USB 3.0 Is Ten Times Faster; Get It In 2010

thefickler writes "Seagate and Symwave are jointly demonstrating the first consumer applications of USB 3.0 at CES, showing a Seagate FreeAgent drive running through a Symwave USB 3.0-compatible storage controller device. According to Symwave, this will result in 'speeds previously unattainable with legacy USB technology.' Which means, if you understand PR-write, it will be much faster."

Comments

And how much cpu power is needed at that speed?

[Joe The Dragon]

And how much cpu power is needed at that speed? firewire 1600 and 3200 seems better same cables and ports as firewire 800 unlike usb 3.0 that needs new cables and ports for usb 3.0 speed.

Re:And how much cpu power is needed at that speed?

[lysergic.acid]

USB is cheaper, and not everyone needs FireWire's level of performance, so USB is more prevalent and dominates the casual computing market; that's only natural. but most motherboards sold these days still come with at least 1 FireWire port.

and while FireWire can technically replace USB, USB will never be able to replace FireWire. even though the average user doesn't need sustained 100MB/sec transfer speeds to transfer their MP3s onto their iPod or text documents onto their thumbdrive, there are a lot of professions where USB just won't cut it. if you're in multimedia production or otherwise need to transfer large amounts of data regularly, then the extra cost of FireWire is more than worth it.

high-end external hard drives, cameras, professional audio equipment, etc. will all continue to use FireWire for this reason. heck, IEEE 1394b is even used by NASA for monitoring launch debris and by the U.S. military in jets like the F-22 and the F-35. so FireWire is far from dead. it's just found its niche. at the very worse, users will have to buy expansion cards to add FireWire S1600/S3200 controllers to their computers. but FireWire will continue to be available for a long, long time.

Apple's decision to remove FireWire from their low-end systems is just a sign that they're no longer catering exclusively to the prosumer/media-production crowd. they're still selling systems with FireWire, but they're also recognize that the Mac-using demographic has changed over the years, and there are a lot of Mac users that will never need FireWire.

eSATA is here already

[camperslo]

With many chipsets/motherboards already supporting SATA and the drives being widespread as well, many of US could enjoy much (about 6x ?) better than USB 2 port speeds for external drives by simply having the external ("e" in eSATA) connectors available.

Re:eSATA is here already

[martinw89]

Yeah, I don't need a faster USB for my keyboard and mouse. Even my flash drive probably won't benefit without faster memory. eSATA seems like a better solution for the widespread use of external HDs. Plus, it doesn't have to go from USB-SATA in the external HDs controller.

Faster data is great, but...

[exploder]

...does it have any greater power capacity?

Not what the phone companies want

[Anonymous Coward]

The last tidbit at the end -the Chinese government wants all cell phones to be chargeable on USB connectors- is the most interesting part of the article. The phone companies may be fighting it tooth and nail, but its not up to them to decide. If they don't like it, then not only do they lose at least 1/5 of the worlds cell phone users, but because they lose a good chunk of the US and European users (using the cheap Chinese cell phones), then they lose roughly half their business. Whining about it won't get it done. Its good for everyone except the phone companies. Standards are monopoly breakers, its true. But China has a bigger stick than the phone companies, and not just that: consumers and environmentalists are happy with it too. This is so NOT A GAME THE PHONE COMPANIES CAN WIN.

Re:Considering what a processor hog USB2 is...

[aksansai]

With USB2, copying from one flash drive to another takes my CPU utilization to 100%.

Please upgrade from Pentium era processor.

Re:That speed comes at a cost

[Surt]

USB has basically zero compatibility problems that i've ever seen. There are 3 port varieties (for small, medium, large devices), and you have to match that properly (or be really strong). There are 3 protocols (1.0, 2.0 low speed, 2.0 high speed), and you get the fastest that both sides of the cable support.

The disastrous mistake the USB forum made was to allow 2.0 low speed to exist. They should have just bitten the bullet and said that 2.0 labeling is for high-speed only. But they had too much 2.0 low speed product in the channel that didn't want to be labeled 1.0, waaah waaah i want to put a 2.0 label on my product!

But still, in spite of the poor labeling, there has been zero incompatibility that I or anyone I know has experienced. Some 2.0 devices work slower than you would expect (because they are low-speed), but they WORK.

Hopefully with 3.0 they won't make the same mistake, and will only allow labeling with 3.0 for devices that use the full speed link.

Re:What about the rest of us?

[omeomi]

It means Firewire and External SATA will still be faster, but everything will come with USB connections anyway for no apparent reason...

Re:That speed comes at a cost

[228e2]

If I had mod points, I would rate this insightful.

Re:What about the rest of us?

[hairyfeet]

Uhh....there is a very good reason why even though Firewire and ESATA are faster that everything will be USB- Because it is cheap and it is the one connector that you KNOW that your customer will have. I tried carrying a Firewire external drive a few years back. I ended up selling it because I almost never got a chance to use it. Every PC I came across, unless it was truly ancient, had at least a USB 1.1 port. If Apple would have given away the Firewire patents for free as Intel did with USB we would all have Firewire ports. But IIRC they wanted $1.00 a port for Firewire compared to $0.0 for USB, and in the cutthroat world of computers it simply wasn't worth it for the manufacturers.

So while it would have been nice if ESATA or Firewire 800 was everywhere, I just don't see that happening. From what I understand USB 3.0 will be backwards compatible with 2.0 which is backwards compatible with 1.1. So that is over a decade that you can be assured that your device will be able to connect with their machine. And that kind of mass penetration is simply worth more to the customers and manufacturers than a speed boost.