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Everything You Need To Know About USB 3.0

Posted by timothy on from the it-goes-one-louder dept.

Esther Schindler writes "After a lengthy gestation period, the third generation of the Universal Serial Bus is making its way to the market. USB 3.0, also known as SuperSpeed USB, has throughput of up to 5 gigabits per second. That's even faster than the 3Gb/sec of SATA hard drives and 1Gb/sec of high-end networking in the home. USB 3.0: Everything You Need to Know goes into plenty of the techie details. But is it already obsolete — will LightPeak make USB 3.0 irrelevant?"

3 of 322 comments (clear)

  1. Re:But later in the same article by Dr_Barnowl · · Score: 3, Informative

    They are referring to the "B" type connectors which per the standard are only used at the device end. The 3.0 B plugs are not compatible with the 2.0 B receptacle by dint of having an "extra bit" bolted on, whereas the 3.0 A plugs are compatible with the 2.0 A receptacle, which is typically used on the host PC.

    So essentially
        - you can connect any two devices with an old A-B cable and it will still work
        - you can't use the new cable with old devices

    Which seems very sensible - you won't have new cables unless you get new devices, and you can't waste your new cables connecting up old devices that can't use their extra wires, whereas in a pinch you can still use an old cable with a new device albeit at lower speed.

  2. Re:Micro-USB by dave420 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Micro-USB connectors are actually less fragile than Mini-USB. They are rated for far more connect/disconnect cycles (10,000) than Mini-USB.

  3. Re:Fuck Everything, We're Going to USB3 by Sexy+Commando · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://www.theonion.com/articles/fuck-everything-were-doing-five-blades,11056/