USB 3.0 Getting a Speed Boost To 10 Gbps

cylonlover writes "The USB 3.0 Promoter Group has used CES 2013 to announce an enhancement to the USB 3.0 (aka SuperSpeed USB) standard that will see the throughput performance of USB 3.0 double from 5 Gbps to 10 Gbps. The speed boost will come courtesy of enhanced USB connectors and cables that are fully backward compatible with existing USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 devices. The 10 Gbps SuperSpeed USB update (pdf) is up for industry review during the first quarter of 2013, with completion of the standard expected by the middle of the year."

Comments

Standards

[MachineShedFred]

So what's the point of having a version number on your standard, if you don't increment the number when you change the standard?

Customer: "This computer has USB 3, but my 10Gbps device only connects at 5Gbps!"
Support Tech: "Oh, that's because you have USB SuperSpeed 3.0 Revision 1 rather than USB SuperSpeed 3.0 Revision 2."

Maybe call it USB SuperSpeed 3.1?

Re:Standards

[Pieroxy]

It is a trademark of USB. Not one USB standard has had a single speed nor has it had its speed easily recognizable from the marketing garbage spilled by the consortium. And I'm not even talking about the mess of mixing USB1 & 2 devices and hubs. USB Full Speed, Hi Speed, Low Speed... and now SuperSpeed.

To illustrate, here is an excerpt of the Wikipedia page:

High-speed USB 2.0 hubs contain devices called transaction translators that convert between high-speed USB 2.0 buses and full and low speed buses. When a high-speed USB 2.0 hub is plugged into a high-speed USB host or hub, it will operate in high-speed mode. The USB hub will then either use one transaction translator per hub to create a full/low-speed bus that is routed to all full and low speed devices on the hub, or will use one transaction translator per port to create an isolated full/low-speed bus per port on the hub.

Garbage.

They obviously HAD to do the same for USB3, for old times' sake. We will laugh about it to our grandchildren next to the fireplace. But that'll be later.

Re:Standards

[LordLimecat]

USB will never replace SATA:
  * It hits the CPU for each transfer
  * the overhead is higher
  * The latency is way higher, as it needs to set up and tear down connections for each transfer
  * It doesnt support ATA commands (TRIM, for one)

Re:Standards

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe call it USB SuperSpeed 3.1?

It will never take off then. Everyone will wait for USB 3.11 For Workgroups.
 

Re:Standards

[LordLimecat]

You cannot get the overhead down without making USB into a storage-specific protocol...
at which point you've just re-made eSATA.

Why not just use the storage specific protocol we already have?

CPU utilization, pc to pc, and Power not speed

[silas_moeckel]

USB3 is fairly fast as it is. It uses far to much CPU time right now as in pegging a cpu while writing 150MBs while the internal sata's on the same machine writing to the same model drive is 20%. The enhanced power is not part of the base standard so there is a chicken and the egg issue with anything using it it needs to be baked in. The USB3 spec allows for pc to pc connects but again it's not a requirement to support it so no OS supports it.

Thunderbolt killer

[sjbe]

So USB could replace SATA.

More likely it will just keep Thunderbolt from ever really taking off. SATA is pretty common and there are enough technical headaches with using USB instead that it is probably going to stick around. (though eSATA might be a different story since it is far less commonly used) But if USB is fast enough there really is limited need for Thunderbolt. I already can run a monitor via USB 2.0 through a docking station I use daily and that works fine.

I'm less interested in faster USB than I am in 100W USB. The ability to power a laptop or small PC with a single USB cable would be huge. Anything that reduces the number of different types of cables I have to deal with is a good thing.