Everything You Need To Know About USB 3.0 322
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?"
Quantum leaps in speed? (Score:2, Insightful)
So, each USB iteration offers the smallest possible increments in speed?
Cost of USB 3.0 vs lightpeak (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, it's fast compared to outdated stuff... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:hard disk speed (Score:1, Insightful)
I never see my hard disk data rate maxing out my connection speed, so I con't understand why all this emphasis on faster connections.
Have you ever heard of SSDs?
Re:Quantum leaps in speed? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Backward compatibility... (Score:1, Insightful)
Fuck the blind!
Network? Home network, listen to me! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:hard disk speed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Micro-USB (Score:3, Insightful)
Finally? I hope all the companies that implemented that horrible plug will go back to mini-usb. It is as big, by far more robust, you can get cables for it and you are not afraid to plug it in. And plugging in is easier, as the plug will "find" its way in.
You can get a micro-USB cable at any halfway decent camera store. It is not that much more fragile than Mini-USB. They both "find" their way in; I find that most micro-USB connectors are more recessed into the plastic (possibly by specification?) and thus cheap connector edges are less likely to hang up, which IS a real problem (if an exceedingly minor one) with Mini-USB that you don't tend to see with any other variant.
There has never been a worse plug than micro-usb.
Clearly you don't remember PS/2 ports, even though you probably have some in your house. Actually any Mini-DIN is shit. I also have a certain hatred in my heart for RJs, I think they are shit. They are cheap though, so at least THEY have a purpose. The Mini-DIN is just a gigantic failure of imagination.
Re:SuperSpeed USB... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why they should just use bandwidth numbers. I never understood why they started language unrelated to the specifications.
Re:hard disk speed (Score:5, Insightful)
As a replacement for SCSI type use cases, of course, USB is a toy and eSATA or SAS is the natural replacement; but for the vast market for flash drives, 2.5 inch externals, and mass-market, works-with-anything 3.5 inch externals, eSATA is doomed compared to USB(especially since a USB port can be used for non storage purposes, while an eSATA port is pretty much storage only. In principle, a high speed serial interconnect like SATA could be used for other stuff; but I've never seen it actually done in practice.
Will LightPeak make USB 3.0 irrelevant? (Score:0, Insightful)
Yes, of course: It will be as irrelevant as USB2.0 was as soon as FireWire was introduced...
Ohwait...
Re:Proprietary (Score:3, Insightful)
Before USB
RS232 - Open standard
SCSI - Standard - No Pins
PCI - Standard
IEEE 1284/Parallel - Standard
FireWire - When available - Standard - No Pins
Where were all these non-standard proprietary connectors ...?
And is it just me or are many of these still around because USB2 does not replace them ...and USB 3 won't either ?
Re:SuperSpeed USB... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Sure, it's fast compared to outdated stuff... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:SuperSpeed USB... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sure, it's fast compared to outdated stuff... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:SuperSpeed USB... (Score:5, Insightful)