USB 3.0 data transfer demonstrated at IDF
By Darren Murph 
posted Aug 21st 2008 8:47AM
posted Aug 21st 2008 8:47AM
posted Aug 21st 2008 8:47AM
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What is that in real world terms, 350 mega byte per second? Faster than SATA? Faster than Firewire 1600? Fast enough to reverse time?
Yes, faster than SATA. Your average SATA hard drive stays around 60MBps read speed (which can vary quite a bit depending on several factors). USB 2.0 flash drives typically run anywhere from 10MBps to 30MBps (usually closer to 10 unless you put some cash down for a nicer drive).
This is a little better than half of the rated speed of USB 3.0....350MBps=2.8Gbps.
yes, 350 megabytes per second. That is very fast, as fast as SATAII and faster than firewire 1600.
Things are looking good for USB 3.0
Anything is possible when your USB card is larger than your motherboard.
That IS IN real world terms. 350 MB/sec. And to "Kamokazi" up there, he's talking about the SATA interconnect, not an average SATA HDD.
USB 2.0 = ~30-35MB/sec (real-world)
Firewire 400 = 35-45MB/sec (real-world
Firewire 800 = 60-70MB/sec (real-world)
SATA I aka SATA 150 = 150MB/sec
SATA II aka SATA 300 = 300MB/sec (current and eSATA)
USB 3.0 = 350MB/sec
Firewire 3200 = ? (will most likely be real close to 350MB/sec max)
SATA III aka SATA 600 = 600MB/sec
I can't wait to see a modder get that huge rig into an Eee.
Yeah, since you absolutely need 350MBps for a subnotebook
You don't ask modders if they "Need" something
It's a question of "Can"
And if they can. They will.
"11. Is there a plan for USB 3.0 or a faster USB 2.1?
No, but you've probably heard about the news already. Wired USB has come to an end with the introduction of the Certified Wireless USB 1.0 approved in May 2005. Everything will start to go wireless when wireless USB hub & USB dongles begin appearing in Q2 2006"
dreams... but then again this is a fine example of Moore's law.
of twice as many transistors in a processor?
yes, in other words technology doubles every two years, and two years ago wireless usb was finally certified and that was the technological factor that was supposed to free us of wires. but like i said in my post. those were dreams lol
no no no, thats not how it works. the number of transistors doubles. not the technology doubles.
unless they solve the problem of requiring power adapters for each "wireless" usb device, it's not really a win.
Hopefully high speed SSDs will mean that storage will be fast enough to take advantage of all that bandwidth.
So...if someone were to make a CF card capable of that speed, we'd be talking about transferring a 2gb card in about six seconds?
Can somebody tell me why my old account cant post anymore? I had to create a new one using a different email to get comments to work...Was I banned for some reason? if so I cant figure out why.
@teetdogs You were banned for posting off topic messages about account support.
I have one of those cheap USB drives. Now I know why I could not find a mbps rating for it. I guess it will do for backing up, but it is annoyingly slow for normal use, especially if you are getting to it via a Share on the LAN. Must be 10 mbps. Yes it is on a 2.0 port. Tried it on another machine with a usb 1 port; that truly bogged down to near useless.
Was your first account called "iluvdogteets"?
You think so ?
So, it's faster than Firewire 1600. Considering Firewire 3200 just got certified, that would qualify as a straw man now, wouldn't it? :-D
As for SATA, didn't SATA 3 just get certified too? Nobody is standing still.
And is USB 3 free of the problems that made USB 2 so much slower than its rated speed that Firewire 400 continually proved the faster way to go in spite of being rated at 400 while USB 2 was 480? The problems I'm referring to is the fact that you had to have a port for each peripheral, and that the processor has to be involved with moving data, whereas in Firewire the processor was left alone. Streaming is clearly better than packet-based data transfer for anything other than a bunch of tiny files.
Price will always trump features. Having a discrete processor, like FW400/800 does, offloads the workload but go take a look at prices of FW800 vs USB2 HD cages. The price difference is huge. And as for 3200. The max real world throughput was a hell of a lot less then advertised. (Still fast as ****. You can have my external SATA FW800 drive when you pry it out of my cold dead hands or give me a USB3 cage.) My guess is that 3200 will be the same and it will end up being a toss up.
The question I have is how hard will this impact the CPU. Since the processing isn't done on a discrete processor its going to end up sucking down more juice then if the controller had a dedicated processor. I see how this makes it cheaper, but from a laptop user's perspective it kinda blows.
Maybe on laptops there will be minor issues, but it's virtually a gaurantee that any PC with USB 3.0 will also be sporting multi-core CPUs. Most of the time the other cores are sitting around doing nothing much. Surely today's CPUs have the extra processing power to handle some simple data transfers. I'm more concerned about having drives capable of maximizing these speeds than I am about having disposable CPU cylces.
Total dreams.
People said that CAT 5 cable was going to go the way of the dodo, and that all future networks would be wireless... That hasn't happened yet, and people are now talking about residential fiber optic installations (I live adjacent to a pretty wealthy neighborhood that seems to get some bizarre installation requests for new houses).
You'll still see advances in wired standards to send and receive data.
didn't you see the Virtex FPGA on the top board?
that's a 500Mhz powerpc core + gate array
the're thinking waaay ahead of us.
then again, that makes battery life waaay worse.
Isn't the new sata going to be 6 Gps or 6000 Mbps...the speeds just keep going on up
Yes. Now if only we actually had devices that could come close to taking advantage of all this great bandwidth!
The most important question for USB still isn't answered - what is the overhead required for this speed? USB was crippled because it required the CPU to do all the work, making the rest of the system horribly slow. That's why you can't use USB for video-transfer (FW doesn't have this problem.)
So, anyone know what the CPU usage was for this 350MBps stream?
OK, newbie question, but will the MB have to provide support for 3.0 or can you just add a 3.0 PC card to an existing board?
whats all this i'm hearing about the israel defense forces?
man, this USB 3 stuff is pretty wicked....
I will need a cubed chassis. XD
you think well have a motherboard with usb 3.0, sata rev. 3, and that sweet sounding lucid technolgy gpu scaler by the end of next year?