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Everything You Need To Know About USB 3.0
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?"
...seriously? Will USB 6.0 be super-hyper-megaspeed USB?
If a man empties his purse into his head no man can take it from him. An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.
... fuck everything, we're going to plaid.
My work here is dung.
All I can think of is this:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/fuck-everything-were-doing-five-blades,11056/
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
SATA is up to 6.0 Gb/s now, and networking is starting to hit 10Gb/s.
Contrary to the lame doomsday message IFTA, USB isn't going away, people. I see all the millions of devices that use USB for data transfer, power charging, ect. not to mention cellular phone market is finally starting to standardize to micro-USB. On top of that, there's too many TTL 5v devices out there built and designed around USB that it would cause some serious chaos if it did go away. There's no way that something like LightPeak is going to come in and whisk it off of computer hardware manufacturer's list of "things to provide". It may be a high-speed fad like Firewire or something of the recent past, but USB is here to stay.
That term's annoying because it's trivially true and means nothing. All technological changes are quantised. You don't get a continuous change from the iPod Classic to the iPod Touch, outside of a Cronenberg-and-cheese-sandwich-induced nightmare.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
The only reason I can see would be if you had an external USB enclosure that housed multiple drives that you plan on RAIDing. With the speeds of SSD drives still ramping up, it is possible you could saturate even USB 3 with just 2 drives.
But with USB 3.0, even though the plug looks the same, the cable has extra wires. Because of this, it will not work in a 2.0 port. The edge of a USB 3.0 plug is colored blue so you know it’s a 3.0.
But it'll still take you 3 tries to get it plugged in the right way around.
The one major eSATA issue(I don't know why they overlooked this the first time) is power. For 3.5inch drives, or multi drive external towers/shelves, this doesn't matter at all. An external PSU is a given. For the "single 2.5 inch or smaller in portable case" case, the fact that USB3 delivers the bandwidth(and is backwards compatible right back to the two-1.1-ports stuff that they were shipping in the mid 90s) and the power, while eSATA delivers only the bandwidth, requiring a seperate connector for power, pretty much ruins things. If eSATA had included power from the start, it might have been a much better contender.
As a replacement for SCSI type use cases, of course, USB is a toy and eSATA or SAS is the natural replacement; but for the vast market for flash drives, 2.5 inch externals, and mass-market, works-with-anything 3.5 inch externals, eSATA is doomed compared to USB(especially since a USB port can be used for non storage purposes, while an eSATA port is pretty much storage only. In principle, a high speed serial interconnect like SATA could be used for other stuff; but I've never seen it actually done in practice.
They're more than just a "bit" slow, IMO. An external HD connected by USB 2 can only really be used for backup, and even then it lags. Firewire is better, but driver problems will occur more often than with USB. Then there's eSata, of which you need 1 per drive. I really hope USB 3 becomes the standard for external storage, possibly even more common than eSata (even though, technically, eSata is cheaper when looking at the overall system).
Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
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.
Micro-USB connectors are actually less fragile than Mini-USB. They are rated for far more connect/disconnect cycles (10,000) than Mini-USB.
Sure, we could go to optical connections next, like the competition. That seems like the logical thing to do. After all, electrons worked out pretty well, and photons are the next particles after electrons. So let's play it safe. Let's make an optical cable and call it the USBOpticon. Why innovate when we can follow? Oh, I know why: Because we're a business, that's why!
You think it's crazy? It is crazy. But I don't give a shit. From now on, we're the ones who have the edge in the data speed game. Are they the best a man can get? Fuck, no. USB is the best a man can get.
What part of this don't you understand? If 12Mbps is good, and 480Mbps is better, obviously 4.8Gbps would make us the best fucking cable that ever existed. Comprende? We didn't claw our way to the top of the cable game by clinging to the parallel industry standard. We got here by taking chances. Well, USB3 is the biggest chance of all.
Here's the report from Engineering. Someone put it in the bathroom: I want to wipe my ass with it. They don't tell me what to invent—I tell them. And I'm telling them to stick four more gigabits in there. I don't care how. Make the wires so thin they're invisible. Put some on the outside. I don't care if they have to cram the extra electrons in perpendicular to the other ones, just do it!
You're taking the "Universal" part of "universal Serial Bus" too literally, grandma. Cut the strings and soar. Let's hit it. Let's roll. This is our chance to make computer history. Let's dream big. All you have to do is say that 4.8Gbps can happen, and it will happen. If you aren't on board, then fuck you. And if you're on the board, then fuck you and your father. Hey, if I'm the only one who'll take risks, I'm sure as hell happy to hog all the glory when USB3 becomes the computer cable for the U.S. of "this is how we connect now" A.
People said we couldn't go to 480Mbps. It'll cost a fortune to manufacture, they said. Well, we did it. Now some egghead in a lab is screaming "4.8Gbps crazy?" Well, perhaps he'd be more comfortable in the labs at Sony, working on fucking discs. Rotary storage, my white ass!
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe we should just ride in Intel's wake and make chipsets. Ha! Not on your fucking life! The day I shadow a penny-ante outfit like Intel is the day I leave the computing game for good, and that won't happen until the day I die!
The market? Listen, we make the market. All we have to do is put her out there with a little jingle. It's as easy as, "Hey, connecting with anything less than 4.8Gbps is like carrying your data in a rusty bucket." Or "Your connection will be so smooth, I could snort lines off of your transfer rate graph." Try "Your computer's gonna be so friggin' fast, you'll get a speeding ticket."
I know what you're thinking now: What'll people say? Mew mew mew. Oh, no, what will people say?! Grow the fuck up. When you're on top, people talk. That's the price you pay for being on top. Which USB is, always has been, and forever shall be, Amen, 4.8Gbps, sweet Jesus in heaven.
Stop. I just had a stroke of genius. Are you ready? Open your mouth, baby birds, cause Mama's about to drop you one sweet, fat nightcrawler. Here she comes: Make that fucker backwards compatible, too. That's right. 4.8Gbps, fully backwards compatible cables, and make the connectors out of gold. You heard me—gold connectors. It's a whole new way to think about downloading. Don't question it. Don't say a word. Just key the music, and call the chorus girls, because we're on the edge—the razor's edge—and I feel like dancing.
The seekers do no need truth, the seekers do find truth and the finding do be painful