USB 3.0 Getting a Speed Boost To 10 Gbps

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."

Re:Standards

[Pieroxy]

It is a trademark of USB. Not one USB standard has had a single speed nor has it had its speed easily recognizable from the marketing garbage spilled by the consortium. And I'm not even talking about the mess of mixing USB1 & 2 devices and hubs. USB Full Speed, Hi Speed, Low Speed... and now SuperSpeed.

To illustrate, here is an excerpt of the Wikipedia page:

High-speed USB 2.0 hubs contain devices called transaction translators that convert between high-speed USB 2.0 buses and full and low speed buses. When a high-speed USB 2.0 hub is plugged into a high-speed USB host or hub, it will operate in high-speed mode. The USB hub will then either use one transaction translator per hub to create a full/low-speed bus that is routed to all full and low speed devices on the hub, or will use one transaction translator per port to create an isolated full/low-speed bus per port on the hub.

Garbage.

They obviously HAD to do the same for USB3, for old times' sake. We will laugh about it to our grandchildren next to the fireplace. But that'll be later.

CPU utilization, pc to pc, and Power not speed

[silas_moeckel]

USB3 is fairly fast as it is. It uses far to much CPU time right now as in pegging a cpu while writing 150MBs while the internal sata's on the same machine writing to the same model drive is 20%. The enhanced power is not part of the base standard so there is a chicken and the egg issue with anything using it it needs to be baked in. The USB3 spec allows for pc to pc connects but again it's not a requirement to support it so no OS supports it.

Re:Standards

[wonkey_monkey]

I would really like to see a SATA IV spec that is a little faster but includes power on the connector.

Isn't that what eSATAp [wikipedia.org] is for?

Re:Standards

[Immerman]

Simple explanation: SATA is primarily an internal-facing interface. "Consumers" almost never see it, only tech-savy individuals. And even the slowest SATA standard is still drastically faster than all but the most cutting-edge drives can use so in most cases the version doesn't actually matter much anyway.

USB on the other hand was specifically designed as a user-facing interface to make life easier for people who had trouble getting all the different "can only fit in one socket" cables plugged into their computers*. Well, in addition to solving all the limited IRQ headaches associated with using multiple serial and parallel ports. And allowing easy hub-based fan-out.

*never quite understood that - it's not *that* much harder than the blocks-and-holes puzzles they solved as a toddler. Well, except the identical but non-interchangable PS-2 mouse and keyboard plugs - those were always a headache if you couldn't see the labels.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Standards

[sjames]

You're close. It's not a 'connection' so much as it is a token allowing the target device to talk. It can't just be left with one target in case another target might need service.

So being non p-t-p is highly relevant as you guessed.