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

What about the rest of us?

[Tubal-Cain]

Which means, if you understand PR-write, it will be much faster.

What does it mean if you don't know PR-write?

Re:What about the rest of us?

[lorenzino]

What does it mean if you don't know PR-write?

Clearly much slower

Re:What about the rest of us?

[zippthorne]

You're going to have a lot of trouble writing drivers for it?

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.

Re:What about the rest of us?

[necro81]

One other problem Firewire had in becoming widespread was that it required a more beefy, dedicated chip. As far as I understand it, Firewire is implemented mostly in the chip, cutting out the CPU, and creates a more-or-less guaranteed bandwidth. This is why it was popular with camcorders - you could always be sure that you could transfer video in realtime. Same for high-end sound equipment.

USB, on the other hand, while it has its own controller chip, is moderated largely by the CPU and memory bus. If the computer is under heavy load, the USB throughput suffers. Peripheral devices are at the mercy of the host to control things. This is fine for things like mice and keyboards, which transfer relatively little data semi-asynchronously. You don't need such a robust high speed bus for such lightweight peripherals. But for hard drives and other devices, USB has some catching up to do.

Royalties aside, the Firewire chipset that could implement a high-speed bus robustly cost more than the more lightweight USB controller. In the particular case of the iPod, a portable device, having the Firewire controller eventually took more board space than Apple was willing to provide. While every computer had a mouse and keyboard, not every computer was made with the ability for connecting external drives. So there, too, the economics played in USB's favor.

That speed comes at a cost

[stokessd]

Given that USB is PIO and not DMA, the faster the bus runs the more processor intervention is needed. Given how cheap and fast our processors are, that's not a huge deal, but it's not like a DMA based transfer just got faster, it means that the processor is going to be more busy too.

PR-write or not, it will be a PITA just like USB2.0 until it's built in and common.

Sheldon

Re:That speed comes at a cost

[beakerMeep]

I'm not very knowledgeable about USB flavors but I think I'm like most people in hoping they just settle on a standard. The Marketriod Speak of the USB people is exactly what's been wrong with all of this. First there was Hi-Speed USB, then USB 2.0, then Hi-Speed USB 2.0, Then Ultra-Titanium Jet-Powered-Turbo USB, then something where they claimed you'd get 76 virgins for using USB.

Honestly, I think even some of the geekiest computer users start to not care when bombarded with all this nonsense. Ultimately it's a cable -- we want it to be universal, and fast. Nothing complicated there. Sadly the USB standard seemed to gain the most traction in the market despite it's fractured flavors/versions.

So if it ends up being eSATA, Firewire, or USB 3.0 or something else, I hope they just make it simple and fast. It's a cable - it shouldn't have compatibility problems or be used to confuse users with marketroid speak.

Re:That speed comes at a cost

[Vihai]

USB is PIO and not DMA? You understand that PIO/DMA transfer modes only meaningful for Parallel ATA devices?

That's because the ATA interface was originally THE 16-bit system bus (AT bus) and the disk controller was onboard on the disks (thus the name IDE - Integrated Drive Electronics).

So, the CPU accessed the disk controller through the AT bus which was originally programmed I/O and then started using DMA.

Of course, the system bus quicky become different and faster (FSB + PCI) thus the ATA interface became a disk attachment interface instead of the system bus and an additional controller was put between the system and the disk.

USB is a completely different beast. The "bus" actually transfer packets (URBs) and all USB controllers use DMA to transfer URBs to the main memory... So, no PIO/DMA stuff is involved....

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:That speed comes at a cost

[commodore64_love]

>>>then something where they claimed you'd get 76 virgins for using USB.

I have 76 *movies* of virgins on my USB hard drive. Does that count?

Re:That speed comes at a cost

[frehe]

Ultimately it's a cable -- we want it to be universal, and fast.

It's not just a cable, but a obvious male created penis metaphor for the patriarchical oppression of women worldwide during all ages, created just to mentally abuse us women even more by reminding us of "our place" every time we use a computer. And of course you want it to be "universal" and "fast", just like all men want women to be generic models of the unrealistic Barbie stereotype, instantly ready for some quick sex with the only goal being selfish gratification for the male. All men are pigs! Snivel... sob... where's my chocolate...

Re:That speed comes at a cost

[barzok]

No, you have 76 movies of "virgins" on your USB hard drive.

Re:That speed comes at a cost

[228e2]

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

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?

[Daniel Dvorkin]

I hate to say this, but Firewire's dead. Apple invented it and they've been the main ones pushing it; now that they're pretty clearly planning to get rid of it, there are no major industry players with an interest in its survival. I agree that it's a far superior standard for pushing any meaningful amount of data around, so I'm not at all happy about this state of affairs, but so it goes.

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

[CarpetShark]

And how much cpu power is needed at that speed?

CPU usage is fixed in all USB standards. It's 140%.

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

[Strange Ranger]

eSATA is great for external drives that stay connected and turned on. But for removable (i.e. flash) drives they can be a pain. Every time you pop a card in or out and then reboot the BIOS makes you redefine Boot Order, eSATA drives are just like regular SATA drives, not a "removable device".

As a photographer who unloads about 20-30GB of raw files every week from CF cards in multiple readers, I'm pretty excited about USB 3.0.

Re:Speed

[eln]

USB 3.0 is known as "ludicrous speed".

USB3 whitepaper

[whyde]

Most of the replies so far show a glaring lack of knowledge of what USB3 really is. Honestly, it only bears a passing resemblance to its predecessors, and is a closer relative to PCIe. If you want more technical information, Denali has a good whitepaper (registration required):

http://www.denali.com/en/events/usb3_whitepaper/?EB20090105

Re:USB3 whitepaper

[legirons]

Most of the replies so far show a glaring lack of knowledge of what USB3 really is. Honestly, it only bears a passing resemblance to its predecessors, and is a closer relative to PCIe. If you want more technical information, Denali has a good whitepaper (registration required):

And the real info can of course be found at https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Usb3#USB_3.0

weirdly, wikipedia doesn't seem to include any of that stuff about upgrade to our standard or your company will die - you might need to turn to an industry-funded news source for the full story ;)

Faster data is great, but...

[exploder]

...does it have any greater power capacity?

Re:Faster data is great, but...

[pchan-]

You'll be glad to know that it does, but I'm not sure if it's enough to run a 3.5" Magnetic Hard drive.

"Maximum bus power is increased to 150mA per unit load (+50% over USB 2.0)."

A solid State drive, on the other hand...

Power is measured in Watts, not Amps. USB3 is still at 5V, but now lets you negotiate up to 1 Amp of current (USB2 limits at 500 mA). So, that's 5 Watts of power. the 150mA draw is the maximum current you are allowed to draw in before negotiating up to verify the host supports more.

Faster speed? Really?

[maugle]

According to Symwave, this will result in 'speeds previously unattainable with legacy USB technology.'

New technology will be faster than old technology? Impossible!

Yeah, but we all know that...

[denzacar]

... The Ultimate speed is 88 mph.
Once a device hits that the Flux Capacitor kicks in and it goes back in time.

There is probably a huge prehistoric dump of USB sticks from the future somewhere in California.

Re:Crap

[neokushan]

I didn't know computers could have sexual preferences. So THAT'S why I only seem to get lesbian porn popups...

Re:Don't touch type?

[martinw89]

True, and as an extreme gamer, I need the extra bandwidth for my 37 megapixel sensor blue-laser mouse. Red lasers just never felt accurate.

PIO vs. DMA

[Alwin Henseler]

You understand that PIO/DMA transfer modes only meaningful for Parallel ATA devices?

That's the meaning in traditional sense. But you can also use this distinction in a wider sense:

• PIO: The CPU has to manage / monitor / do every little step in the process.
• DMA: The CPU sets parameters, give a start signal, and then just waits (ehm, can do something else in the meanwhile), while dedicated hardware does all the boring work, like tranfer individual bytes / words of data to main memory. When ready, the CPU gets a signal (for example: an interrupt) that the transfer is complete. This may be used to describe many hardware-supported tasks, not just IDE harddisk controllers.

How much of an advantage this is, depends on how complex the initial parameter setup is, how much of the work is done by hardware vs. CPU, transfer speed, how large transferred blocks are, how often transfer occur, etc. etc. Besides overall speed, a big advantage is that the CPU can do other things (like decode a video stream, respond to keyboard / mouse input) while a tranfer continues in the background. This allows a system to feel much more responsive.

You state that USB controllers use DMA, parents says not. I don't know which is true. Perhaps there is DMA support for USB controllers, but the packets are small enough and flowing at a high enough rate that it feels like the CPU is doing all the work?

Re:PIO vs. DMA

[Agripa]

That was the impression I got from the various sources I have read. I also think I remember reading that they are planning to fix this with USB 3.

I read through Intel's EHCI specifications and from what I understood, while DMA is supported it still requires double buffering because of alignment issues. The interrupt rate and required CPU supervision were probably not a problem until the 480 Mbits/sec transfer rate was implemented.

Now we need to find a way to loop the video feed s

[Joe The Dragon]

Now we need to find a way to loop the video feed so we can get the people off of the usb bus.

Firewire isn't dea

[trolltalk.com]

Gee, don't say that to the aviation industry - they've standardized on Firewire because it saves weight in cabling.

The F-22 Raptor, the A380 Airbus, etc use firewire and gigabit ethernet to save weight. With over 300 miles of wiring an each A380, cutting the weight even in half makes a big difference with an A380.

http://74.125.77.132/search?q=cache:L96bOxSv3V8J:www.critical-embedded-systems.com/meecc/2005/presentations/Keller.pdf+army+tank+firewire+combat+electronics&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=6&gl=ca&client=firefox-a " JSF Avionics snapshot

Distributed avionics: display- management computers, integrated core processing, and flight subsystems

IEEE 1394 FireWire network links core processor and display processors

Fibre Channel links core processor modules and sensor subsystems "

The military will be saying "You can have my Firewire when you pry it from my cold, dead hands." They have the bigger guns, so I think they'll win any argument.

Chinese mandate USB charging for mobile phones

[AlXtreme]

A more interesting bit from TFA:

Not connected with CES but related is the fact the Chinese government has declared its intention to force all digital phone makers to use a standard USB connector from the charger. That would mean that a single charger would do for all of your devices and would save an immense amount of wastage and frustration.

Good call, I hope to finally ditch those dozens of different chargers in a couple of years.

Re:76 Virgins!?!?!?

[Jafafa Hots]

There has to be at LEAST 76 virgins on slashdot.

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