USB 3.0 will crush eSATA, FireWire ( Alex tells us why )

CNET ^ | January 13, 2009 11:21 AM PST | Alex Serpo

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Intel demonstrated a working version of USB 3.0 at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week. Here's why it will make eSATA and FireWire obsolete.

When USB 3.0 is expected to hit the market in early 2010, it will have been 10 years since the now ubiquitous USB 2.0 was introduced (April 2000). The current USB 2.0 specification runs at a theoretical maximum speed of 480Mbps, and can supply power (for those looking for the hard details, you can find the USB 2.0 specification here (zip file).

According to the USB Implementers Forum, there were 2 billion USB 2.0 devices shipped in 2006 (one for every three people in the world), and the install base was 6 billion (almost one for every person in the world). In November 2007, the USB Implementers forum announced the USB 3.0 specifications, and Intel officially demonstrated the technology at CES 2009.

Now, the juice: USB 3.0 promises a theoretical maximum rate of 5Gbps, meaning it's 10 times faster than USB 2.0. USB 3.0 is also full duplex, meaning it can upload and download simultaneously (it's bi-directional); USB 2.0 is only half duplex.

Put side by side with eSATA and FireWire 800, USB 3.0 is far superior. eSATA, an external connection that runs at the same speed as the internal SATA 1.0 bus, has a maximum theoretical of 3Gbps. This makes USB 3.0 faster than eSATA and about six times faster than FireWire 800 (full duplex at 800Mbps).

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

fyi

[MAD-AS-HELL]

but is it Carbon neutral?

[miliantnutcase]

USB 3.0 FTW!

[D-fendr]

Cool.

Is USB Open or does Intel or someone own it?

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

I'm guessing it is just a new standard....see this:

USB Implementers Forum set to announce specs of USB 3.0

***********************EXCERPT***********************

Hardware News November 16th, 2008

Market analyst Brian O’Rourke spoke about this upcoming update to USB: “USB 3.0 will take USB 2.0 to the next level and take away performance as an issue for data transfer in many devices. USB 3.0 will make it even more pervasive across devices than it is today.”

One of the major update would be faster speeds. Experts believe USB 3 would be around 10 times faster than USB 2.

It would also be capable of recharging more variety of devices. This update is likely to end the requirement of having a rival FireWire technology.

[romanesq]

Turn out the lights firewire.

Sounds excellent.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

Why the heck haven’t they moved to fiber optic, yet. Transmission should be up in the Terabits per second by now.

[SJSAMPLE]

As a very early adopter of the original USB, I’m amazed that I’ve actually run out of USB ports on my current PC.
Camera
Video camera
iPod
iPhone
Mouse and keyboard
Scanner
Flash memory
Bluetooth transmitter
et al.

USB really has lived up to its promise.

[mamelukesabre]

No mention of firewire 3200?

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

That would be a competitive group....but apparently apple has already moved to USB.....saw that somewhere.

[MediaMole]

Very few systems can even begin to pump gigabits per second, let alone terabits. Even SATA is faster than the underlying hard drives.

[Yossarian]

I've had two gripes with USB 2.0, as compared to FireWire:

1. It requires a lot of supervision from the CPU - FireWire is much more independent, and thus frees up the CPU for processing the data as it comes in (or right before it goes out); and
2. it never EVER could sustain the 480 Mbps speed for anything more than a few seconds, making it almost twice as slow as 400Mbps Firewire. (Newer Macs have better implementations of USB, making it now only (roughly) 1.5 times as slow, but still, when you have a lot of data to transfer, that kills.

I hope that USB 3.0 overcomes these deficiencies, so that we can simplify our computers. But now that I have a boatload of FireWire and SATA/eSATA peripherals, that simplification won't happen for me for a good while.

[Jeremiah2]

Has anyone ever seen a computer that had a Firewire 800 port on it? I could even find a card like that. They’re all 400s.

[SamAdams76]

The best thing about USB is that it finally made the floppy disc extinct. I have about a dozen USB "flash-drives" ranging from 64MB to 16GB like the one in the picture.

I can fit my 6GB work folder (containing all my work files) in my pocket and thus take all my files from the office to home and back so I can work wherever I want. I have other USB flash-drives that are crammed with utilities and applications so that no matter what computer I am running, I have full access to all my files and apps and also have the ability to troubleshoot and fix any computer.

If thumb drives was all USB was good for, it would still be a great invention. But that's just scratching at the surface.

I can still

[martin_fierro]

[jeffc]

"Bandwidth! I need more bandwidth!"

"I'm giving her all the bandwidth I can, Captain. If I give her anymore, she'll blow!"

[jeffc]

"Any more" should be substituted for "anymore".

Thank you . . .

[SouthTexas]

thus take all my files from the office to home and back so I can work wherever I want

I have yet to figure out if this is a good thing or not.

[martin_fierro]

Imagine you're the guy in China who spends all day putting these things together.