USB 3.0 is ten times faster

USB 3.0 is being demonstrated at CES. It is ten times faster that USB 2.0 but will not be available on products until next year.
The annual Consumer Electronics Show is a showcase in one sense and an indicator of future trends in another. The show is held in Las Vegas and getting around all the stands puts a serious strain on the physical and nervous systems. This year you can do it quite a lot as press conferences on the Internet are streamed live.
There are still many improvements needed but there is little doubt that, say, five years from today few journalists will bother with all the hassle and expense of being at these shows. They will sit and watch the presentations at home.
Every year CES shows something which points the way to the future. This year one of the pointers is the new USB 3.0.
Seagate and Symwave are jointly demonstrating the first consumer applications of USB 3.0, showing a Seagate FreeAgent drive running through a Symwave USB 3.0-compatible storage controller device. According to a Symwave press release, this will result in ’speeds previously unattainable with legacy USB technology.’ Which means, if you understand PR-write, it will be much faster.
How much faster is that? A serious amount. Probably ten times faster.
This is a very quick move from specification to working model. The USB 2.0 Promoter Group only completed the USB 3.0 specification in November. Now it is being demonstrated. However, that speed will not mean the product will be on sale real soon now. In fact, although it works it will not become mainstream until 2010.
The new standard, also known as SuperSpeed USB 3.0, will manage transfer speeds of up to 5 Gbps — more than ten times the transfer speed of USB 2.0. Which was thought was very quick when it was first introduced, ten years ago.
But the public demand for quicker, better is ever with us and this new standard is a major step forward. Not just in terms of speed of data transfer but in it ability to send more electricity to devices, and control them intelligently. For instance, USB 3.0 will not poll devices, which will allow them to enter a sleep-like mode.
USB 3.0 will be backward-compatible with USB 2.0 and 1.1.
Not connected with CES but related is the fact the Chinese government has declared its intention to force all digital phone makers to use a standard USB connector from the charger. That would mean that a single charger would do for all of your devices and would save an immense amount of wastage and frustration.
The mobile phone companies are fighting it tooth and nail. They are saying if the Chinese government implements these changes then they will take their bat and ball and play elsewhere. ‘Twas ever thus.
Note carefully the illustration is USB 2.0. You will have to wait a year before you can see the new standard in real life. Worth the wait.