We've seen some early
USB 3.0 gear
here and there, but it looks like the successor to everyone's favorite serial bus is off to a rocky start, with AMD and NVIDIA claiming that Intel is withholding crucial specifications necessary to develop an open host controller. Although Intel apparently already has working silicon, it's not willing to share -- so AMD and NVIDIA are working on a competing spec that will be introduced alongside Intel's. The first meeting of the alternate spec group is scheduled for next week, according to sources, but there could be problems with this diverging roadmap down the line: sources close to Intel say that the only reason the specs haven't been released is that they're not done, and that Intel doesn't want incompatible chipsets based on different versions of the spec out there. Sure, sure, but we're certain both sides are playing a little fast and loose with reality here -- good thing all these fools have until 2010 to get this sorted.
[Via
Everything USB]
posted Jun 11th 2008 4:16PM
come on Intel, can't you play nice so the rest of us can benefit?
You need to phrase it better. Now kids play nicely or there will be no playtime after dinner.
Yay ^^.... Blue Ray Vs. HD-DVD part two. Whipee.... *rolls eyes*
Great now we'll end up with USB+ and USB- devices.
Maybe not, we'll just have to wait until USB 3.1 comes out.
I for one support HD-USB... Just like I support HD-DVD....
On an unrelated note-does anyone want to buy my $300 HD-DVD player? and all 6 of the HD-DVD's that I have?
sure ill give you 20 bucks for the player and 40 for the movies..
Great. Looks like the 'Universal' part has flown out the window.
I think it's still safe. USB 3.0 will be backwards compatible with the old 1.0 and 2.0 devices, that alone will secure it's place.
wii
YES USB will be backwards compatible with USB 1.0 and 2.0 but guess what? We are gonna end up being forced to upgrade all our equiptment or we'll get those
WARNING THIS DEVICE REQUIRES USB 3.0 - INSUFFICIENT POWER
For once im actually positive ranking Flashpoint on this one..
I was an early adopter of usb 2.0, even went through the pularva of memory sticks that didnt even function on older usb 1.0s because of insufficient power.
Where they NOT paying attention the last two years with the whole, oh I don't know...HD-DVD vs Blu-ray thing?
Agreeing on standards is a good thing. Even for the major companies. Just ask Toshiba's accountant.
the power is an important part of the spec. Many devices don't work because USB 2 can't deliver enough power. USB 3 should eliminate extra "wall warts" for things... like the Macbook Air's USB Super drive. What they SHOULD add is the ability to "multitap" a connection with an inline power supply (power supply in the USB plug between the PC and device from another port or adapter. That way as many external & mobile device are standardizing on USB 2 power specs, we can continue to provide extra "doggles" for backward compatibility but not have to have Separate DC ports.
Jesus Intel isn't releasing the specs so they're going to roll their own? Fuck that! I don't want to have to find a compatible chipset for my devices or buy an extra PCI / PCI-E card to plug in my new iPod or Zune.
All of these companies need to get their shit together and standardize preferably through a standards organization.
Uh, IEEE.
I was thinking the same thing, doesn't USB 3.x need to become an IEEE standard before any products are released, even a draft standard. Otherwise you could be left with unusable hardware.
I agree, the IEEE will smack them down, ummm except that USB isn't an IEEE standard. It's governed by the USB Implementers Forum
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_Implementers_Forum
and if you check their latest bulletin on USB 3.0 :
http://www.usb.org/press/press20/2007_11_28_usb30promotergroup.pdf
You;ll notice that the main contact listed for the group in charge of ratifying the standard works for Intel, and neither AMD nor NVIDIA is on the board.
So I'm thinking Intel gets to do whatever it wants with USB3.0
I'm sure AMD wants to bring as much heat as possible on Intel with all the antitrust issues Intel has been dealing with.
Competition always wants the guy ahead to slow down so that they can catch up.
I think you hit the hammer on the nail with your comment.
Intel is doing anything wrong in this instance, but AMD helps themselves look better by saying Intel is acting like the anti-trust suit claims.
It's all a publicity warfare campaign.
Intel, If it's not finalized then why won't you share what you have already with AMD, with the understanding that it's a Work in progress? Oh, I know, so you can get a head start on the Devices and shutout AMD.
Nice. Douche.
Because Intel may have to change critical parts of the spec, then AMD may whine that Intel gave them bad information and misled them and is anti-competitive and kicked their dog.
Because if they give them an incomplete specification, they might diverge from the base that Intel's already created and still wind up with a different spec entirely.
Unfortunately, that looks like it's happening anyway, so I dunno.
Come on, we don't need another format war, this would be worse than a disc war, because you could get a disc combo player, but this is a data transfer bus and protocol, and you can't have two Universal Serial Bus specs as it would throw the computer world into chaos, and wasn't this why USB created?
Tastes Great! Less Filling!
FireWire FTW !!!
3x the price FTL.
Yes I love my External FW 800 drive. However the price was insane.
I have a few FW 800 drives and honestly they were only fractionally more then similar ones with just FW 400.
Esata, Esata II, FW 400, FW 800, FW 1600, FW 3200, USB 1.0/1.1, USB 2.0, USB 3.0, and now the possibility of another one?! AAAHHHHH!
This is on a completely random tangent, but alsoL HDMI VGA COMPONENT MINIDVI DVI S-VIDEO DISPLAY PORT COMPOSITE AAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!! all to do one thing: display images.
I'm probably missing something here as well, so feel free to add to this list ;)
There is no such thing as FW1600 BTW, they skipped it and went straight to FW3200
That and you left out all of the SCSI world:
SCSI-1, Fast SCSI, Fast-Wide SCSI, Ultra SCSI, Ultra Wide SCSI, Ultra2 SCSI, Ultra2 Wide SCSI, Ultra3 SCSI, Ultra-320 SCSI, Ultra-640 SCSI. Add on top of that all the differant methods of attachment, 50pin, 60 pin, SAS, and probably even a few more.
DVI-I Single, DVI-I Dual, DVI-D Single, DVI-I Dual, DVI-A, DVI-DL, DMS-59, just to put out some more video connectors. This has caused some headache while ordering and setting up machines at work.
what about the ata s and pci s
There most definitely are more SCSI connectors: Apple decided to make all of their own D-sub connectors instead of sticking to the standard. Particularly when they used DB25, identical to parallel (printer) ports.
Well this format war is going to be a whole barrel of laughs
God save us all from another HD/Blu-ray disaster!
Dear AMD and NVIDIA, if you truly want to create a competitive specification, fiber optics is where it is at.
*sighs* USB 3 IS fiber.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9780794-7.html
The copper is for backwards compat.
Man, these guys are serious!
You've got two competitors, AMD and nVidia teaming up to go against AMD's other competitor, Intel.
Intel is starting to sound like a whiney little bitch.
All three of them are being A holes and Fing over the consumer.
Going to B my L on all of their T's.
Do you always abbreviate single words?
N
Again, I want nVidia to buy AMD/ATi and create CPUs and GPUs to compete solely against Intel.
I don't think Intel could compete with ati / nvidia combined in the graphics segment.
Horrible line of thought.
Why in the world would you want to the two biggest (and pretty much only) gpu manufacturers in the world to become one? It is competition that breeds innovation.
Is the cord or connector any different from 2.0?
It uses a Blue Laser so it's better. (roll eyes)
Thats what she said.
Uses technology from Monster cable to make it 'look' better.
/sarcasm
Why would Nvidia do anything with AMD. AMD needs to do something like...uh...oh I don't know...maybe make a chip that doesn't suck ass before they start worrying about peripherals.
Just a little clarification:
The USB spec consists of multiple pieces. The part the outlines the protocol (what data goes over the wire) as well as the physical spec (connectors, cables, etc.) is controlled by the USB standards body. Intel is not withholding anything related to that.
What Intel has done is design the host controller. This is the logic that implements the USB protocol over the wire and interfaces to a PC. With USB 1.1, 2.0, (and FireWire), the host controllers follow various standards (OHCI, UHCI, or EHCI) that allows the PC driver software to work with any host controller that follows the same standard, regardless of who made it.
Of course, a host controller is a very complicated beast, as it is the "engine" that drives the USB protocol. Having everyone design their own engine from the ground up will likely lead to lots of compatibility issues, so it's much better if the groundwork is done in common and set out in a standard.
But all this takes a lot of work, and Intel is balking at doing all the hard work and letting others freeload off of it. It's not completely unreasonable, but if the standard is to be successful, they can't keep it all to themselves.
i hope they just start rolling this out whatever they end up on deciding
no Mr. T reference?
I'm dissapointed.
Ugh we just got over the BD/HD-DVD war, I hope this stops here.
People, people, people....this is NOT going to lead to another format war a la Blu-ray/HD-DVD. If anything it will more closely mimic this whole 802.11N debacle.
The reason for this is that the final word on what implementation is going to be the standard known as "USB 3.0" is not going to be the consumers buying power...it's going to be the IEEE. Even if Intel, AMD, Nvidia, and my grandmother for all that it's worth come up with an implementation of a new expanded serial communications standard for peripherals they would ALL still have to submit it to the IEEE, who will then pick exactly ONE, and slap a label on it that says "USB 3.0". And that will be that.
Now, that's basically what's been going on with 802.11N, except the standards orgs involved still haven't slapped that label on anything. But, and here's the part that is potentially bad/dangerous for consumers, the manufacturers weren't willing to wait, so they all just plowed ahead and made suites of products to their own spec. There's nothing really wrong with that except that those products aren't certified, which means that they won't necessarily work with any other vendors products. Virtually everything in the computer world was like that ~30+ years ago...that's why those standards orgs were created.
Eventually 802.11N will become a ratified standard in some form, and then you can be reasonably sure that certified products from different vendors will work with each other as their supposed to (or at least as well as b and g have...). Many people are waiting for that before buying anything N, but some people want the increased functionality NOW and are willing to risk non-interoperability (and frankly I don't totally blame them...if people bought 'draft N' equipment when it first came out they've probably already gotten their monies worth and N STILL isn't ratified).
Worst case scenerio for USB 3.0 (and it's pretty unlikely) would be roughly the same thing. AMD and Nvidia release their own spec and some OEMs make products based on them. If you're worried about interoperability JUST BE PATIENT, and wait till the IEEE weighs in before you buy anything.
And don't forget, competition is GOOD. There's always the dark horse possibility that AMD and Nvidia could come up with something BETTER than Intel. If it's still backward compatible with USB 1.x/2.0, cheaper to license, and the vendors make products for it, I say bring on NvidiAMD.Link, and let USB3.0 go the way of Firewire (which actually should have become the domminant standard in the first place).
they might as well wait for intel to finalize... look at the other "partners" HP, MSFT, and TI... this is very much a "club" that will have "just enough" differences that only the "club" knows about to hold everybody back for the first year. The quicker a real objects come out everybody can measure and test against to ensure compatiblity with what will be released and not what's on paper.
Hi, I work for Intel. For Intel's side of the story, pls read this: http://blogs.intel.com/technology/2008/06/usb_30_for_the_masses_dispelli.php
AMD has now been upgraded to douchebag threat level 3.
Meanwhile Nvidia is sitting at douchebag threat level 5.
this has NOTHING to do with Intel. People can spin it any way they like but at the end of the day its AMD and Nvidia being asshats. AMD because they couldn't complete in the performacne realm if they were thrown a 100 billion in free money, and Nvidia who has some sort of phobia based on Intel entering the SoaC arena. If these people would sit back and relax a finalized spec would be implimented and then work with that. As if there won't be draft specs that can't be used prior to the final release. That's what a certified standard is all about. Something USB3 will be...*sighs*...in time.
"AMD has now been upgraded to douchebag threat level 3.
Meanwhile Nvidia is sitting at douchebag threat level 5."
And what about Intel? Douchebag infinitum?
Hi, I work for Intel. For Intel's side of the story, pls read this: http://blogs.intel.com/technology/2008/06/usb_30_for_the_masses_dispelli.php
Nick
finally a guy who works for intel!
but i wouldnt blame intel for this
and the government should have nothing to say about this because its not like we give away our secrets of say the F23 Phantom or the Airborne laser, so according to the government, they have no reason to be mad at intel for doing thsi
so good luck NVIDIA and AMD on getting this through law
this could be good for AMD because they can make a special port than can fully use their standard 1600 MHz FSBs
Jesus Christ, AMD, Intel, and Nvidia are having a war right now. GPUs, CPUs, and now USB.