USB 3.0 Getting a Speed Boost To 10 Gbps 144
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."
can we call it (Score:4, Insightful)
SuperDuperSpeed USB?
Re:Standards (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Will this speed ever be used? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think its a matter of scale. So raw uncompressed video signal on an original displayport connector is 4.32 Gbit/s... now instead of a "USB" port being able to carry one uncompressed video signal it could carry two. Of course displayport 1.2 does 17.28 Gbit/s, so we've gone from only 1/4 to only 1/2 of a video signal. On the other hand, displayport has about twice the BW available as HDMI, so you could just about replace HDMI with USB now on a raw available BW basis. Although it would be a heck of a lot more intelligent to shove compressed video down the cable rather than raw uncompressed.
Using USB for a uncompressed video connection is not a valid or useful data point, anyway. But it does make the point that this is competitive with the fastest port anyone is likely to ever have access to. Nothing in your average dude's computer will ever be able to saturate a USB thats faster or about as fast as the video cable. A more normal use case is I'm sure my typing speed was not limited by 5.0 Gigs USB so 10.0 Gigs USB is not going to help.
In the very long run we will not have USB / Firewire / SATA / PATA / Displayport / HDMI we'll have just one connector and protocol to run them all. Plug your keyboard, mouse, LAN adapter and monitor into your hub connected to your phone and be done with it. The only question is which standard will win. Probably USB.
Re:Standards (Score:4, Insightful)
That seems to me what SATA should have been.
Re:Standards (Score:0, Insightful)
Ok so yeah maybe if you took USB and removed everything that makes it USB then USB could replace SATA.
Idiot.
Re:Standards (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Stupid plug design (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not that, USB plugs actually have a half-integer spin so that a 360-degree rotation actually inverts their perspective on the universe rather than returning them to the original orientation.
USB is actually a pretty unique case in user-facing plugs, and it rather pisses me off - what idiot thought that a perfect rectangle was a good shape for a connector? It's not like it was a surprise problem - almost every prior external plug was either a trapezoid whose orientation could to told with a glance or touch, or a round DIN which could often be partially inserted and then rotated until the "key" engaged (I rather liked those). Internal ribbon cables had already faced the problem for decades and come up with a progressive variety of solutions that most everyone agreed were sub-par and acceptable only because it was so rarely an issue. The keyed plug and collar had been settled on as the best solution for IDE and floppy cables long before USB was designed, and even that had the advantage over USB that you could often feel the respective orientations when working in situations where you couldn't see one or both of them. And it's not exactly like the solution was in any way difficult, just change the shape of the sheath. For crying out loud even the USB-B connectors designed as part of the same standard were uniquely orientable! /rant