Intel and its partners plan to release a new version of the ubiquitous Universal Serial Bus technology in the first half of 2008, a revamp the chipmaker said will make data transfer rates more than 10 times as fast by adding fiber-optic links alongside the traditional copper wires. USB 3.0 products should likely arrive in 2009 or 2010.
The current USB 2.0 version has a top data-transfer rate of 480 megabits per second, so a tenfold increase would be 4.8 gigabits per second. Many devices don’t need that much capacity, but some can use more, including hard drives, flash card readers and optical drives such as DVD and Blu-ray . The fastest flash card readers today use IEEE 1394 “FireWire” connections that top out at 800 megabits per second.
According to Intel’s Digital Enterprise Group, 6.2 billion USB devices have been shipped since 2001, and 2.1 billion of these were delivered in 2006.
In addition, USB 3.0 will offer greater energy efficiency and will be backward compatible, so current USB 2.0 devices will be able to plug into USB 3.0 ports.
Filed under: Computers, Hardware | Tagged: 4.8 gigabits, SuperSpeed, USB 3, USB 3.0, USB3
