Report: Intel Delaying Support for USB 3.0

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dheadley

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I don't see why they are even saying that they will support it in 2011. There is nothing saying they have to support it at all. They can just end their USB support at 2.0 and move on to their new fiber technology. So what if people get left at the USB 2.0 level? They don't lose anything they have invested in peripherals.

It's not like they haven't dropped other technologies before and left people out of luck in future motherboards. AGP slots, chip sockets, memory slots, etc.. Heck PCI slots, Parallel and serial ports, PS2 connections will all disappear soon.
 

enforcer22

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[citation][nom]dheadley[/nom]I don't see why they are even saying that they will support it in 2011. There is nothing saying they have to support it at all. They can just end their USB support at 2.0 and move on to their new fiber technology. So what if people get left at the USB 2.0 level? They don't lose anything they have invested in peripherals. It's not like they haven't dropped other technologies before and left people out of luck in future motherboards. AGP slots, chip sockets, memory slots, etc.. Heck PCI slots, Parallel and serial ports, PS2 connections will all disappear soon.[/citation]


Your comprasin is actualy way off here.. each one of those things LIKE USB 3 was a universal standard "upgrade" they got rid of pci for agp for video then agp for pci e. memory advanced all these advancements and changing to them is different then deciding to not adopt them. Besides having a single universal port is much nicer then 20 different ones. i cant say i have personaly used any of those slots in the past few years. maybe pci more recently but yeah.
 

Honis

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I was planning on buying the expansion slot version for my main PC. This does put a kink in my plans to hold off my purchase of a laptop until USB 3.0 is released. I use my laptops for 3-4 year time periods and I'm hitting year 3.5.
 

dheadley

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[citation][nom]EnFoRceR22[/nom]Your comprasin is actualy way off here.. each one of those things LIKE USB 3 was a universal standard "upgrade" they got rid of pci for agp for video then agp for pci e. memory advanced all these advancements and changing to them is different then deciding to not adopt them. Besides having a single universal port is much nicer then 20 different ones. i cant say i have personaly used any of those slots in the past few years. maybe pci more recently but yeah.[/citation]

How would Intel adopting Light Peak as their next advancement for connections be any different than the move from PCI to AGP to PCI Express? USB 3.0 is not established in the market as a universal standard yet. In developing USB 3.0 they came up with the idea for Light Peak and they themselves seem to think it is a better technology. So why would they have any need of going forward with USB 3.0 at this point? If they have both technologies at the same stage development, why not choose one and make that your next step? They are the biggest maker of motherboard chipsets in the world, if they say Light Peak is it, peripheral makers are not going to go with AMD or VIA to get USB 3. They will start making Light Peak hard drives, peripherals and USB to Light Peak hubs etc..

If there is a better technology developed before the next iteration of a series is released that new version may never catch on in any great degree. just look at Firewire 800 and will there ever be a Firewire 1600 and 3200 as planned, or the fiber based 6.4 version talked about. Nothing says USB has to continue on at all.
 

mman74

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That's it then. I am waiting no longer. I am going out to get an i7 with Win 7 now. As far as I am concerned they can postpone it to 2012, because I am not getting another machine for another few years at least!
 

yjagota

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[citation]and is also working on transitioning to the 5 GHz PCI Express 2.0 spec[citation]
2.0 or 3.0?

As far as the delay is concerned, Good things take some time in coming.
 

liquidsnake718

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Noooooooooooooooo0000000000oooOOOOOOOOOOOoo......

I was waiting for the first USB3.0 motherboards to come out next year and then I was going to finally upgrade from my 775!!! This would have been a TRUE 'next gen' motherboard with a 1366pin and SLI/Xfire! Man I am really upset. I hope MSI, ASUS, EVGA, XFX, FOXCONN, and Gigabyte make USB3.0 MBs and come out with them if Intel doesnt want to join the bandwagon then it doesnt matter, I just hope there wont be a dominoe affect with all the other MB and chip makers!

Intel must have a good reason not to however and I guess they are working on their hexacore chips and will make LGA1366 even better, so maybe its worth waiting for LGA1366 2.0 with USB3.0?????????
 

thomaseron

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I bet they are having their revenge, because of the hefty fine from the EU. :p "yay! Let's postpone the USB 3. That'll show them! oh, wait, will we lose customers now? Who cares, we can still bribe companies to not use parts from our competitors."
 
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Light peak isn't a replacement for USB 3.0. To quote Intel's own page on the subject...

"Light Peak also has the ability to run multiple protocols simultaneously over a single cable, enabling the technology to connect devices such as peripherals, workstations, displays, disk drives, docking stations, and more."

Light Peak would simply be an alternate cabling, which allows for higher and less error-prone transfer rates, for existing interface technologies.

Thus one could very well say that USB 3.0, with it's high transfer speeds, and Light Peak would be an excellent match. It wouldn't seem unreasonable, to me at least, that Intel is holding back USB 3.0 to have Light Peak ready for a simultaneous deployment rather than developing the latter as a "replacement".

Just my 2c based on what little we know so far though.
 

matt87_50

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[citation][nom]doomtomb[/nom]lightspeed = *light peak[/citation]


though feel free to give us light speed as well if you want... if its on the menu...
 
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I suspect this is a deeper issue. I bet they could have implemented themselves into a corner as once AMD did. They went from socket 939 to 940 because they "forgot/overlooked" a power pin that was required to power the higher end 120+ watt processors. This maybe the problem with Intel and the P55 chipsets/processors and their successors. They now put the PCI Express controller on the chip and probably do not have the bandwith to support USB 3.0 via the southbridge link or processor PCI Express links.

Do the math:
1 USB 3.0 port has a bandwith of about 5000 Megabits = ~500 Megabytes per second with 8/10 encoding.
1 PCI Express 2.0 lane has the bandwidth of 500 Megabytes per second
So 1 USB 3.0 port = 1 PCI Express 2.0 lane
So 8 USB 3.0 ports would require 8 additional PCI Express 2.0 lanes

I bet they forgot the additional data pins in their new sockets and do not want to force an upgrade too quickly to a new socket like AMD was forced to do. Really pisses of the users and OEMs, so rather than admit the mistake just delay it, not admit a mistake, and then introduce it with the next socket in 2011.
 
[citation][nom]wtp33[/nom]I suspect this is a deeper issue. I bet they could have implemented themselves into a corner as once AMD did. They went from socket 939 to 940 because they "forgot/overlooked" a power pin that was required to power the higher end 120+ watt processors. This maybe the problem with Intel and the P55 chipsets/processors and their successors. They now put the PCI Express controller on the chip and probably do not have the bandwith to support USB 3.0 via the southbridge link or processor PCI Express links.Do the math:1 USB 3.0 port has a bandwith of about 5000 Megabits = ~500 Megabytes per second with 8/10 encoding.1 PCI Express 2.0 lane has the bandwidth of 500 Megabytes per secondSo 1 USB 3.0 port = 1 PCI Express 2.0 laneSo 8 USB 3.0 ports would require 8 additional PCI Express 2.0 lanes I bet they forgot the additional data pins in their new sockets and do not want to force an upgrade too quickly to a new socket like AMD was forced to do. Really pisses of the users and OEMs, so rather than admit the mistake just delay it, not admit a mistake, and then introduce it with the next socket in 2011.[/citation]

Ummm no.

Southbridge looks after any USB ports, all data doesnt have to travel to the CPU (dedicated bus anyhow), and USB's arnt via the PCIe bus.
 
Oh and AMD didnt have that sort of issue with 940 to 939 - they changed the IMC to support standard, non ECC memory and because the two were totally different designs they changed the socket to distinguish the two.
 

MamiyaOtaru

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[citation][nom]dheadley[/nom] PS2 connections will all disappear soon.[/citation]
I sure hope not. N-key rollover is not possible over USB. USB remains an inferior connection for keyboards. The number of people with n-key rollover capable keyboards is vanishingly small, but I'm one of them and so a mobo without PS2 is unacceptable.
 
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