- Sunday, 22 November 2009
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Politics is more dangerous than war, for in war you are only killed once - Winston Churchill
Superspeed USB compliance standard launched
SUPERSPEED USB or USB 3.0 as it is more commonly known, is coming a little closer to reality with the launch of the first certification and compliance program launched by the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF).
The non-profit organisation - which is made up of representatives of some of the biggest tech outfits on the planet including Microsft, HP, Intel and Texas Instruments - rigorously tests hardware to ensure that it complies with the full USB 3.0 specification. Then, and only then, can that hardware proudly wear the official Superspeed logo. Unless of course your device has been made in a Chinese sweatshop by an 11-year-old. In which case you can just get some logo labels printed up yourself and bang them on.
A whole raft of tests developed by the USB Platform Interoperability Lab (PIL) will make sure that devices are capable of achieving data transfer speeds of up to 5Gb per second and playing nice with their ten times slower cousins, the slack-jawed USB 2.0 yokels.
Digital video is the driving force behind USB 3.0 with the abilty to quickly copy and store massive High Definition files leading to the need for faster data transfer abilties.
The new standard, which uses the same connectors as previous iterations, also feature Sync-n-Go technology, which apparently reduces user waiting time, and optimised power efficiency which eradicates the need for device polling and leads to reduced power suckage for both idle and active devices. Which is good news for anyone looking to buy a battery-powered USB 3.0 device.
Although the platform guarantees backward compatibilty with high speed USB 2.0 kit, it remains to be seen whether 1.0 devices will continue to be supported and, from what we can ascertain, the USB-IF has expressed no intention of guaranteeing any level of support.
The Universal Serial Bus is the most succesful interface in computing history and has become the de facto standard throughout the tech industry thanks to its reliabilty, simplicity and easy implimentation. It's reckoned that close to 3 billion USB-toting devices were shipped in 2008 alone. Anyone old enough to remember SCSI - yes, that really was pronounced 'scuzzy' - will not miss individually numbered ports, terminators and cables the width and rigidity of a fat man's thumb.
Gadgets and gizmos featuring Superspeed USB should be appearing around Christmas time so don't forget to add one to your list.
You can get the full specification for Superspeed USB 3.0, if that sort of thing floats your boat. µ
L'Inq
USB.org
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Yes i do
My UMAX SCSI scanner still works fine
($600.00 dollar) from 15 years ago.
Always buy the good stuff
486-100 DX4
SCSI VLB Controller
Windows 3.1 screamed
First off, if they cannot guarantee compatibility with other devices that use the same plug (ie USB 1 or 1.1 devices), then I kinda think they should have used a new plug. I mean, I've got like 10 USB ports on my PC. If half were USB3-only, I'd be fine with that. It's better than not knowing if some device is going to work or not.
i would rather have a better product that was not backwards compatible then a half baked one
The popularity of USB has nothing to do with its reliability. Serial, parallel and SCSI ports were reliable. Nor has it anything to do with ease of use and simplicity. Firewire is just as "simple" and in fact is easier to use since it can utilize peer to peer connections obviating the need for proliferation of ugly USB routers which proliferate as USB, and since it is much easier to power up a device like a hard or optical drive, thereby eliminating the power cable.
So why is USB so wildly popular? Because it is the Yugo (or Trabant) of computer peripheral technology. It is cheap as chips to add and implement because the technology is simplistic and because Intel craftily chose to forgo high royalties in order to extend (and exterminate) competing connectors. Nothing more, nothing less. Give me Firewire or gigabit ethernet any day over USB for my heavy duty devices like external hard drives, optical drives, printers, scanners, and videocams. Give me Bluetooth for wireless goodness in my mini-periferals like mice, keyboards, speakers, and headphones.
My grandmother had a word for USB - "pshaw!"
The connectors are only the same from the outside. Some additional wire pairs are smartly hidden inside. Old devices should not notice but the new ones have some extra cupper to account for the bandwidth. This also makes the wires noticably thicker.
USB 3.0 will provide a much faster (theoretically) data transfer than any current standard, with the exception of 10Gbit Ethernet, fiber, and maybe coax, with a simple 4-pin connector. What more can you ask? Even SAS doesn't have that kind of bandwidth. And with most computers today having internal USB routers, thus providing many USB ports, there's little functional difference between USB and Firewire interfaces to the layperson.
Granted, even 3.0 can't provide the kind of juice that Firewire can, but the new standard provides almost double the power as 2.0, so it's at least better.
In terms of Intel trying to price Apple out of the market... Apple did that to themselves. The standard for USB actually came out before IEEE1394, and Apple made the (somewhat incorrect) assumption that people were going to be willing to pay for the dramatically increased bandwidth and power. Unfortunately, there weren't that many devices that could make use of that at the time... digital cameras were in their infancy and USB 1.1 provided more than enough bandwidth that the bottleneck was usually the memory chip speed, not the interface. So while Firewire was a bit more 'futureproof' in its versatility, it kind of overshot the mark.
Frankly, it makes no sense to worry about supporting USB 1.0-1.1 devices. Backwards compatibility can only go on for so long, and no one should be surprised if their decade-old peripheral doesn't work with a brand-new computer. Besides, consumer-level adoption won't even be for another year or more. As long as it works with 2.0, almost no one will notice, I'm sure.
JonB hit it right.
And USB 3.0 should be plenty fast enough for all my external hd work.
Backwards compatibility is more or less an excuse for lazy people. If you can't figure out or don't know what USB version your computer came with then that's a user problem not a hardware problem. Aside from you being able to easily test if your device is compatible or not, I don't see what all the fuss is about. If you're going to upgrade to a 3.0 PC by the end of the year don't you think it's time you upgrade all those 1.x devices as well.
USB devices such as mice, keyboards, game controlers and inkjet printers work perfectly fine with USB 1.1 and don't even need the bandwidth of USB 2.0 let alone USB 3.0.
What'll happen if USB 3.0 doesn't provide USB 1.1 compatibility for these devices.
From what I have seen about future chipsets with USB 3.0 support, only a few of the ports will be USB 3 while the rest will be USB 2.0 so should not have any problem with compatibility with old devices. This is similar to some modern chipsets that still have so many USB 2.0 ports and a couple USB 1.1 ports. They are normally are different colour or on a separate connector internally off the motherboard and can be configured in the BIOS.
for a USB-UPS self-perpetuating PC.
Comparing USB and SCSI is like comparing apples and oranges. Yes, you can do it but it's kind of missing the point.