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."
Standards (Score:5, Interesting)
So what's the point of having a version number on your standard, if you don't increment the number when you change the standard?
Customer: "This computer has USB 3, but my 10Gbps device only connects at 5Gbps!"
Support Tech: "Oh, that's because you have USB SuperSpeed 3.0 Revision 1 rather than USB SuperSpeed 3.0 Revision 2."
Maybe call it USB SuperSpeed 3.1?
Re:Standards (Score:4, Interesting)
So USB could replace SATA. Well if they get the overhead down.
I would really like to see a SATA IV spec that is a little faster but includes power on the connector. It makes little sense to me to have separate connectors for power and data on SATA since you can not have an unpowered SATA device.
Thunderbolt killer (Score:5, Interesting)
So USB could replace SATA.
More likely it will just keep Thunderbolt from ever really taking off. SATA is pretty common and there are enough technical headaches with using USB instead that it is probably going to stick around. (though eSATA might be a different story since it is far less commonly used) But if USB is fast enough there really is limited need for Thunderbolt. I already can run a monitor via USB 2.0 through a docking station I use daily and that works fine.
I'm less interested in faster USB than I am in 100W USB [slashdot.org]. The ability to power a laptop or small PC with a single USB cable would be huge. Anything that reduces the number of different types of cables I have to deal with is a good thing.
Re:Will this speed ever be used? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
That was the hope with Thunderbolt/LightPeak, which is on all Macs these days and works well. One cable carries two full-duplex 10Gb channels (10Gb each way simultaneously per channel). But "docks" have been slow in coming and expensive. And because the USB group refused to integrate the standard or allow them to use the connector, they switched to the DisplayPort interface which is nice and compact. Now we have a slower standard coming much later for which existing cables may or may not work but look the same as the current ones... fun.