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12.29.09 The Improvements Of USB 3.0 (SuperSpeed USB) Technology  By John Vinson When it comes to storage, the most common solution for portable situations are USB drives. They're small and speedier than other methods, and are compatible with nearly every computing device. There are problems with USB, those of which hopefully improve with USB 3.0. The final specs of 3.0 have been announced, and with them, products which look to expand the market. The first thing you should know about USB 3.0 is that in technical terms, it's called: SuperSpeed USB. I think that sounds silly though, and while I can appreciate wanting to differentiate it from 2.0 -- doesn't 3.0 do good enough job with that? I have a feeling that less tech savvy crowds will be confused by the new terminology and will be left with many unnecessary questions going forward. Since storage capacity is something which continually grows, whether or not a device is 2.0 or 3.0 doesn't matter. So, you can throw out notions that USB 3.0 will bring about a great boon in storage capacity. Instead, the largest improvement found with 3.0 is transfer speeds. While USB storage isn't the slowest method of transferring data to a portable source, it is far from the fastest. With USB 3.0 this looks to change with a 10x improvement in bandwidth. USB 2.0 models had maximum speeds of 480Mbps, while the 3.0 will see speeds of 4.8Gbps. Along with bandwidth speeds, a new feature added to USB 3.0 will improve the overall efficiency of usage. Full-duplex communication will be an option which to the tech aware is a great improvement. For those who aren't familiar with the terminology, this simply means data can be transferred to and from a USB device at the same time. A concern everyone should put to bed, is that of backwards compatibility. All of your current USB 2.0 devices will work within the USB 3.0 sets. New cables are being made for USB 3.0, and even those can be used for connecting USB 2.0 devices. All of this is theoretical of course, as we have no devices or sets to truly test this. However, it's comforting to at least be assured backwards compatibility is being included. There are still plenty of concerns and questions regarding USB 3.0. Unfortunately, these can't be address fully until the device's release. We still have quite a ways to go, as Intel still hasn't included it in any current manufacturing. Hopefully, we'll get to have a crack at it sometime in 2010. About the Author: John is a staff writer for WebProNews. |
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