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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.
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?
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.
Does USB 3 finally have a controller? I mean a real one, not the "let's just offload half our work to the CPU" nonsense USB 1, 1.1 and 2 have. Yes, it's cheap but it's also a recipe for horrible throughput (see FireWire S400 being faster then USB 2.0) and puts an unneccessary burden on the CPU.
I'd like USB better if it wasn't implemented in such a half-assed way. The connectors are horrible (whoever thought that a symmetric-looking but really asymmetric connector was a good idea?), it's incapable of daisy-chaining without hubs, it's strictly host-peripheral and its reliance on the CPU degrades its own performance.
USB is a nice idea but sometimes I wish FireWire had made the cut instead. Apart from the fact that it can DMA wherever it wants it's essentially USB done right. Likewise, I hope that Light Peak makes its way to the market soon as it doesn't seem to share many of USB's shortcomings.
USB is great for HID. Everything else not so much.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
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