every system because of differing standards (trust me, i've ran into LOTS of problems with my E-sata cage on various controllers)
Remember this is to eliminate the bottleneck from USB2.0, its not like E-sata where its all new cables and connectors and single-purpose, these ports are going to end up on every system, there'll be hubs and so on.
Edit: Oh and more importantly for audio-related tasks, it should be able to help in eliminating latency with external audio interfaces. And don't bring up the hard-drive thing, because studio-quality interfaces do more than just record to disk; they're used on stage a lot with sequencers and virtual instruments (soft-synths), etc. I would personally LOVE to have an interface that could have pretty much 0 (or <=1ms) latency while using all I/O channels and wordclock and stuff. Too bad I don't have enough mics, instruments, and other equipment to know what to do with all of it lol.
@Wile E: Yeah, I'm rockin' a used Firestation that I got off ebay for ~200 shipped for a newbie interface. Of course it took ****ing two months to get the drivers to work properly thanks to the stupid MLan interface, instead of standard firewire. I'm only a hobbyist though, so I didn't want to spend like 500+ for a new interface with the same amount of I/O. If I ever get more serious about it though, I'll get a good interface with ADAT so I can still use the Firestation, but without needing MLan.
In any case, would fw800 still be better than usb3.0?
Bring on USB3...hehe
But I am looking forward to USB 3.0, 2.0 is pretty damn slow, especially since bandwidth is shared for the whole controller, so it becomes twice as slow as soon as you plug in another USB drive.