Intel Releases USB 3.0 Controller Interface Spec

hardsky submitted thrilling news about everyone's favorite interconnect cable by saying "USB 3.0 is set to deliver data-transfer speeds of up to 5Gb/s, initially over tweaked connectors and wiring and, later, over optical links."

Comments

One Question

[pandrijeczko]

Does USB 3.0 assist in the more rapid delivery of porn to my PC?

If the answer is "Yes", then please continue with your announcement.

Re:One Question

[janeuner]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833129104
You may continue.

Re:One Question

[cerberusss]

Does USB 3.0 assist in the more rapid delivery of porn to my PC?

Why, yes of course! The internet tubes will be replaced with USB 3.0, which is easily done because USB hubs are very cheap. When this is done, everybody will have 5 Gb/s!

Re:One Question

[hardsky]

Yep, even, you can plug directly in your brain! I think it will be nice advertising slogan.

Re:One Question

[mk_is_here]

Of course! By putting porn to your mobile storage or taking hot shower pictures from your neighborhood with a digital camera, you are eligible to enjoy the advancement of speed of USB 3.0!

Re:One Question

[Rick Bentley]

Does USB 3.0 assist in the more rapid delivery of porn to my PC?

Yes, but if you have Vista then your CPU load will inexplicably go to 100%.

Re:One Question

[ACMENEWSLLC]

You don't need wires, just do USB 3 over "Certified Wireless USB" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_USB .

Re:One Question

[bond_ionic_bond]

Given we won't have Japanese (or Swedish, for that matter) broadband speeds for another 100 years, I'd put my money towards magazines if I were you. As an added bonus - you'll exercise your imagination too!

Re:One Question

[Hurricane78]

The problem will be, that the computer is the master, while your brain is the slave.

Come On

[Jellybob]

If not even the editor posting a story isn't interested, I'd think that would be an indication that it might not be worth posting.

Re:Come On

[Jellybob]

Damn it.

Three edits later, and it still makes no sense. I obviously meant to say "If not even the editor posting a stroy is interested".

[Goes to hide in a corner until he's able to type again.]

Re:Come On

[Hal_Porter]

Damn it.

Three edits later, and it still makes no sense. I obviously meant to say "If not even the editor posting a stroy is interested".

[Goes to hide in a corner until he's able to type again.]

Hvae you seen taht rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy taht syas it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/~mattd/Cmabrigde/

Re:Come On

[jgtg32a]

While that is true, I showed that to my GF who is from Hong Kong and knows English as a second language, cannot do it at all, but she can read perfectly and a bit faster than me

Re:Come On

[PIBM]

it might be because the characters aren't normal for her, since english is my second language and it's not a problem at all, but I use the same set of letters.

Re:Come On

[amcdiarmid]

Thank you Riddley Walker.

Re:Come On

[neokushan]

That's a lie and you know it. Nobody on slashdot has a girlfriend.

Re:Come On

[Anonymous Coward]

Hvae you seen taht rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy taht syas it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/~mattd/Cmabrigde/

You know firefox has a build in spell check these days, you might want to look into that.

Re:Come On

[Anonymous Coward]

You know firefox has a build in spell check these days, you might want to look into that.

Oh the irony...

Re:Come On

[Anonymous Coward]

*sigh*. mod parent up.

Re:Come On

[Jellybob]

Yup. I have seen the research, and I clearly needed to step away from the keyboard.

Although I think my point stands, when the entire discussion on this article is on my crappy spelling and grammar, rather then the oh-so-exciting USB 3.0

Re:Come On

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a girlfriend, you insensitive clod!

Re:Come On

[canix]

This is so wrong! From the same page:

1) A vheclie epxledod at a plocie cehckipont near the UN haduqertares in Bagahdd on Mnoday kilinlg the bmober and an Irqai polcie offceir

2) Big ccunoil tax ineesacrs tihs yaer hvae seezueqd the inmcoes of mnay pneosenirs

3) A dootcr has aimttded the magltheuansr of a tageene ceacnr pintaet who deid aetfr a hatospil durg blendur

Re:Come On

[sukotto]

That does not actually work all that well if you really randomize the letters.
.
.
.
.
Taht deos not aalstluy wrok all taht wlel if you ralely rzaomdnie the ltertes .

Re:Come On

[Kristoph]

Yes but the point is, no one on Slashdot HAS a girlfriend ...

Or ... err ... are you a girlfriend with a girlfriend on slashdot ... because that would be like ... whoa!

;-)

Re:Come On

[chemisus]

but the question is, do you have a girlfriend?

Re:Come On

[andrewd18]

Sure, but do you have one?

Re:Come On

[Doddman]

Where did the "s" in the fourth word come from?

Re:Come On

[morcego]

Same thing here. English is mu second language, and I only had to stop once to recheck a single word while reading.

However, I did notice I was paying more attention (making more effort, maybe?) while reading it than I usually do.

Re:Come On

[Hal_Porter]

The problem is that build and built are both words and so a computer spell checker can't tell if you get them mixed up.

Actually, I can't tell if someone else gets them mixed up unless I force myself - the bizarre thing about reading is that if you're reading for meaning rather than spelling, errors like this get 'error corrected' away at some level beneath the conscious one, particularly if you're reading stuff on the internet where most people are pretty sloppy.

I suppose 'Grammar Nazis' just never learn this skill.

Re:Come On

[Phat_Tony]

Saying "it deosn't mttaer" is relative. It may not matter to getting your meaning across, but it does affect whether or not you're attacked by a ravenous cabal of grammar Nazis on slashdot.

Re:Come On

[alx5000]

To be fair, he said it wouldn't work...

Re:Come On

[sukotto]

typoed the "c"

Re:Come On

[Hal_Porter]

I once dated a Chinese girl in the UK who'd arrived from China and learned English very quickly, in two years. I found out that just after she woke up she had great difficulty speaking English. But once she was awake she spoke it very fluently, though it was clear that it wasn't her native language because she never used chavisms like slightly thuggish English people I knew then would pepper their sentences with. It's like her English translator software was an application rather than part of her 'OS' and thus booted a bit late.

I've read that there's some strange process where you go from thinking in your native language and translating it to thinking in a foreign language. Personally, I've never got past the stage where I can buy stuff in shops in (Swedish, used to be able to do it in French at school). I doubt I'll ever get to the point where I'm properly bilingual. Let alone in a language like Chinese.

Mind you if your native language is not English you're exposed to English from a very early age, so I think non English speakers have an advantage. Certainly if I were Swedish or Chinese I would have made sure I learned English.

Re:Come On

[Enderandrew]

My wife and I watch RedTube together.

Re:Come On

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, you're right!
my wife would kill me if i had one

Re:Come On

[dontPanik]

Nobody on slashdot has a girlfriend.

He might have gotten away with it, but he had to push it and claim she was asian too!
Some people don't know when to stop...

Re:Come On

[warsql]

You only speak 1 language? That's embarrassing.

Re:Come On

[Dolda2000]

You know firefox has a build in spell check these days, you might want to look into that

Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rare lea ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect awl the weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.

Re:Come On

[Thomasje]

English is my third language, and I can read it with no problem. My first two languages are Dutch and German, FWIW.
I think this is pretty interesting. I'm going to write a little program to randomize text in this manner, and then I'll feed some ebooks through it. I wonder how readable chemistry texts will be after this kind of treatment. :-)

Re:Come On

[Dolda2000]

the bizarre thing about reading is that if you're reading for meaning rather than spelling, errors like this get 'error corrected' away at some level beneath the conscious one, particularly if you're reading stuff on the internet where most people are pretty sloppy.

I suppose 'Grammar Nazis' just never learn this skill.

Indeed, spelling mistakes can easily be overlooked (though I usually see them automatically nonetheless, sometimes up to a paragraph away). However, grammar mistakes are far harder to ignore, if I may say so.

When people mess up words like "your"/"you're" or "its"/"it's" (or "de"/"dem" in my native language, Swedish ("they"/"them" in English)), that takes me completely out of any reading rhythm I might have had, because the entire sentence need to be reparsed once I realize that it was a mistake I read, rather than a predicate (or the other way around). The same thing goes for bad punctuation.

If I were to guess, I'd say its the same kind of difference as there is between visually and audially* oriented people. Some people read the words for their pronunciation value, and parse the sentence from that, while others read words for their pictographical value, and parse the sentence from that. If so, it's not so much a matter of skill, but of one's dominant sense.

* Yes, I know that's not an accepted English word, but I'd like to introduce it.

Re:Come On

[AgentPhunk]

Shut up Mom, Real Girls(tm) count. Now go back upstairs and get out of my basement.

Re:Come On

[Kingrames]

girl androids that have developed sentience don't count.

Re:Come On

[4D6963]

While that is true, I showed that to my GF who is from Hong Kong and knows English as a second language, cannot do it at all, but she can read perfectly and a bit faster than me

Taht's satnrge, bceusae I'm Fenrch and Esnligh is my socend lgnaugae and yet I'm albe to btoh raed it fsat but aslo wtire lkie taht..

Re:Come On

[Hal_Porter]

When people mess up words like "your"/"you're" or "its"/"it's" (or "de"/"dem" in my native language, Swedish ("they"/"them" in English)), that takes me completely out of any reading rhythm I might have had, because the entire sentence need to be reparsed once I realize that it was a mistake I read, rather than a predicate (or the other way around). The same thing goes for bad punctuation.

If I were to guess, I'd say its the same kind of difference as there is between visually and audially* oriented people. Some people read the words for their pronunciation value, and parse the sentence from that, while others read words for their pictographical value, and parse the sentence from that. If so, it's not so much a matter of skill, but of one's dominant sense.

* Yes, I know that's not an accepted English word, but I'd like to introduce it.

But when you read stuff written by slashdotards you know that your and you're and its and it's are used interchangeably. Just like when you get a txtspk SMS you know that it will be full of errors to save some cretin a few seconds of their time when they waste their whole lives on trivia. But once you've worked out how to rd the msg once it becomes second nature. It's like a filter I think, to protect your pristine mind from the chimpanzee jabbering of the brute masses. Once it is in place, it's almost like talking to real people, at least syntactically. They will perceive you as one of them too, since your erudite prose will be reduced to an appropriately brutish register on the way out.

Re:Come On

[novakreo]

* Yes, I know that's not an accepted English word, but I'd like to introduce it.

Thanks, but we already have the word you're looking for, it's 'aurally'.

Re:Come On

[EvolutionsPeak]

WHOOSH

Re:Come On

[bigstrat2003]

No, it isn't. If only one language is in common use in your country and you have no desire to leave the country, there is absolutely no reason to learn a second language, except as an intellectual exercise.

I hate to interrupt a good karma-whoring, but your statement was so asinine I had no choice.

Re:Come On

[chubs730]

If I were to guess, I'd say its the same kind of difference as there is between visually and audially* oriented people. Some people read the words for their pronunciation value, and parse the sentence from that, while others read words for their pictographical value, and parse the sentence from that. If so, it's not so much a matter of skill, but of one's dominant sense.

* Yes, I know that's not an accepted English word, but I'd like to introduce it.

Aurally is the word you're looking for.

Re:Come On

[janrinok]

Your English is superb, particularly so as it is not your first language. However, I think the word that you were looking for is aurally rather than audially - at least, I think that is the word that you are looking for. Your version (audially) is entirely understandable and follows the path of common sense, hence it will never be adopted in the UK but probably will be used in the USA at some point in the future! ;-)

Re:Come On

[warsql]

Whoosh. http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2008/07/11/politics/fromtheroad/entry4254480.shtml

Re:Come On

[TheLink]

Nah, the main reason is she doesn't read Slashdot enough so she's not exposed to the tons of spelling mistakes on Slashdot (amongst other things) ;).

Re:Come On

[TheLink]

"you're reading for meaning" ... "where most people are pretty sloppy"

That's fine if people are trying to express "standard" or "normal" aka boring stuff.

If you are trying to communicate unusual meanings to somebody else, it doesn't work so well if you are sloppy.

On Slashdot I'm expecting the discourse to be on a higher level than "Me hungry. Want food", and that at least some people here will post stuff that is out of the ordinary and hopefully interesting.

In such a case, in addition to figuring out whether the writer made a mistake in spelling, grammer, you also have to figure out whether the writer made a mistake in reasoning, or is trying to be funny, or is saying something really _different_, or is saying multiple things at the same time, or is just plain crazy, or whatever.

It's all very easy to parse if you only have to expect people to say boring stuff.

Re:Come On

[nodonn]

Ahh ... We all speak at least 2 languages ...
0 Geek; 'cause its the only real way to express the perception.
1 Native; 'cause its the only way to know when the fridge is going to be restocked ;-)

Re:Come On

[tyrione]

Damn it.

Three edits later, and it still makes no sense. I obviously meant to say "If not even the editor posting a stroy is interested".

[Goes to hide in a corner until he's able to type again.]

Hvae you seen taht rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy taht syas it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/~mattd/Cmabrigde/

This research is based upon the individual already have an accessible stored copy of the correct version of the word. The greater the person's vocabulary the more capable they are of reading garbled words and still capture their proper spelling. This goes to explaining that the human brain is capable of graphing various languages and spellings to equate the same context of any situation.

Re:Come On

[tyrione]

Perhaps they can f*** in all languages?

All roads leading to "Oh gawd! You're so big!

Re:Come On

[EnsilZah]

My first language is Hebrew which is written in different characters and in the opposite direction and I have no problem reading that.
If it has anything to do with her first language I would think it's the role of the characters in the word rather than their appearance.

Re:Come On

[pr0nbot]

Dunno if it's your poem, but did you mean "quay" instead of "key"?

Re:Come On

[DaVince21]

Yes, but are you a woman?

Re:Come On

[LiquidFire_HK]

My native language uses the Cyrillic alphabet but I can still read it easily. Now, granted, the Cyrillic alphabet is much closer to the Latin alphabet than the Chinese one is. But I think it's probably more a matter of how much exposure you've had to the language, how well you know it, how often you use it, etc.

Re:Come On

[rootooftheworld]

*hard drive thrashing* *cpu burns up*

Re:Come On

[bdraschk]

Was that by any chance "iprmoetnt"? I stumbled on this, and i think it's because i had to reconstruct it to "iprmoatnt".

Sigh

[Tyler Eaves]

Still the same symmetrical plug design....stupid, stupid move. Would have been that hard to add a ridge on one side or something, so you don't have to stare at the end??

Re:Sigh

[Seraph787]

yea we know its but here are the reasons its needed 1) Backwards compatible 2) Fit more ports in a smaller area, less wasted space 3) Cheaper for manufactures because the mounts are the same thus making it a cheaper industry upgrade to adopt.

Re:Sigh

[heffrey]

Most UBB connectors have a USB symbol on one side which means (this side up). I'd never really thought about this until someone gave me an iPod. I then found that I was forever struggling to get the connector in.

What I concluded was happening was:

1. I'd sub-consciously worked out that the connector is inserted USB symbol up.
2. The Apple USB connector has the USB symbol on, but on the other side it has an Apple symbol.
3. My sub-conscious was in fact not distinguishing between USB symbol and Apple symbol. Instead the logic was something like, "that side has a symbol on, I'll put it facing upwards".

I'm quite sure that the "symbol faces up" convention is a part of the USB spec. I never needed to know this because my brain naturally worked it out without it ever entering my consciousness. This is a truly wonderful piece of human interface design and yet those morons from Apple go and break it with an inane piece of branding. Way to go Apple. Anyone who ever thinks that Apple cares about usability should think again.

Re:Sigh

[ChrisMP1]

If it takes you more than two tries to put in a USB plug, you probably shouldn't be allowed near a computer anyway.

Re:Sigh

[91degrees]

Never had this:

Try the correct way.
Try the other way.
Try the correct way again.
Look at plug
Insert screwdriver to bend plug back into shape
Try the correct way.

Re:Sigh

[ChrisMP1]

And that, children, is why we don't use a hammer to put in a plug.

Re:Sigh

[MyLongNickName]

If you push hard enough, it will go in the wrong way as well.

Re:Sigh

[Tim C]

I've not had that, though I have managed to ruin a lead and one of the ports on my desktop; I had something plugged in and caught the lead as I walked past. The plug ripped out of the port, leaving that internal bit in the port.

Oh well, I had plenty of other leads and ports...

Re:Sigh

[maxume]

I guess you are trying too hard.

No really, it doesn't take a lot of force to plug in a USB cable. On my laptop, when the plug is oriented correctly, it goes a little ways into the socket; when it is not oriented correctly, it does not fit into the socket at all. It only takes a very small amount of self control not to just wedge it in there.

Re:Sigh

[Intron]

What. You've never had plug rage? The last time was trying to get the power plug off a 10-year old hard drive. It seemed to have been superglued.

Re:Sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what she said.

Re:Sigh

[ZerdZerd]

I did one try, and the thing short circuited. The host-connector was bent. It wouldn't have happened with an unsymmetrical plug.

Re:Sigh

[chemisus]

what are you talking about?? you obviously dont have one of these

Re:Sigh

[pisto_grih]

Every USB port on recent Apple products is designed so that the plug fits in "symbol towards the user". This makes so much more sense when the ports aren't arranged horizontally. If you look round the side of an iMac for example, its symbol towards you, if you plug it into a keyboard, its symbol towards you. If you can't distinguish between an apple symbol and a usb symbol, where instead your "sub-conscious" just sees dark blobs, then I don't think anyone is going to be able to design anything that keeps you happy.

Re:Sigh

[kavin]

3 things i hope they address:

* it's not UNIVERSAL serial bus if the other end of the cable is allowed to be proprietary. nightmare when travelling and you've forgotten your cable. it's never in the public interest to create a hidden cost (expensive proprietary cables)

* symmetrical design is fine - but make it work whichever way you plug it in

* true hot plugging - it's NOT ok to have to hunt for some crazy "safely remove" option before it's safe to unplug.

Re:Sigh

[andrewd18]

You've never had plug rage?

Please stay away from my computers. Thanks.

Re:Sigh

[alx5000]

The front connectors of my computer will allow me to plug a USB cable upside down. I'm two flash drives down already...

Re:Sigh

[amRadioHed]

* true hot plugging - it's NOT ok to have to hunt for some crazy "safely remove" option before it's safe to unplug.

I only ever use "safely remove" for USB drives, I've never had a problem with just yanking out other random USB devices. I don't think anything can be done about having to unmount your drives first. As it is now USB supports hot swapping the drives fine without unmounting first. I mean it won't damage the device, but what do you expect them to do with the data you were halfway through copying?

Re:Sigh

[j-cloth]

USB hot plugs just fine... you put a device in and it works, you yank it out and it disappears. The "Safely remove hardware" bit is because the OS (and more specifically the file system if it's a disk) needs to do some work before a device goes bye bye.

Re:Sigh

[nmg196]

Or make it round - so it can go in any way up?

Re:Sigh

[maxume]

I've always had the very small amount of self control required to not take my frustrations out on the inanimate object.

Re:Sigh

[Kjella]

And the worst combination you can have is a mixed PATA/SATA machine - the molex connectors are superglued on and the SATA connectors are relatively fragile. The "yank" when a molex connector finally loosens had lead to several near-death experiences for my disks. Fortunately it's on the way out and everything else seems to plug and unplug without heavy force.

Re:Sigh

[gad_zuki!]

Plug rage I dont mind so much, but plug rape. Well, then seriously stay away from my computers.

Re:Sigh

[mortonda]

You forgot the step where you realized you stuck the USB connector into the ethernet slot. It fits, I kid you not.

Re:Sigh

[Big Boss]

3 things i hope they address:

* it's not UNIVERSAL serial bus if the other end of the cable is allowed to be proprietary. nightmare when travelling and you've forgotten your cable. it's never in the public interest to create a hidden cost (expensive proprietary cables)

+1! I HATE proprietary cables. Use the damn standards. THAT MEANS YOU APPLE! I don't care if they ALSO have a non-standard connector, but charging and data should be available via USB Mini-B (or the new micro-B if your device is REALLY small).

Re:Sigh

[antic]

>>You've never had plug rage?
>
>Please stay away from my computers. Thanks.

Stay away from our computers? What about, stay away from our daughters?!

Re:Sigh

[Zebedeu]

Canon also does this.
It was also how I discovered the "USB symbol" rule.

Re:Sigh

[heffrey]

That's the whole point. With a standard connector I only need to see some "dark blobs" and I know what to do. With the Apple connector I've got to think about something that up until now my sub-conscious had handled for me. That makes it much less usable than a standard connector.

It's called "embrace and extend".

If you want to stick up for what Apple do please explain what benefit the Apple logo on the connector brings any user of the connector. If there is none it should not be there and marketing should stick to encouraging me to buy the products rather than making them hard to use once I have them!

Re:Sigh

[hey!]

Well, you might not have noticed, but some USB plugs are, well, cheap. As in really soft metal you can bend with a small amount of finger force.

In an ideal world, we are all very careful to unplug cables by pulling directly out, even the socket is on the back of a computer under a desk and doing so requires mastering postures from The Advanced Manual of IT Yoga. And nobody ever cheats and pulls a cable out by the cable, no matter how much of a rush they're in or how bad their day has been. And of course USB plugs are so sturdy you can use them to pop the lid on a can of paint.

Re:Sigh

[Blakey Rat]

The USB logo is always supposed to be on the top of the plug. I have several with no logo, though, or a logo that's printed and so you can't feel it with your thumb while plugging.

The real problem is when the USB ports are vertical, then all bets are off. Or if you're using a USB hub, many/most of those don't really have an "up" or "down" and then all bets are off. It's just a crappy plug design; they should have done what Firewire did and keyed it in a very obvious and impossible-to-jam way.

Re:Sigh

[heffrey]

That's all fair enough and I do agree with what you say. But, if you are going to make a USB connector, then you might as well get it right.

Re:Sigh

[maxume]

I see what you are driving at, but one of my older brothers breaks a lot more shit than I do, simply because he doesn't pay shit for attention.

I prefer not to spend money when my (momentary!) attention is going for such low, low prices.

Re:Sigh

[Spatial]

Backwards compatability doesn't excuse it. It would be easy to make the ports like this (I did a small sketch), while still being mostly backwards compatible. It doesn't even have to be that dramatic of a bump, just obvious to the touch and on BOTH the port and the connector so you can match them easily by tactile response alone. It need not change the internal shape of the port.

Re:Sigh

[linuxelf]

In other words, Apple Hates Blind People.

Re:Sigh

[CrazedSanity]

In one of my older computers, I had to purchase a USB2.0 card so it could transfer stuff to/from an external HDD in a reasonable amount of time. All the plugs on the card were very close together, and it was difficult to determine (blindly) which was the right way; since the plastic tabs were quite brittle, they broke almost immediately, leaving the four metal connectors hanging out. Now it's a crapshoot to get USB connected properly to it--without shorting things out--unless I pull the computer out and look at the stupid card.

This is why I give credit to the idea that a very small design change could have made USB much better. By simply "keying" it, much like most IDE connectors are (thank you google image search), they could have avoided the problem altogether.

Re:Sigh

[Ant P.]

Best thing for dealing with a stuck molex is a pair of pliers. Even when they're so small that you'd be applying the same amount of force, it seems to be far easier.

Re:Sigh

[hey!]

I once worked with a guy who just broke things. We'd have the same laptop, and after about three months his had cracks in the case, missing keys, and half-torn out power connector. Mine would be pristine after over a year and a half, except the paint on the keycaps would be worn off.

The guy wasn't dumb or irresponsible, or even clumsy. He was just rough with machines.

Some people have a lighter touch with machines than others. My car is a standard, and when my wife drives it I wince every time she shifts and the transmission makes a "kerr-lunk" noise. When it's time shift she just steps on the clutch and shoves the shifter from one position to another. She doesn't take that tiny fraction of an instant to feel that point where the gears will mesh smoothly and silently or bother to get the engine RPMS just right.

It's not that our value systems are different or anything like that; we both regard the car as a way to get from point A to point B and other than that just an inconvenience. It's that she doesn't have that kind of unconscious awareness of what the car is up to that most drivers do.

Connectors of all sorts are sources of trouble in the real world. I've worked on mobile applications, and you wouldn't believe the difference in longevity of PDAs with a cradle and those that have to be plugged into a cable. I've seen tons of problems with proprietary connectors on cell phones. I've seen CF card slots torn off their PCBs by vigorous card insertion. Now I could probably insert a CF card ten times a day for ten years straight and never once do anything like that, but there are plenty of people who will do this, reliably, within a hundred insertions or so.

Connectors ought to be completely bulletproof and foolproof, simple to connect and disconnect, tolerant of rough or sloppy connection or disconnection, tolerant of accidental disconnection (as when a cable is snagged), but stay securely connected otherwise, and work consistently for thousands and thousands of connections and disconnections. Oh, yes, and if it goes on the end of the cable, a large person should be able to step on it without damaging it. That's a tall order, and no connector is perfect, but many connectors, particularly proprietary connectors, are truly awful.

Motorola for years on some of their phones had a connector that had teeny tiny little spring clips that were supposed to mate with teeny tiny little holes (if I recall) on the receptacle. This was,I suppose, supposed to give the connectors a positive lock. That was a stupid idea unless the receptacle is built like a piece of climbing equipment, but what was worse was that it was mushy and didn't give any tactile or auditory feedback. So people just shoved the cables in and yanked them out. Most of the cables I saw had the little spring clips broken off or bent after a month or two. Many of the phones had damaged receptacles and seriously bent or even ripped out connectors weren't unheard of -- from one of those rare occasions when the connectors did lock together.

The six pin firewire and full size USB "B" (device end) connectors are pretty good. The four pin Firewire and full size USB "A" (master end) connectors are middling-lousy. The mini-USB connectors on some PDAs and phone are reasonable, and a huge improvement over some of the proprietary connectors they often replace. I don't know about the USB EMU type connectors.

Barrel type power connectors are usually pretty good, although in some cases they are susceptible to causing equipment damage during accidental disconnect (the classic foot tangled in the power cord scenario). Some of them are fine, others tend to take a bit of the device with them when they go. There really ought to be a break away plug design where you plug a small flexible extension into things like laptops, unless the cord and connectors are designed to survive a strong sideways tug.

In any case, it's too damned bad that the type A connector is being kept. It's not the worst connector in common use. It's probably OK to plug your printer into your PC once and leave it there. But it's too fragile (both the male and female) for field use where connections are made frequently.

Re:Sigh

[kinzillah]

It's the increased leverage that allows you to wiggle it more easily, rather than the pulling force. Someone should make pliers specifically designed to grip molex plugs.

Re:Sigh

[mini me]

If you want to stick up for what Apple do please explain what benefit the Apple logo on the connector brings any user of the connector.

The iPod cable that I have in front of me only has the USB symbol. No Apple logo. Perhaps they've come to agree with you?

Re:Sigh

[mini me]

I just tried it for fun. It does not fit in my ethernet card.

Re:Sigh

[petermgreen]

IMO yhe plastic tab IS a key. It sounds like your real problem is a shitty card made with shitty connectors that broke almost immediately.

Re:Sigh

[Anti_Climax]

I can attest to that having worked tech support lines.

I've also helped my friend's father troubleshoot a non-working USB device that had been slid onto the pins in his DB9 serial port. Had a surprisingly similar feel to inserting it in an actual USB port.

Re:Sigh

[maestroX]

Nice picture-- however, I'd use an etched notch at the top.

Having an etched notch at the top allows us tinkerers to carve a notch in the bottom, thereby effectively doubling USB 3.0 to 10Gb/s!!!

Re:Sigh

[ProfessionalCookie]

I use my keys on my keychain drive quite often. It seems to be holding up well.

Re:Sigh

[mikael]

Heard of this one (in the days of 9 pin modem and monitor sockets):

Insert plug into socket
Modem makes funny noise
Insert plug into RS-232C port
Modem lights go on

Re:Sigh

[ChrisMP1]

Damn you -- now I want one...

Re:Sigh

[adamclarke77]

Probably wouldn't have to waste space to make a non-symetrical yet tileable shape? Any maths doods care to (dis)prove this

Re:Sigh

[enoz]

Apple isn't singling out blind people, they just hate everyone who doesn't dress stylish.

Re:Sigh

[enoz]

Yet another annoyance with the type A plug. I was trying to plug a USB key into my laptop in the dark, and then realised that I had just put it in the ethernet socket which was next to the USB ports.

Damn thing bent the contacts in the ethernet socket as well.

There seems to be a small margin of error (either with the USB plug or the RJ45 socket) so it won't work with all combinations of hardware.

Re:Sigh

[enoz]

PS/2 cables were round, and certainly didn't go any way up.

Re:Sigh

[Sardaukar86]

Probably slightly off-topic, but disabling write caching on USB devices (via Device Mangler) obviates the need for the irritating 'Safely Remove Hardware' step; just mentioning it in case it proves useful to someone.

Re:Sigh

[Sardaukar86]

Maybe you have a slightly different size RJ-45 port on your card; a metric/imperial conversion issue perhaps?

Facetiousness aside, GP is correct. If you are trying to connect up a PC by braille (facing the PC's front, groping around the back) it is surprisingly easy to insert a USB-A connector into an ethernet port and the tactile feedback one perceives whilst doing so is similarly misleading.

Re:Sigh

[mini me]

Maybe you have a slightly different size RJ-45 port on your card; a metric/imperial conversion issue perhaps?

It is a Mac. Anything is possible. Whatever it is, there is no way it will fit.

Re:Sigh

[bill_mcgonigle]

You forgot the step where you realized you stuck the USB connector into the ethernet slot. It fits, I kid you not.

I watched a guy plug an RJ-45 into an Mini-GBIC the other day, I kid you not. Sigh, when will they learn?

Great!

[iminplaya]

Will we ever see a storage medium that can move data that fast?

Re:Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't matter. It is a universal serial BUS.

This means that traffic to and from many slower storage devices can share the path so any speed increase is still a good thing, right?

Re:Great!

[ChrisMP1]

Not without a connector for it first.

Re:Great!

[Seraph787]

simple answer: yes

Complicated answer:
Progress is inevitable and we definitely need that kind of speed. Its not only about hard drives but also about Audio visual components. Such as an USB HDTV Dongle which is a bit slow for USB 2.0. It is also one of the reasons why webcams currently max out at 2.0 megapixels. anything more than that the current USB 2.0 cannot handle. It is quite easy to eat through those 600MB/s, Just think of the USB 3.0 replacing 1000mbit ethernet.

Re:Great!

[PIBM]

Just use an external raid hard drive rack, with 4 HD pushing over 1.5 gbs you'll max out the incoming bus speed already..

Re:Great!

[SanityInAnarchy]

Well, first, I imagine it would make a USB 3.0 hub support far more of the slower variety.

But consider that USB 2.0 isn't fast enough for standard desktop hard drives, and it's obvious we do need more speed. Whether we need that much more speed is up for debate, but I'd argue that if we're going to spend all that money on an upgrade, we may as well make it as fast as we can, just in case.

Re:Great!

[TheBig1]

Just think of the USB 3.0 replacing 1000mbit ethernet.

No, thank you.

Re:Great!

[Blakey Rat]

It could be streaming video, or something else that doesn't necessarily need to even be stored at all.

Re:Great!

[JamesP]

Yeah, but a BUS will never be better than a CAR!!111

Oh wait...

Re:Great!

[Hatta]

Here's another question. Will USB 3.0 still tax the CPU like USB 2.0 (and unlike firewire)?

Re:Great!

[Darinbob]

And like USB 2.0 or ethernet, the maximum bit rate on wire will probably be far faster than actual practice. It's just too hard to saturate the bandwidth, especially with USB since it's a single-master bus.

Re:Great!

[enoz]

It's not a big truck...

My god

[Centurix]

My humping USB dog will be a blur!

Re:My god

[JCSoRocks]

Yeah, you'll need to trade it out for a humping USB rabbit.

Will it run Linux?

[Enderandrew]

I for one, welcome our new dongle overlords.

I just like to say dongle.

Re:Will it run Linux?

[Paaskonijn]

I'm sorry, but you try too hard.

Embossing

[tepples]

Yes, the USB connector is blind accessible. The "top" of the A plug's plastic part is supposed to be embossed with a USB logo, and the "bottom" isn't supposed to be embossed. So if you know which way is "up" on your PC's connector, or if you are using a hub (in which case up is more obvious), you can more easily plug them in blind.

Re:Embossing

[Seraph787]

this would be useful information if all manufactures actually mounted the USB ports right side up. I know some of the older dell models have that problem.

Re:Embossing

[benwiggy]

Yes, the USB connector is blind accessible.

Oh yeah? Try feeling the difference with your eyes shut!

Re:Embossing

[ShadowBlasko]

Yeah, that's all fine and good, but it rarely seems to happen that way.

But I have four devices that have usb cords sitting here, and one of them is properly embossed.

In fact, one them that is not has a "mold mark" from cheap assembly on the *bottom* of the plug, which feels like an emboss mark if you didn't know better. (That would be the data cord for my phone, and it has the same mold mark at both the PC end and the micro-usb end, and both of them are on the bottom instead of the top)

I've taken to using a piece of sandpaper or a wire brush to "rough up" one side of my connectors so that I can use them by feel.

Re:Embossing

[Beau6183]

/looks at his iPod USB cable No embossed logo, only printed. Even so, there's no way to tell which direction the receptacle is orientated without trying to plug it in... Relying upon manufacturers to adhere to an optional feature is stupid. It should be part of the connector design. In fact, it already is with the mini plugs...

Re:Embossing

[Mattsson]

The problem is that the host-connector has no markings, and sometimes "up" might be either left, right, up or down relative the up of the device itself.

What they should have done, from the beginning of USB, was to have the connector truly symmetric, so that you could plug it in either way.

Re:Embossing

[hkgroove]

But... but that would have made sense!

Re:Embossing

[Emb3rz]

Many blind persons are accustomed to 'reading' braille, for which it is absolutely necessary that you 'train' your fingers to increased sensitivity so as to distinguish one group of bumps from another.

Re:Embossing

[saider]

What they should have done, from the beginning of USB, was to have the connector truly symmetric, so that you could plug it in either way.

Connecting +5V to ground with a wire is inadvisable. The magic smoke is let out of the chip, which then ceases to work.

Seriously, how many connectors out there do you know of that let you plug it in any way you feel like? All connectors have to be oriented so that the signals and power goes to the right place.

Please do not come if I ask for someone to jump my car.

Re:Embossing

[benwiggy]

Braille, you say? I must look into that.
Even taking this into account, there are often two slightly different embossed patterns on USB leads, which requires a bit more consideration than a dirty great groove down one side of the plug, for example!

Re:Embossing

[MadnessASAP]

Done, it's dead easy. Even on one with the USB logo on one side and the D-Link logo on the other I could still tell the difference.

Re:Embossing

[M0S 6581]

How do you explain this for USB flash drives. I have an old 128MB Dell flash drive that is counter intuitive. It actually requires that the label side be face down. I still sometimes forget, and when I am in a hurry it can be a bit frustrating. I don't see why they just don't make the connector square with repeated I/O, power, and ground pins on each side.

Re:Embossing

[Anonymous Coward]

Headphones, RCA Jacks, Car accessory power adapters, most laptop and wall-wart power adapters, F connectors, bnc connectors.

Do you want me to continue?

It really wouldn't have been _that_ hard to make it symmetrical or have a tactile key.

Re:Embossing

[josecanuc]

Maybe not symmetric, but "genderless". See Anderson PowerPole connectors:
http://www.powerwerx.com/assembly.asp

No male/female parts, and there's only one way it will fit. Doesn't solve the problem of needing to line up the "tops" of each half of the connection.

It is possible, however, to have a plug/socket set that allows you to plug it in "up" or "down". You just need double the number of contacts as signals and put all your signals on one half of the plug and wire each signal wire in the socket to two contacts on the socket, in a mirrored configuration. Waste of space, but orientation is irrelevant.

Re:Embossing

[SanityInAnarchy]

Seriously, how many connectors out there do you know of that let you plug it in any way you feel like?

Oh, I don't know... Ever used headphones?

How about at least some power connectors?

I can't even imagine it being easier to manufacture this little square thing than to manufacture something, you know, round like that.

Re:Embossing

[tepples]

Oh, I don't know... Ever used headphones?

Tip-ring-sleeve connectors on devices for home use don't often carry both power and signal. The iPod Shuffle is an exception.

Re:Embossing

[rcw-home]

Seriously, how many connectors out there do you know of that let you plug it in any way you feel like?

For starters, my car keys.

It can be done, but it requires duplicating contacts in an axially-symmetric way.

I would have been happy with a trapezoidal or semicircular connector.

Re:Embossing

[Ruie]

What they should have done, from the beginning of USB, was to have the connector truly symmetric, so that you could plug it in either way.

Connecting +5V to ground with a wire is inadvisable. The magic smoke is let out of the chip, which then ceases to work.

Seriously, how many connectors out there do you know of that let you plug it in any way you feel like? All connectors have to be oriented so that the signals and power goes to the right place.

Please do not come if I ask for someone to jump my car.

Trivial, my dear Watson - just have two sets of contacts on the male connector
that are centrally symmetric. This way regardless of orientation you have proper polarity.

If you are worried about EM properties of the connector make the host have two sets as well - this way you will not have dangling ends.

Re:Embossing

[Lumpy]

problem is the plus is a crapshoot as to how it's positioned.

back of my dell, usb symbol is up, side of my dell it's down.

we need to beat the3 crap out of PC makers and stab them with forks for every product they ship with the ports put in randomly.

Re:Embossing

[I'm not really here]

how many connectors out there do you know of that let you plug it in any way you feel like?

Coaxial, RCA, 3/4ths of my power adapters... simly put, the design could have been done such that the inner wafer contained the 4 'wires' on both the top and bottom of the wafer, and the outer metal sheath would still perform the same grounding as before... put it in with either side as 'up' and you still get the right connectors touching the right ends in the PC.

Re:Embossing

[bendodge]

The Compaq Presario R4000 has one that works beautifully. I'm not sure how it works; it appears that it has two complete sets of contacts on opposite sides of the plug, with one inverted.

Snapshot: http://bsgprogrammers.com/gmc/r4000%20power%20plug.jpg

Note that it says Foxconn on the bottom of the socket.

Re:Embossing

[richard.cs]

Tip-ring-sleeve connectors on devices for home use don't often carry both power and signal. The iPod Shuffle is an exception.

That and the 3.5mm jack plug when it's used for a PC microphone. Ground on the sleeve, signal on the tip, and +5 V on the ring connected through a 2.2 k resistor for current limiting).

Re:Embossing

[Anonymous Coward]

Very simple. Use an odd number of contacts plus shield, +5V on the center contact, GND on the shield, each differential data connection symmetrical around the center contact. Plugging that in the wrong way will only reverse the polarity on the differential signals, which isn't a problem.

Re:Embossing

[Tihstae]

Seriously, how many connectors out there do you know of that let you plug it in any way you feel like?

Vagina is the first one that comes to my mind.

Re:Embossing

[bugs2squash]

The should be small and hermaphrodite too - get rid of this A and B and OTG thing.

Like a tiny token ring connector

Re:Embossing

[Grishnakh]

That's great, except I have USB cables that are either embossed on both sides, or embossed on the wrong side. After breaking the port on a $150 motherboard, you don't trust that anymore.

You're not supposed to push that hard.

Anyway, it's easy to solder a replacement connector on.

Re:Embossing

[Grishnakh]

The should be small and hermaphrodite too - get rid of this A and B and OTG thing.

Sorry, but there's a very good reason the have A, B, OTG, etc., instead of just making USB a sensible peer-to-peer connection like FireWire: Intel authored the USB spec, and wanted to sell more CPUs. A peer-to-peer connection like FW requires a lot more logic and processing power in the interface chip, while USB with its simple host/slave design requires very little, and allows them to do all the work in software instead. This required more CPU horsepower back in the days of the Pentium II, and helped Intel sell chips. Nowadays, the load imposed by the USB stack is pretty insignificant, but back then it wasn't.

Re:Embossing

[Grishnakh]

A circular connector (with 4 lines), mated to a circuit board, is likely more expensive than the rectangular USB connector. Plus, they probably didn't want to make it look too much like a headphone connector, or else people would confuse the two.

Personally, I like the FireWire connector: it's rectangular, but not symmetric, so it's pretty obvious how to insert it, and it you get it reversed, it simply won't go in because it won't fit.

Re:Embossing

[pdxp]

Sure, the connector is blind accessible, but the ports are never in any specific orientation.

Dell, I've always hated you for your angled impossible-to-see ass-backwards USB ports!

Re:Embossing

[rwiggers]

You don't even need two sets of contacts, as it can be done electronically. Anyway, the biggest objective on usb development was to make is very cheap on the device side, so anything that adds cost would be dumped very fast. Remember it had some very cheap competitors for the same functionality that the initial proposal had: RS-232, PS/2... And the initial proposal was really for simplistic things like keyboard, mice and joysticks plus some other things. When it came to more complex applications, it was competing with IEEE1394 (firewire), which is a much better protocol for this. But then, the USB spec was free, the IEEE1394 costs a bunch of money. USB is dead simple at the device end, in IEEE1394 everyone can be a host and it's somewhat complicated. And the list goes on.

Re:Embossing

[Blakey Rat]

What they should have done, from the beginning of USB, was to have the connector truly symmetric, so that you could plug it in either way.

That would have been best. Second-best would have been keying it with a sturdy key (not just a single pin that gets in the way) like Firewire cables are. Or like the mini-USB connectors on cellphones are. I was blown away when they came out with USB that the connector wasn't keyed or reversible-- I mean, seriously, have the guys who designed it NEVER had to plug-in a PS/2 cable in a dark room?

In fact, looking at my computer, the only ports that aren't either symmetric or keyed are the USB ports and the memory card reader; and the memory cards have an excuse that they're too thin to key properly.

Re:Embossing

[Blakey Rat]

Seriously, how many connectors out there do you know of that let you plug it in any way you feel like? All connectors have to be oriented so that the signals and power goes to the right place.

Never used headphones? Or coax? Or component cables?

Re:Embossing

[skeptikos]

3.5mm audio jacks have cylindrical symmetry.

Re:Embossing

[lskovlund]

Anyway, it's easy to solder a replacement connector on.

But if you're blind, you had better not try to do that.

Re:Embossing

[PitaBred]

How hard is it to try to fit it in, and if it doesn't go, turn the plug 180 degrees? Really, you never have to use enough force to break it to fit it in, so there's no real reason to worry too much about it.

Re:Embossing

[samkass]

You don't have to go esoteric on power connectors to find one reversible... every MacBook and MacBook Pro has the magnetic plug that can go in either way. You can plug it in in the dark, because orientation doesn't matter and it pulls itself into place when it's nearby.

It would be awfully cool if all the connectors were like that. Just sweep your hand along the back of your laptop to disconnect everything.

Re:Embossing

[jonbryce]

And Apple's USB plugs have the symbol printed rather than embossed, so you can't feel it.

Re:Embossing

[ShadowBlasko]

While that is true, there are quite a few situations where it is annoying to have to do that.

The best example I can think of is when I am in the car, and I want to plug my phone in for charging.

In Micro USB application, it's very difficult to feel the difference between \_/ and /_\ in the dark. I would rather be able to keep my attention on the road, and not have to look first. When the receiver is mobile (phone) and the cord is springy, it much nicer to just be able to feel for a specific marker on the cord end so I know which side is up when I grab it.

I've taken to using very very small pieces of velcro so I can feel for the right side.

Re:Embossing

[Anonymous Coward]

Anus is #2, I take it?

Re:Embossing

[petermgreen]

A USB A connector has a LARGE lump of plastic that gets in the way if you try and plug it in backwards. The B connector has an asymetric shell. If you are breaking USB connectors by plugging them in backwards you must be using seriously excessive force.

Re:Embossing

[krazytekn0]

Anyone with a macbook look at your magsafe plug for an illustration of this.

Re:Embossing

[XHIIHIIHX]

You can paint one side of the connector a different color.

Profit!

Re:Embossing

[Mhtsos]

For starters, my car keys.

Yes, they're for starters.

*ducks* sorry, couldn't help it.

Re:Embossing

[Mattsson]

All connectors have to be oriented so that the signals and power goes to the right place.

With a truly symmetric connector, where the signals are symmetric too, the connectors will have the correct signals either way.
You do not seem to grasp what I mean.

USB is connected like this.

- D+ D- +
---------

If you made the contact symmetrical, you'd be able to connect it the wrong way and short +5 to ground.

If they instead had a connector looking like this

- D+ D- +
---------
+ D- D+ -

you could plug it in either way.
When you rotate the connector 180 degrees, the pinout look the same.

The downside is that the connector will a little more expensive.
The upside it that even a blind 6 year old with a learning disorder can use it.

Re:Embossing

[XLR8DST8]

uhh... did you say, you.. 'take it'? /butthead voice

Re:Embossing

[Fex303]

Seriously, how many connectors out there do you know of that let you plug it in any way you feel like? All connectors have to be oriented so that the signals and power goes to the right place.

Actually, that's not true. As much as it seems fanboyish to say, Apple solved this problem perfectly with their MagSafe connectors. They connect equally well in either orientation, and the magnetic connection is fantastic (and has saved me from numerous nasty accidents).

I'd love a version of this for the next version of USB.

Re:Embossing

[rootooftheworld]

*locks and loads AK-47* Thats OK.

Re:Embossing

[Emb3rz]

I lol'd quite hard. Sometimes it's the simplest observations. :)

Re:Embossing

[wtfispcloadletter]

Looks like that's the way it's suppose to be, only engraved instead of embossed and the other side is optional to have the manufacturer's logo. Embossing would be raised, not recessed. Since reading your post I've looked at every USB connector I can find. I've gotten my hands on about 10 completely different USB cables. Not a single one of them follows what you claim. I finally decided to take a look at the specification.

If you look at the USB 2.0 spec, http://www.usb.org/developers/docs/ (download the 9.8 MB zip file and open the "usb_20.pdf" file, then go to page 93 you'll see that both sides can be engraved, the top with the USB logo and optionally be embossed with a little nub while the bottom can be engraved with the manufacturer's logo.

I haven't found a single connector with a nub on the top, which I think should have been made a requirement. Most of the connectors I've looked at are engraved as specified, however, some are embossed (raised lettering) like my Logitech USB cable and the the Apple ones are neither, they are just printed on (the blind could probably create a pretty big huff against Apple for inaccessibility if they wanted). The some have the USB logo engraved on both sides.

Quote from page 93 of the spec:

"The USB Icon is embossed, in a recessed area, on the topside of the USB plug. This provides easy user
recognition and facilitates alignment during the mating process. The USB Icon and Manufacturerâ(TM)s logo
should not project beyond the overmold surface. The USB Icon is required, while the Manufacturerâ(TM)s logo
is recommended, for both Series âoeAâ and âoeBâ plug assemblies. The USB Icon is also located adjacent to
each receptacle. Receptacles should be oriented to allow the Icon on the plug to be visible during the
mating process. Figure 6-6 illustrates the typical plug orientation."

Re:Embossing

[tepples]

Embossing would be raised, not recessed.

When the spec says "engraved", it means something that's sort of a combination of embossed and engraved. The USB logo gets embossed inside an engraved rounded rectangle.

Everyone's Favorite?

[vjmurphy]

"hardsky submitted thrilling news about everyone's favorite interconnect cable..."

Don't know about anyone else, but my favorite interconnect cable is something very, very, different.

Re:Everyone's Favorite?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah! Mini-USB!

Re:Everyone's Favorite?

[shadowrat]

Like USB, you don't want to plug that cable into the wrong port.

Re:Everyone's Favorite?

[pandrijeczko]

At my age, mine's suffering from increased attenuation due to conductor degradation, high signal to noise ratio & the image goes all fuzzy when I wiggle it.

Re:Everyone's Favorite?

[martin_henry]

Not to mention the hub's disabled most of the time...

Re:Everyone's Favorite?

[pandrijeczko]

Hub? Mine's that old, it's still got a 9-pin serial D connector!

Re:Everyone's Favorite?

[neokushan]

All this sexual innuendo is giving "hot-swapping" a whole new meaning...

Re:Everyone's Favorite?

[ZarathustraDK]

Mine got caught in the elevator-door. Now it's an IDE-cable, partly.

Re:Everyone's Favorite?

[aceofspades1217]

mmmm esata :) It's already faster than USB 3.0.

Re:Everyone's Favorite?

[rootooftheworld]

Thriling news about paralel ports!? Yay!! Oh, wait... *ducks*

So 3.0 is not going to be wireless.

[jordan314]

That's what I get for reading digg. http://digg.com/hardware/USB_3.0_Confirmed_(Wireless_USB_upto_1Gbps)

Re:So 3.0 is not going to be wireless.

[SpeedyDX]

Wireless USB would be totally nonsensical, at least to me. It would break one of the most useful features of USB, the ability to charge/provide power to portable electronics and accessories.

Re:So 3.0 is not going to be wireless.

[strabes]

I think it's a well-known law of the universe that one cannot simultaneously read digg and Slashdot. Maybe it's just me.

Re:So 3.0 is not going to be wireless.

[juiceboxfan]

It would break one of the most useful features of USB, the ability to charge/provide power to portable electronics and accessories.

Unless they were pumping out a lot of RF;-)

Seriously, will 3.0 provide more power than 2.0? May not be necessary with the trend to lower power devices.
What about the optical version, will the cables include wires for powering devices?
Not much info in TFA.

But the USB socket is not

[Brit_in_the_USA]

And how are you supposed to work out which way is "up" with a socket that is on a tower case or PCI bracket?

Is this really faster?

[Sleen]

Will this really be faster or will it just be bigger chunks? Also, will this spec require more cpu overhead? My interest is not for SLR and video cams, but for live audio and instruments where speed, or latency is an issue. USB usually requires more cpu, is prone to more contention and overall offers lower quality for realtime audio processing. And why do people say its faster or higher speed? Maybe your transfers don't take as long, but I am willing to bet that small chunks won't see any benefit.

Re:Is this really faster?

[Daryen]

Also, will this spec require more cpu overhead?

Almost certainly, because unlike Firewire, USB ports are "dumb" and all of the processing is done at the CPU. More data will mean more processing required. Whether the increase is linear or parabolic I cannot tell you.

Maybe your transfers don't take as long, but I am willing to bet that small chunks won't see any benefit.

I am not sure how they are doing the "chunks," but wouldn't it vary by device driver? USB is, after all, a universal serial bus. In addition you'll need to remember that your USB 2.0 devices won't see any improvement. When new USB 3.0 devices come out I expect they'll have lower latency, although what I'm really interested in is the potential of the optical connection.

Re:Is this really faster?

[Ilgaz]

"Almost certainly, because unlike Firewire, USB ports are "dumb" and all of the processing is done at the CPU. More data will mean more processing required. Whether the increase is linear or parabolic I cannot tell you."

The fact that it is designed and supported/sponsored by a CPU making company which will die if people don't upgrade their machines (CPUs) every year is just a co-incidence right? :)

Re:Is this really faster?

[dave420]

If latency and CPU usage are issues, you shouldn't be using USB.

Where is the "standars" body

[bogaboga]

From the actual body of the story...

Intel has provided chipset makers with a draft specification for a USB 3.0 eXtensible Host Controller Interface (XHCI), making good a promise it made a couple of months ago.

I thought we had a standards body that would release such a spec to developers. This development in my opinion, might have other chip makers release a "renegade USB 4.0" promising new features and the like.

Question is; is it up to manufacturers to think of ideas, name them and release these to the general public? What's up with IEEE Standards group, whose global standards include Biomedical and Healthcare, Nanotechnology, Information Technology and Information Assurance among others?

Re:Where is the "standars" body

[TheRaven64]

I think you are confusing USB with FireWire. FireWire is the IEEE 1394 family of standards (letter suffixes indicating later versions with higher speeds). USB is an interface developed by Intel to help them sell faster CPUs.

Re:Where is the "standars" body

[Anonymous Coward]

USB is Intel's baby, they essentially dictate the spec out to the USB-IF (Implementers Forum). If you want an IEEE-standard interconnect technology, use Firewire (IEEE-1394).

Re:Where is the "standars" body

[bogaboga]

Thank you for enlightening me.

Re:Where is the "standars" body

[Areyoukiddingme]

There is a USB standards group, of which Intel has historically been the driving force. The various USB logos are trademarks of that group, so any "renegade" claiming to have USB 4.0 would be committing a trademark infringement if they tried to decorate it using recognized symbols and logos.

USB remains one of the great industry success stories, designed by Intel and then licensed out at extremely low prices with a very inclusive policy. USB gained as much traction as it did because Apple used to insist on upwards of $1 in royalties per chip implementing Firewire, on top of the difficulty of implementing Firewire in the first place. The margins on peripheral chipsets are so low that there was no way to manufacture cheap Firewire devices at those prices. They still want too much in royalties even today, which is why budget motherboards never include Firewire, and no low-end devices connect using Firewire. Ever seen a Firewire flash drive?

Meanwhile Intel understands the concept of a truly mass market, and designed a simpler standard that uses less silicon to implement and less money for permission to implement. The price is higher CPU usage, since USB chips don't do very much work. Then Intel was clever enough to grab a golden opportunity and create a higher speed extension to the standard that suddenly brought it squarely in contention with Firewire, while being totally backwards compatible. Firewire answered, with Firewire 400, but without USB pushing them, they probably wouldn't have bothered to create a higher speed Firewire. Now Firewire 800 is on its way out, but going up against USB 3 at up to 5X the speed, while still having liberal licensing terms. Is it any wonder that camcorder manufacturers are jumping ship and abandoning Firewire?

Re:Where is the "standars" body

[fenderized]

There are probably exceptions, but I think it's probably best for a for the standards to reflect working practice.

Re:Where is the "standars" body

[Kjella]

USB is an interface developed by Intel to help them sell faster CPUs.

That is rather a cheap shot. USB was originally intended to be a computer peripheral connector where it was rather pointless to include a lot of logic in the port since it would pretty much by defintion be connected to a much more powerful computer. If you didn't pay attention during the 80s/90s, most all "hardware accelerated" cards just turned into WinModems/WinPrinters/SoftRAID and so on using the CPU and there was no good reason USB shouldn't do that as well, End result was that USB won out on price, and that is also why you see 10+ USB2 connectors on motherboards today even though most people won't use more than 6 (e.g. keyboard, mouse, printer, digicam, external disk, webcam). Firewire had a much wider scope, but in practise it flipped around that you want USB connectors on other things because the computer has USB connectors. On pure speed it's been overrun by eSATA, USB is the "lowest common denominator" and with digital videocameras moving to HDD/SSD real-time transfer is no longer required. It will live on for a while longer because of all the DV cams but it's a dead end.

Re:Where is the "standars" body

[dontmakemethink]

[USB] will live on for a while longer because of all the DV cams but it's a dead end.

I thought most DV cams used Firewire. It's digital still cameras that use USB. HDD DV cams may still need to support realtime transfers for ENG since it's faster to just cue up a shoot straight off the cam rather than transfer/load into an editor. SSD would probably be quicker to physically connect the card to the editor rather than take the cam to the editing room.

Re:Where is the "standars" body

[billnapier]

We went through this last time. Intel release the "Host Controller Interface" which defines how USB host controller chips talk to the CPU. The USB group did release and define a USB 3 spec previously.

Companies are welcome to create their own host controller interface to compete with Intel (and people did for USB 1.1).

Re:Where is the "standars" body

[Kjella]

I thought most DV cams used Firewire. It's digital still cameras that use USB. HDD DV cams may still need to support realtime transfers for ENG since it's faster to just cue up a shoot straight off the cam rather than transfer/load into an editor. SSD would probably be quicker to physically connect the card to the editor rather than take the cam to the editing room.

"It" was referring way back to Firewire, not my clearest sentence. Anyway regular DV cam is only about 25Mbit/s, it's not the average bandwidth that is the problem rather the inflexibility of tape. With a tape camera, it's read off the tape into a buffer, and if it's not sent in time you get frame drops since the tape keeps running producing new frames and it's practically impossible to rewind and try again each time. Because USB relies so heavily on the CPU, if the CPU is busy even just for a moment you'd get frame drops very easily. With a HDD/SSD it doesn't matter, you can just resend and a one second buffer on the computer would be more than enough to cover it up for live streaming.

Re:Where is the "standars" body

[Darinbob]

USB is an interface developed by Intel to help them sell faster CPUs.

I am a bit disappointed that the host controller spec is by Intel. EHCI is such a badly designed interface (haven't used UHCI but it gets its share of complaints). It seems designed by pure hardware engineers who've never done software, and who assumed that a fast CPU driving everything, relying on shared memory for stuff that could be in registers, pinging PCI constantly even when idle, and a single interrupt which says "something happened but we're not going to tell you what".

Re:Where is the "standars" body

[bomanbot]

You make some good points, especially about the licensing fees, but you got something mixed up with your Firewire Speeds:

AFAIK There were never many available Firewire Controllers which had less than 400 Mbps (I think some of the early Firewire-equipped Macs may have been slower, but I am not sure), so generally, Firewire always was Firewire 400, long before USB 2.0 was created.

Intel specifically created the 2.0 spec in response to Firewire 400, to get a pie of the high-bandwith devices market, so USB 2.0 was the answer to Firewire, NOT vice versa.

Also, I think you meant this Firewire spec that is on its way out soon, but that one would technically be Firewire 3200 (which will have less theoretical bandwith than USB 3.0, but not 5x less), NOT Firewire 800. Firewire 800 has been on the Market for quite some years now, mostly on Macs, but a few High-End PC Mainboards have Firewire 800 controllers too. And believe me, they are noticeably faster than USB 2.0 or Firewire 400 ports, as I have been using them for a while now.

Re:Where is the "standars" body

[Trogre]

Uhh, no. "Firewire" is the Apple trademark of their implementation of the IEEE 1394 interface. A name dreamed up presumably to help them sell more Macs.

Re:Where is the "standars" body

[MojoStan]

Intel has provided chipset makers with a draft specification for a USB 3.0 eXtensible Host Controller Interface (XHCI), making good a promise it made a couple of months ago.

I thought we had a standards body that would release such a spec to developers. This development in my opinion, might have other chip makers release a "renegade USB 4.0" promising new features and the like.

As others have replied, there is a finalized USB 3.0 spec accepted by a standards body that includes Apple, HP, NEC, Microsoft, Intel, and Agere.

However, the article is talking about Intel's draft spec for their USB 3.0 host controller, which implements the USB 3.0 spec and is expected to become the standard design. Everybody was waiting for Intel's implementation because even minor differences in host controller designs can cause problems with incompatibilities (a problem FireWire had to deal with in its early days).

For previous versions of USB, Intel designed a fast, reliable host controller and released the spec under a royalty-free license. For USB 3.0, it appeared Intel was temporarily witholding the spec so that they could recoup some of the significant costs to design the spec before everyone else could implement the spec for free. The others threatened to design their own host controller spec in response, which could cause problems with incompatibilities. Intel apparently relented and released their spec.

Re:Where is the "standars" body

[MojoStan]

Shit, I forgot to include a link to a good article that explains this more thoroughly than my comment:

• Intel's USB 3.0 xHCI goes gold

Re:Where is the "standars" body

[enoz]

Sure it wasn't the other way around?

iEEE1394 certainly sounds like a Apple kind of name. You gotta get a new iEEE so your iPod can interface with your iLife, etc.

Re:Where is the "standars" body

[Vidar Leathershod]

Actually, it's just like a USB A to B cable. You get a FW800 - FW400 cable, and you can get either 4 or six pin. I have all of these. FW 400 6 pin can connect to a 4 pin with a cheap cable, FW 800 to 400 6 pin with a cheap cable, etc...

The extra pins are just unused when talking to slower devices.

Re:Where is the "standars" body

[TheRaven64]

FireWire was largely developed by Apple as a replacement for SCSI in Macs and for connecting DV devices and was submitted to the IEEE for standardisation (which happened quite quickly, after a working group containing TI and a few others made a few tweaks to the spec). The FireWire trademark is owned by Apple, but can be licensed for no fee by any IEEE 1394 implementation and is used by pretty much anyone apart from Sony (who still use iLINK).

Re:Where is the "standars" body

[Areyoukiddingme]

Other people pointed out the chronological errors, so thank you for nothing.

What real world throughput?

[Brit_in_the_USA]

It's all well and good to quote the new speed but what will be get int the real world? USB2 never meets expectations due ot the huge (compared to fire wire) host CPU requirements.

Will Intel be integrating the Larabee core into it's USB 3 host chips?

Re:What real world throughput?

[Glendale2x]

Throughput will be just like real-world performance of 802.11b/g/n and USB 2.0. Claim some huge ass number, but reality ends up being nowhere near that value, but it doesn't matter because you can market it at the former.

Re:What real world throughput?

[TheRaven64]

USB 2 does get the speed it advertises, but it advertises a misleading number. The 480Mb/s speed is the wire speed. This is the same as the 100Mb/s you get from ethernet - it's the speed bits are sent along the wire, not the speed at which you can transfer useful data. On top of this, you have a protocol which wraps each blob of data into one or more packets with some routing and error checking information. It will also intersperse timing and control signals into the bit stream.

The amount of overhead for USB depends a lot on the size of the packets. I've seen estimates as high as 25% in some cases, although it's typically a bit better than that. In contrast, the overhead for FireWire is closer to 3%.

Not ready.

[tikram]

I am personally waiting for USB 3.11 for Workgroups to come out before upgrading.

Re:Not ready.

[neokushan]

I hear USB 6.0 is actually slower than USB 5.1

Re:Not ready.

[neokushan]

No no no, that's Firewire, it's a completely different product.

Re:Not ready.

[anexkahn]

I am going to wait for USB Vista before I upgrade....I want to have a lot of "bloat" in my serial ports :)

Re:Not ready.

[Kamineko]

Not to mention the lack of a subwoofer really throws off the sound quality.

Re:Not ready.

[novakreo]

Do we have to have the same tired, lame jokes every time version 3 of something is discussed?

Re:Not ready.

[jetsfandb]

Please select from the following obligatory answers:

A. Yes, this is Slashdot.
B. You must be new here.
C. I for one welcome our new lame joke overlords.
D. All of the above.

Re:Not ready.

[Atti K.]

Please select from the following obligatory answers:

A. Yes, this is Slashdot. B. You must be new here. C. I for one welcome our new lame joke overlords. D. All of the above.

E. CowboyNeal.
Oh, wait...

Re:Where is FireWire going?

[Tim C]

I believe that firewire is peer to peer, while USB is master/slave. In theory that means that you can connect any two firewire-capable devices and have them talk to each other, which is not possible with USB (you need a hub). I've never actually tried that though, and so cannot personally confirm it.

Re:USB? Bah.

[MacColossus]

It will be interesting to see if USB 3.0 relies on the processor as much as the USB 2.0. This has led to firewire (400mbps) outperforming USB 2.0 (480mbps) in real world tests. In todays multicore world this may be non-issue on most machines by the time it ships. In a way I hope USB 3.0 does perform well. I would be OK with firewire going away if Firewire 3200 is outperformed by USB 3.0 without hogging to many clock cycles.

eSATA?

[amcdiarmid]

I'm certain that USB3 will be "supposed to be" backward with USB 1; 1.1; 2, but will likely only be backwards compatible with 2. Right now, a Hard disk cannot keep up with eSATA at 1.5 Gb/s, nevermind eSATA at 3Gb/s. For the past year or so, many of us have been buying $15 eSATA cards for our old computers, and new computers with eSATA built in. Considering that external HD cases with eSATA connectors cost only about $16 (something with 4 eggs, at Newegg) what is the benefit?

Possible benefits would be increased transfer speed to peripheral devices, but can we reasonably expect devices that fast by then? Personally, I would hope that 10Gb/s ethernet would come down in price by then. The only real benefit I see with the proposed USB3 is something for a processor core to do....

$.02

PS: I will give a possible something to do mention to Hard Disk (Solid-State) video recorders... but they could use eSATA as well & still be saturated..

Re:eSATA?

[TooTechy]

Having a faster bus speed will enable our CPU to talk to more devices at the same time. How about USB RAID? Or, perhaps build another groupware protocol on top of USB if it can be made faster/cheaper than 10^n BaseT Ethernet (silly idea)

Faster speeds means more possibilities for our next gen VR body suits or whatever.

Re:eSATA?

[Sockatume]

I'm not sure why it would be backwards compatible with USB 2.0, but not USB 1.1 and 1.0. IIRC all USB devices must initially connect as USB 1.0, then negotiate with the controller for higher speeds. By necessity, therefore, anything which accepts USB 2.0 must support USB 1.0 at the very least.

Re:eSATA?

[White Flame]

Right now, a Hard disk cannot keep up with eSATA at 1.5 Gb/s, nevermind eSATA at 3Gb/s.

I've gotten a 175MB/sec sustained stream from a single eSATA 3Gb/s 1TB drive. That would easily saturate the slower eSATA.

SATA 3GB in a software raid

[davidwr]

In theory, you could take two SATA 3GB drives and put them in a dedicated box that treated them as a software-driven RAID-0. That would give you peak theoretical data transfer of 6Gb/sec, but that's likely to happen only if you hit the drives' on-board caches. Connect that to your box using USB 3.0.

Of course, I'd probably prefer 1Gb/sec Ethernet, so I could see the data from my network not just one machine.

Seriously though, widespread use of the full bandwidth will probably not show up until 6-12 months after this hits the market. But it will come. It will be a competitor to eSATA.

Why?

[thatskinnyguy]

Why do we need USB 3? The reason for my question is e-SATA. Why not pump more into development of devices that run on that interface instead of USB?

Re:Why?

[rnelsonee]

One big disadvantage is that e-SATA does not carry power, which limits functionality in small devices. I don't want to have to change batteries in my flash drives - it adds to the cost, complexity, and size. And with devices getting smaller and smaller there is less room for batteries and cord connectors.

Re:Why?

[dave420]

They're for different things entirely. The chipsets cost different amounts and can do different things. eSATA is great at what it does, but it'd be pretty shitty as a method for connecting a webcam (compared to USB). Similarly USB is a shitty way to connect a hard disk (when compared to eSATA).

Re:Why?

[aquabat]

Why do we need USB 3? The reason for my question is e-SATA. Why not pump more into development of devices that run on that interface instead of USB?

I think it would be cool to have a video card that output to a USB connector. 1080P@60Hz,24bit depth only uses ~2.78Gib/s.

In fact, now that I think of it, a 2560x1600 panel uses ~5.5Gib/s, so this bus could almost handle that.

Just a thought.

Re:Why?

[Caetel]

Probably because every computer in the last 5-10 years has came with multiple USB ports, and momentum is a powerful thing.

Re:Why?

[AnyoneEB]

USB monitors exist. Here is a review of one. As mentioned in the review, the problem is that there are not any USB graphics cards, so the graphics are not hardware accelerated. They get around the bandwidth problem by using "DisplayLink" compression.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

tweaked connectors

[abfan1127]

Who's brilliant idea was it to go to production with "tweaked" connectors?

Re:tweaked connectors

[TopSpin]

Probably Mr. Shannon.

The new connector provides contacts for new wires. This is necessary because the existing wires can not operate at the frequency necessary for 5GB and remain compatible with legacy devices.

Physics, information theory, etc.

Plug rage

[davidwr]

Don't laugh. I've seen power plugs glued to drives.

Re:Where is FireWire going?

[TheRaven64]

It's not a huge limitation for USB since devices just include a USB host controller as well. This allows, for example, a USB camera to print to a USB printer. The main win for FireWire is the lower protocol overhead (meaning that it gets closer to the rated wire speed) and the lower CPU usage.

at how much cpu and system bus load?

[Joe The Dragon]

USB 2.0 can't even hit it's full speed and the slower fire wire 400 beats it and with firewire 1600 and 3200 that uses the same cables as fire wire 800. USB 3.0 that needs new cables to hit it full speed It will be a long time for it to get any ware and will 3.0 usb cards with there own cpu and heatsink on them?

Re:at how much cpu and system bus load?

[allaunjsilverfox2]

Never, that would make Intel what is often refered to as a "Sad Panda." They make chips that go vrroomm vroom and having a specialized chip that takes the load off then they won't sell much. Which doesn't make them very joy joy cherry happy. And they need that happy fun time you know. Yes, I DID just mainline my coffee!

Re:at how much cpu and system bus load?

[dvhh]

well it is well know that you can get pwned by firewire because of DMA access [http://it.slashdot.org/it/08/03/04/1258210.shtml], disable that and your firewire would be crawling. Performance or Security ?

Sand down the cable

[tepples]

That's great, except I have USB cables that are either embossed on both sides, or embossed on the wrong side.

If your cable's connector has bumps on the bottom, sand them off before using the cable.

5 GB/s

[mario_grgic]

Now all they need to do is make a motherboard and hard drives that can push 5 GB/s though the bridge and stream the data to a hard drive that can actually write 5 GB/s.

Wouldn't that be great.

Re:5 GB/s

[Koiu Lpoi]

And even then, Adobe's installers would still take 30 minutes.

Re:5 GB/s

[UnknowingFool]

That speed of USB 3.0 is maximum theoretical speed. USB 2.0 has a maximum speed of 480Mb/s. In reality USB 2.0 never gets that fast and is actually slower than Firewire 400. While it is fine for most data transfers, USB 2.0 suffers from latency and should not be used in anything like audio or video where realtime performance is crucial. I don't know this latency has been addressed in 3.0

Hub, use a hub, I said to use a hub

[tepples]

And how are you supposed to work out which way is "up" with a socket that is on a tower case or PCI bracket?

On the majority of USB hubs, up is obvious from the printing on the hub's case. For a tower case, up is generally away from the motherboard. PCI USB cards are less predictable, so I'd recommend using a hub with those. You should be using a hub anyway (or the front-panel sockets, if present) for any device that you routinely plug and unplug.

(subject explained)

Re:Hub, use a hub, I said to use a hub

[Grishnakh]

I prefer the side-mounted ports on my case. It keeps the cable out of the way, while still having the ports easily accessible near the front.

Re:Hub, use a hub, I said to use a hub

[petermgreen]

I would have thought on a PCI card up would be away from the card.

Re:Hub, use a hub, I said to use a hub

[tepples]

I would have thought on a PCI card up would be away from the card.

"Away from the card" is oriented differently in ATX vs. BTX towers because the PCI connectors are on the opposite side of the case.

Scary

[mario_grgic]

Can you imagine how he puts on a condom?

Re:USB? Bah.

[SanityInAnarchy]

I would be OK with firewire going away if Firewire 3200 is outperformed by USB 3.0 without hogging to many clock cycles.

Define "too many" -- in my mind, it ultimately comes down to price. While it's overly-simplistic, a dual-core CPU costs about $50, and a triple-core costs about $100. A cheap firewire adapter is less than $20...

So, if it required a whole extra CPU, it would be a bad deal. But I doubt it requires that -- and at that price, it would have to be using more than $20% of the CPU, all the time, for firewire to make sense.

And that's assuming all other things are equal. In my experience, outside of a few niche high-bandwidth requirements (digital video), everything "USB-like" is either USB or Bluetooth. With USB 3.0, they've got high-bandwidth more than covered, so I imagine I would see far fewer Firewire-only devices.

Pointless

[SanityInAnarchy]

We already have a wireless standard for this purpose. It's called Bluetooth.

USB means you can plug things directly in, and have them either charge, or be entirely powered by the socket. It also means you can physically see where it's plugged into your computer, and short of a freaky tempest attack, it's safe to enter your password on a wired USB keyboard.

Wireless means you don't have to deal with wires, but you do have to deal with batteries. It also means that unless you really understand what's going on, it's very possible that someone else could hijack your keyboard and capture your password.

Oh, and Bluetooth uses roughly the same tech as Wifi, which means that the next proposed upgrade to Bluetooth is finally going to be around the speed of USB 2.0.

Re:USB? Bah.

[larkost]

It is not just the dependance on the processor that makes the "slower" FireWire 400 beat out USB 2.0 (the fast one... whatever they are calling that today). A rough outline:

1) FireWire allows devices to allocate a specific slice of time to their needs for a period of time. This slice of time can then be used exclusivly by the device to transmit that round of data. This keeps devices from interupting the flow durring those periods. USB has a part-way analog to this, but it is not nearly as efficent.

2) FireWire allows any device to talk to any other without requiring a CPU's intervention. So if you are transfering from on HD to another connected via FireWire the data never has to flow thorugh the CPU (unlike on USB).

3) FireWire has explicit support for DMA (direct memory access), so when transfering data to and from an internal HD the CPU only has to grant access to the bits on disk and the FireWire support chips can handle streaming the data from one storage device to the other (like #2, but lightly different).

4) Latency can be gaurenteeded through a mechanism in the time-slice arbitration system. So audio devices can have the guaranteed chanels. On USB it is a constant fight... that does not work for music devices if you start loading up the USB system. This works well with the DMA thing, so even if your CPU is busy at the moment it does not have to make the context switch before accepting the data.

Most of these differences are inherint in the basic design of the two protocols. And they cause the FireWire bridge chips to be significaly more expensive (still we are talking a mater of a dollar or two). I have not heard any good analasis of USB 3 yet (since the spec just came out), but I suspect that USB 3.0 will still be saddled with the legacy of USB 1.0 (which was designed with mice an keyboards in mind... everything else seems to have been showhorned in).

Re:Do we divide 5 to 2? Or 3?

[Ilgaz]

Person marked me as "flamebaiter" would be surprised but I am not really a big USB2 hater. For example, my colour laser is connected via USB2 and performing really good. Also my scanner, my time machine backup drive and so on.

I seriously wonder if Intel really stopped such childish "use CPU" or "don't include overhead in speed" tricks as they are in very good shape now.

I will plant 120 meters of cable just because of USB2 CPU overhead, imagine that. I seriously didn't know the overhead could hurt that much.

Connector simplicity?

[JSBiff]

Don't have time to read the article, but historically one of the advantages of USB has been that almost any perpipheral, high speed, or low speed, can be plugged into the same type of connector, so users don't have to worry about which plug to plug the keyboard into, which for the mouse, which for an external hard drive, camera, thumb drive, etc. That is the real beauty of USB - the 'universal plug'. Which is one reason I'm worried about an 'optical' version of USB - because that would seem to require a new plug type which I suspect would not be backwards compatible?

I *hope* that 'tweaked' USB 3 connector is backwards compatible with older USb connectors and hardware, so you can still plug the keyboard, printer, mouse, scanner, etc into it, *but also* plug in future high speed hard drives, network adapters, HDTV tuners, blu-ray burner drives, etc. I really like the idea of a universal plug for everything. It makes computers so much simpler to work with.

That's part of why I don't like the idea of e-SATA - unless I'm mistaken (haven't looked much at eSATA yet) it's introducing a new interface type which is basically not compatible with USB, requiring a differing plug.

Re:USB? Bah.

[MacColossus]

I would define too many as in proportion to what firewire requires. So theoretically if the two interfaces are at full potential speed the USB 3.0 should not require in excess of 36% more processor than Firewire 3200 does. So if the processor load increase was proportionate to the speed increase I would be happy. My 2 machines are dual core and 8 core and include firewire built in. But if they and their peripherals were less expensive due to standardization on a single port type, woohoo. However we have seen what happens when there is a lack of competition.

Re:Where is FireWire going?

[Comboman]

I believe that firewire is peer to peer, while USB is master/slave.

USB On-The-Go was designed to give USB some of the peer-to-peer abilities of FireWire.

Oh, one more thing

[JSBiff]

In my previous post I mentioned the issue of connecting old hardware to newer hosts, but you also have to consider the other way too. . .

If they implemented USB 3 in a similar fashion to USB 2, the new hardware is backwards compatible with older USB hosts, back to version 1.0. Sure, it'll be slow on version 1.0 (in the case of something like an HDTV Tuner, it might have to downconvert the video stream to lower resolution when connected to a slower host), and even on 2.0 it'll be slower than it would if connected to 3.0 (though for a lot of devices, 2.0 is at least fast enough to be useful), but backwards compatibility is a huge market win. It means that as a device maker, I'm not limiting my market to only the people with the latest and greatest hardware - the hardware can gracefully 'downgrade' to work with the huge number of computers that have USB 2.0 and 1.0 but not 3.0 yet.

Backwards compatibility is both good business and good engineering (when possible; it's true that in some cases, the cost of backwards compatibility could be so high that it does not make economic sense to bother, but I don't think with something like USB that tends to be a 'blocking' level problem).

Of course... We already have...

[Colin Smith]

Will we ever see a storage medium that can move data that fast?

Simply fill a container ship with a million LTO tapes and there you go, truly, unimaginably vast bandwidth.

 

Re:Of course... We already have...

[genner]

Will we ever see a storage medium that can move data that fast?

Simply fill a container ship with a million LTO tapes and there you go, truly, unimaginably vast bandwidth.

Yeah it a lot of bandwidth but the lag sucks.

I'm waiting for ludicrous speed

[karlandtanya]

1.5 Mbit/s Low Speed
12 Mbit/s Full Speed
480 Mbit/s High Speed
4.8 Gbit/s Super Speed
4E+08 Gbit/s Plaid!

Re:I'm waiting for ludicrous speed

[toddhisattva]

4E+08 Gbit/s Plaid!

I've always thought that was a joke about the Doppler effect.

How many conductors?

[tepples]

But USB 3.0 appears to need six conductors: power, data from host, data from device, and ground for each. I haven't seen a TRS connector with more than four conductors (tip, two rings, sleeve).

Re:How many conductors?

[ProfessionalCookie]

And therefore it cant be done!

I kidd. I actually thing a square or rectangle that can be inserted in any simple orientation would make a lot of sense.

Symmetric USB connector *IS* possible.

[Anonymous Coward]

Picture this, 8 pins in a row.

1 VCC
2 GND
3 D-
4 D+
5 D+
6 D-
7 GND
8 VCC

No matter which way you plug it in, the pinout would've worked fine. The additional cost to manufacture an 8-pin USB cabling system versus the current 4-pin scheme would've been negligible.

Re:Where is FireWire going?

[dontmakemethink]

I believe that firewire is peer to peer, while USB is master/slave. In theory that means that you can connect any two firewire-capable devices and have them talk to each other, which is not possible with USB (you need a hub). I've never actually tried that though, and so cannot personally confirm it.

The iPod was originally designed to be able to share files by simply connecting two iPods. Once the iTunes possibility presented itself, it was one of the first things to be disabled to satisfy record label interests, along with the ability to record audio.

Imagine...

[ibanezist00]

...how many L.O.C./s this thing can transfer!

Re:TRS rules

[compro01]

So you happen to have a TRRRRS connector? as TFA seems to state that USB3.0 over wire will need 6 conductors. (power, ground, data to device, data from device, and grounds for each data line), presumably to get the SNR high enough to allow higher speeds.

Correction - prefer 10Gb/sec ethernet

[davidwr]

Who thought a zero could be so important?

Girlfriend in Canada

[dhalsim2]

Not quite true. A lot of slashdotters have a girlfriend in Canada. ;)

Re:Girlfriend in Canada

[neokushan]

It's not a real girlfriend if it's actually a man. Or a Canadian.

Re:USB? Bah.

[TeknoHog]

5) Firewire has dedicated differential wire pairs for input and output. USB 1/2 only has one pair, so the total theoretical capacities are 480 vs. 400+400 Mbps. There's also some latency involved in negotiating the switch of direction.

From a link in the article it looks like USB 3 will have dedicated differential pairs. Great, just like Firewire and Ethernet have had for ages.

My views on the 'process'

[Zalminen]

My native language is Finnish but I actually started thinking partly in English since I was 10 or so (and knew only some English).
Originally it was just something to keep my mind occupied - I'd be thinking in Finnish and then just switch to English and later back again. Later on it would also happen pretty much automatically when ever I read or heard English.
I'd even go so far as to say it's the second most important reason why I've never had problems learning English - the first being computer games :D
But I've never been able to do that well in other languages...

Vertical Plugs

[ProfessionalCookie]

Not to mention that vertically oriented jacks are not uncommon. In fact I think it often make more sense to have a vertical jack.

Re:USB? Bah.

[i_ate_god]

Out of curiosity, how does PCMIA slots on laptops fare for firewire components? I'm specifically interested in your point #4 for my laptop. Sound modules mostly are Firewire, so how well would a firewire adapter in my PCMIA slot work vs. a USB sound module?

I haven't found much to suggest anything at all...

I clmeepoty dregsaie

[freeweed]

I clmeepoty dregsaie.

That study was only acapblilpe to small words for the most part. Ohiswerte welthsors.

Yes, you can make it out if you try hard enough - much of that is based on context. Heck, it takes ME a while to figure those words out, and I *typed* them.

Probably not, MS will likely cap it like FW800

[gmezero]

You know Firewire 800 where Windows caps it at 100MB, and if you hack your registry to override it you risk blowing out any FW400 and under devices that you connect to the port...

Or would it be like USB 2.0 that actually only get's about 7-9MB throughput in practice?

This should be fun to see.

Re:USB? Bah.

[Macrat]

You forget that firewire 800 exists today.

Re:USB? Bah.

[MacColossus]

Nope. I forgot nothing. I primarily use firewire 800. I was comparing next generation standards of these products. Firewire 3200 (3rd major revision) to USB 3.0 (3rd major revision). Firewire 800 is definitely my first choice here and now. ESATA has promise as well. Drivers on my favorite platform (Mac) currently suck for it. I haven't seen many speed comparisons of ESATA vs Firewire 800 on other platforms to see if this is endemic of ESATA across platforms. I could be wrong or there could be exceptions, but I'm guessing most Windows and Linux users don't use Firewire 800 much.

Ha! Try this one! ;P

[sznupi]

Anidroccg to crad cniyrrag lcitsiugnis planoissefors at an uemannd, utisreviny in Bsitirh Cibmuloa, and crartnoy to the duoibus cmials of the ueticnd rcraeseh, a slpmie, macinahcel ioisrevnn of ianretnl cretcarahs araepps sneiciffut to csufnoe the eadyrevy oekoolnr.

So I guess the names will be

[Kanasta]

USB 3 low speed==USB 2 low speed==USB 1 low speed
USB 3 full speed==USB 2 full speed=USB 1
USB 3 hi speed==USB 2 hi speed
USB 3 ultra hi speed?

Molex plugs suck

[GPS Pilot]

Those Molex power plugs can get impossibly stuck. One time I had to tug on one with a great deal of force for literally 30 minutes before it loosened up.

I think somebody makes a Molex-pulling tool, but I haven't been able to find it.

Re:Molex plugs suck

[Raenex]

I think somebody makes a Molex-pulling tool, but I haven't been able to find it.

Are you kidding me?

http://www.google.com/search?q=Molex+tool

FireWire not on its way out

[GPS Pilot]

FireWire 800 is on its way out, because FireWire S3200 (3.2 Gbit/s) is on its way in.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FireWire#FireWire_S1600_and_S3200

taint so

[wilec]

If she likes it den dat taint da wong way, ya can tell from da feedback signal, eeyowwee you sob! == wong way but oohhhoo baby! == uhuhuh!

wabi-sabi
matthew

e.SATA Booby Trapped

[bill_mcgonigle]

what is the benefit?

e.SATA cables fall out if you sneeze in the same room.

USB connectors only fall out if you put minute tension on the cable.

Gosh, was RJ-45 really so hard to beat?