More Bandwidth with USB 3.0

[WINTERLORD]

hmmm, now this puts me into a perdiciment. when can we start seeing laptops with this technology? id assume with a usb 3.0 stick of memory you could greatly increse your laptops speed with a usb 3.0 stick for when your gaming on a midrange laptop or somethin

 

[Guest]

This article does not mention the latency advantages of USB 3.0. USB 2.0 is a poll driven interface, the master (PC) polls the device no faster than 1000 times per second, if the device has a request for data transfer the host will give the device the ok. I am guessing that latency would be a minimum of 2ms, probably closer to 5ms.

3.0 is an interrupt driven interface, it should be atleast 2 orders of magnitude lower in terms of latency, in the us range, maybe ns.

The lower latency will allow for a floodgate of new devices to be developed. It may be possible to make a reasonably fast graphics card that uses USB 3.0, it may also be used as a high speed interconnect for cheap grid computing. Certainly USB 3.0 will be a boom to USB based measurement tools such as oscilloscopes and logic analyzers.

 

[aspireonelover]

[citation][nom]kato128[/nom]I am regularly bottlenecked by the slow speed of USB 2.0 devices and currently pick eSATA over it every time. Try transferring 70GB of data over USB 2.0 and then tell me we don't need USB 3.0.[/citation]
Hey there,
Then why not just use E-SATA, right? and if you were bottlenecked by your USB, you would have to buy a new device anyways just to use the USB 3.0 interface. Just my thought.

 

[kato128]

[citation][nom]aspireonelover[/nom]Hey there,Then why not just use E-SATA, right? and if you were bottlenecked by your USB, you would have to buy a new device anyways just to use the USB 3.0 interface. Just my thought.[/citation]

eSATA is great but it's not widespread. Especially in the govt/urban planning area where I get a lot of data from. So you'll get gigs of data and have to transfer it from a dinky little 2.5" usb 2.0 drive. When USB 3.0 comes out it's going to get huge support from manufacturers because its compatible with the existing standard so life will get better. eSATA on the other hand has been out for years but is still a niche product that most non IT people haven't even heard of.

 

[aspireonelover]

[citation][nom]kato128[/nom]eSATA is great but it's not widespread. Especially in the govt/urban planning area where I get a lot of data from. So you'll get gigs of data and have to transfer it from a dinky little 2.5" usb 2.0 drive. When USB 3.0 comes out it's going to get huge support from manufacturers because its compatible with the existing standard so life will get better. eSATA on the other hand has been out for years but is still a niche product that most non IT people haven't even heard of.[/citation]
Oh yeah, I agree with that, totally. Too bad that the E-SATA port was never as successful as USB.

 

[belardo]

USB and eSATA, while both are "serial" interfaces, they work differently and have their uses. eSATA is nothing more than a SATA with a different connector.

But eSATA is a horribly designed connector. Its too thin, flaky and easy to damage.

Firewire is one of the better designs. And thats being upgraded.

 

[apache_lives]

[citation][nom]Belardo[/nom]The power issue with 2.5" external HDs is not so much the USB spec itself, but the chipset. Intel made the original USB, Apple made it marketable by having it on all their computers and then AMD makes it work better on their motherboards.I have both intel and AMD CPU/Chipsets. And noticed this at some of my clients offices as well.- ALL the intel systems required two USB connectors to power a 2.5" HD.- The AMD systems (32bit, 64bit single / dual cores) did not. A single cable works fine.The other issue... performance.When backing up Gigabytes of info... backing up about 170GB of data with an AMD64 system takes about 2hrs. With an intel Q6600/P35 (and the other Core2 systems)it takes about 5 hours! Same Ext. USB drive. It sucks... nobody has explained why this happens.[/citation]

Total BS there - AMD and Intel my ass its a port - half the external drives dont work with a single cable let alone at all on the front of most PC's

 

[cowasaki]

With a 24Mpix+ Mp camera USB3 is going to be a bonus. My external drive is FW800 so the speed is pretty good but backing up 100+Gb is never going to be particularly quick. Do we need it now?? - Well I would rather it came out now so that it gets adopted everywhere over the next couple of years ready for when we will get the main advantage. No point in delaying it till drives reach that speed then your latest laptop hasn't got it and the drivers on your main computer are still version 1 etc etc. Get it out now, iron out any problems and it will be ready to use when we need it.

 

[n30n1x]

They can keep their USB 3.0, USB has always been crap and will continue to be, it uses your CPU and crawls. As anyone everyone knows the "advertised" throughput is nothing more than advertising, it rarely reaches anything close. As far as speed goes, its eSATA, Firewire, last is USB, do your research or just check the prices on External drives, the USB interfaced are the cheapest, and the price hikes up for eSATA and Firewire versions.

 

[scryer_360]

When was the last time that you can remember where the data transfer standard was faster than the hdd?

 

[scryer_360]

[citation][nom]aspireonelover[/nom]Both my keyboard and mouse use the usb 2.0 interface, so I'm on the lucky side.But is USB 3.0 really that necessary? IMHO, no. USB 2.0 is good enough for everything, and it even exceeds the current rate of the fastest flash drives on the market.It will become useful one day though, we just don't know when... 2010? 2011?[/citation]

You obviously do not know how this works. When Toms and Wikipedia are saying 480mbits/s, they are saying 480 Mega BITS per second. To get megabytes for that, divide 480 by 8. So thats only 60 megabytes per second. Hardly enough to support todays data transfers. Like the article says, an HD 25 gig movie transfers in 70seconds on USB 3.0, it could take a third of an hour on USB 2.0.

And to Cowasaki: Fire 3200 is around the corner, it will provide 3200 megabits of signaling, or 400 megabytes per second. Will its ability to run entirely without sapping the CPU make it quicker in large files? Possibly, but then again, USB3.0 has both 240megabytes of gross bandwidth on it, and the i7 processor has resources to spare on extra threads. Its gonna get close.

 

[Narg]

[citation][nom]Casper42[/nom]You wont see more than 35MB/s and in most cases its right around 30MB/s.This is because the 480Mbps (60MB/s) is for both directions AT THE SAME TIME.[/citation]

Wrong. The 30MB/s limit is due to the physical limitation of the hard drive to transfer data off the platter, then the limitation of the chips to convert the data from ATA to USB serial format.

480MB/s is a dual direction format, but the ceiling of 480MB/s in a single direct is there and achievable. There is just no devices available on the market that actually use that ability.

YOU need to stop with the lies, not the USB folks.

 

[Narg]

WHERE'S THE BOTTLENECK!!!!

So many folks here complain about the speed of USB2.0 and think it's the standard that is slowing them down. WRONG! Get the big picture, USB 3.0 won't speed up an already slow device due to other limitations. USB 3.0 doesn't update speed alone, it also updates other factors including power and communication properties.

By reading all the B.S. here, you'd think that we just just stop in our tracks and never move foward. Don't be an idiot. New formats should always be welcome, and judged AFTER they are in mass use, not before.

 

[Narg]

[citation][nom]zdzichu[/nom]It would be nice to note that Linux supports USB 3.0.[/citation]

Nice, but a waist of time since USB 3.0 hardware is not available yet. Filed under "so what"

 

[doomtomb]

USB 3.0 support for Windows 7 is an guarantee given the amount of people using Microsoft OSes and they will want USB 3.0 when it rolls out on shelves. Vista should also get 3.0 support because it is a little too short of time thereafter to exclude it. Windows XP... XP doesn't even have DX10 so who really would go out of their way for USB 3.0 in 2010, a year after Win 7. XP huggers need to upgrade to Win 7 when it releases, you are using an OS from 2001 people.

 

[cowasaki]

[citation][nom]scryer_360[/nom] And to Cowasaki: Fire 3200 is around the corner, it will provide 3200 megabits of signaling, or 400 megabytes per second. Will its ability to run entirely without sapping the CPU make it quicker in large files? Possibly, but then again, USB3.0 has both 240megabytes of gross bandwidth on it, and the i7 processor has resources to spare on extra threads. Its gonna get close.[/citation]

??? I'm not sure why you said "to cowasaki" there, I know all about the new versions of Firewire but we are not talking about that we are simply discussing a new version of USB!! All I said was that it will be nice for USB3 to be in place sooner rather than later so that it is here ready for other devices that may need it in the future. I use USB2, FW400 and FW800 at the moment depending on the device! The main camera manufacturers all use USB so when the new standard comes out then no doubt they will fit a USB3 socket on the camera. This will make tethered shooting much smoother on full frame sensor and medium format cameras that already have 20+Mpix images. I will continue to use FW800 and ultimately FW3200 for storage.

 

[starryman]

USB 2.0 at 480 Mbit/s is a complete joke. In the article chart, a transfer of 1GB takes 33 seconds. Ha ha ha. On 5 different workstations on XP, Vista, and Ubuntu I've never had a Gig of files move under 33 seconds. Yes I know those are the theoretical numbers. So if the given USB 2.0 theoretical is 480 Mbits/s, in the real world more like 120 Mbit/s if you are moving files of all types. I hope USB 3.0 comes out tomorrow because if they state a theoretical 5,000 Mbit/s, I would then expect a real world of 1,250 Mbit/s which would be wicked awesome.

 

[Guest]

Most likely XP users will be left in the dark,while Vista will support USB3..
It's but a hunch I have...

 

[Guest]

I wonder whether tape drive manufacturers will look at USB 3.0 to replace high cost SCSI connectors for tape drives?

 

[belardo]

[citation][nom]bourgeoisdude[/nom]I know you haven't met me before, but for the record, I call it that.[/citation]

You're my first. Here is your sign.

 

[belardo]

[citation][nom]apache_lives[/nom]Total BS there - AMD and Intel my ass its a port - half the external drives dont work with a single cable let alone at all on the front of most PC's[/citation]

Okay... lets say, I post my personal experience with external 2.5" USB drives. The results have been consistent. In fact, for more than a year, I didn't know why there was this stupid "Y" cable included with the drive - but I used it anyway because of its mini-USB connector.

I have 3 such drives... what-do you know! They work in the front and back ports of AMD(64, X2, X3 and X4) computers with a single USB connector. Name brand PCs or ASUS or Gigabyte boards. Same drives on intel systems - any of them, name brand, notebooks, etc. TWO cables required or there will be an error or nothing.

 

[belardo]

[citation][nom]doomtomb[/nom]USB 3.0 support for Windows 7 is an guarantee given the amount of people using Microsoft OSes ~~ XP doesn't even have DX10 so who really would go out of their way for USB 3.0 in 2010, a year after Win 7. XP huggers need to upgrade to Win 7 when it releases, you are using an OS from 2001 people.[/citation]

Yeah its pretty much a given than Win7 will support USB3. Your assumption about USB working on anything else is silly. DX10 not working with XP is an MS internal decision to block XP users from using DX10. A wrapper doesn't work... and it doesn't matter. So what about 2001? XP, Vista and Win7 are still based off the same NT. Whoopie, you get some backgrounds and transparent windows and you think its a God OS? There is nothing in the GUI that is done on Vista that can't be done on XP or on Linux. Talk about age.

When Windows95 came out, PC people wet their pants! A real GUI-OS! Multimedia, PNP, multi-tasking, etc. Lets see, Amiga came out in 1985 and had those things. It wasn't until XP came out in 2001 that MS had a GUI-OS for the masses that was mostly better than the 1990 version of AmigaOS 2.0! And it wasn't until 2007 with Vista that MS made a "modern" installer that isn't a DOS screen for their OS!

Yes, in 1989/90 - AmigaOS boot floppy brought the user to a GUI screen with HD tools to prep the HD (partition/format) and install the OS. MacOS is the same way. Wow, took MS 17 years to do what 8Mhz computer did long before Windows 3.x.

 

[belardo]

Sorry - forgot to add.

USB 3.0 is a hardware standard. All it requires is a thing called DRIVERS.
Too much money to be made off of WinXP, Linux and Macintosh users.

Afterall, there's no such thing as USB 2.0 add-on cards... oh WAIT - there are! $10~30 and they work on Windows98 through to Vista, oh WOW!

* Get a clue... when techies can browse the net on a Commodore64 (I have NO idea why) and attach IDE HDs to same 1980/1984 8bit computers. Or even the 1987~1990s Amigas can support USB2.0 with an Add-on Card (Only $190USD - yeah... I know, I know... why?)

USB 3.0 on WindowsXP is a non-issue.

 

[jn77]

I really wish firewire would take off better. USB has always had these fast "theoretical" limits, but in reality, no one gets that speed. Firewire 800 really pulls shame to the USB 2.0 spec. I would like to see how Firewire 1600 and 3200 compare to USB 3.0 in real life usage.