The nerdiest SuperSpeed USB 3.0 details yet

We've been hearing about SuperSpeed USB 3.0 since CES last year, and now that the spec's been officially released, we're getting way more details at this year's show -- like new power features, which include the elimination of device polling to enable an energy-saving "virtual sleep" mode, more juice for bus-powered devices, and the ability to charge a completely dead device, which USB 2.0 can't do. According to Intel's Jeff Ravencraft, the spec is designed to last for the next five years, with room to pump 25 gigabits per second over a hypothetical optical connection. Sounds sexy -- we'll see how well this stuff demos when the doors open.

[Tarnation @ Jan 7th 2009 8:26AM]

Now you can transfer your pron a whole lot faster. :}

[Hashbrown Hunter @ Jan 7th 2009 9:46AM]

And recharge your porn multimedia player of choice once the battery is dead!

[lolkatz @ Jan 7th 2009 8:30AM]

Sexy indeed

[Paul Chapel @ Jan 7th 2009 8:30AM]

I am very happy USB 3.0 is backwards compatible with USB 2.0 devices.

[pd0ph1l3 @ Jan 7th 2009 8:32AM]

heh, I wonder what Best Buy will sell those cables for!

[216 @ Jan 7th 2009 8:36AM]

$33.99 while Wally Mart will have em for $9.99 lol

[tiuk @ Jan 7th 2009 8:58AM]

And monoprice will have them for $5

[ZaxCG2 @ Jan 7th 2009 9:54AM]

You'll pay too much for the first one and wind up having like 25 of them scattered across all the drawers in your house a few years later.

[wodheila @ Jan 7th 2009 10:08AM]

They'll have "WINDOWS 7 Ready!!" written on them!

[Ahmed Alzayani @ Jan 7th 2009 8:35AM]

Is blue is part of the spec? I always see USB 3.0 cable blue?!

[Daniele Baelde @ Jan 7th 2009 9:04AM]

I hope so!

[Mic2000 @ Jan 7th 2009 9:04AM]

Yeah, didn't you heard the new name, USBlu?

[Xenoterranos @ Jan 7th 2009 10:46AM]

You sounds exactly like Vlad from Achewood. Just, you know, FYI.

[Mitch @ Jan 7th 2009 12:52PM]

Sorry Mic, it's BluSB

[Stephen @ Jan 7th 2009 8:46AM]

...to pump 25 gigabits per second over a hypothetical optical connection. Sounds sexy...

HA!! I lol'd!! OH! The irony...

[Level 5 @ Jan 7th 2009 8:50AM]

Am I the only one less than enthused here? Give me a faster Bluetooth ANY day. I mean really, I use my mouse and keyboard on USB, and they function just fine on USB 1.1. Flash drives ok, yeah they could use 3.0, but I'd really rather just have eSATA drives instead so I could use the port with an external HDD as well. Digital cams, PDAs/Smartphones, Printers etc can be BT or WiFi. What else could we REALLY need 25 gbit for when read/write speeds are as crappy as they are in most devices? Honestly until flash drives develop some MAJOR speed boosts, I don't really know how pumped I am.

[tiuk @ Jan 7th 2009 9:01AM]

There are still numerous USB drives being sold without eSATA, so it'll be nice for those. Who knows, we'll probably see a battle of sorts for a while

[tiuk @ Jan 7th 2009 9:01AM]

Note: When I said "USB drives" I meant hard drives, missed that.

[Grant @ Jan 7th 2009 10:33AM]

considering most portable size external hard drives need an inline power source, esata is out. This could be of good use to them and potentially offer faster speeds.
Not to mention external esata are not exactly common on your typical machine without buying a card, i imagine once 3.0 gets rolling, manufacturers will be tripping over themselves to slap some of these in their machine.

[Michael Scrip @ Jan 7th 2009 5:05PM]

> "considering most portable size external hard drives need an inline power source, esata is out."

Some people just want a hard drive outside of their case. They don't need it to be ultra-portable. eSATA with a power brick is fine in this situation.

While the article says that USB 3.0 will provide "more juice for bus-powered devices"... 3.5" hard drives require 12V. I've seen no mention of USB 3.0 providing 12V... in which you'd still need a power brick to use a 3.5" external drive with USB 3.0

[--Ed @ Jan 7th 2009 9:05AM]

I can't wait. My printer will print so much faster.

[ed. @ Jan 7th 2009 9:08AM]

does your printer print ligers? They're pretty much my favourite animal...

[eggothewaffle @ Jan 7th 2009 9:15AM]

Great, USB 3.0 will be over 8 times faster than current proliferated SATA spec (3 Gbps).

Not that there are any drives which can even hit 3 Gbps anyway.

[Tim Brown @ Jan 7th 2009 9:39AM]

True, but if you get a USB box that supports its own internal raid and has 8 (or more) drives striped, then you will see the full (theoretical) speeds. As you can currently get 2-4 drive USB 2 enclosures with the same kind of function it should not be too long before some nice firm comes along and offers it and helps us feed our p2p addictions

[loosely_coupled @ Jan 7th 2009 10:56PM]

Good luck with that one, guys..

http://www.tgdaily.com/html_tmp/content-view-40865-135.html

although the article I pasted is a bit ambiguous and confusing, it implies initial USB3.0 chipsets will actually do little more than 1/4 of the theoretical 600MB/sec. If true, that is HALF the speed of the *current* eSATA, and will be less than half the real-world speed of FireWire 3200.

[Chin-Poh @ Jan 7th 2009 9:31AM]

So when can we expect it to hit the retail market, I assume by the end of this year or early 2010?

[PCIV @ Jan 7th 2009 9:34AM]

I somehow think that this will be used internally for harddrives. One line for both power and data? Count me in.

[absinthe party @ Jan 7th 2009 10:05AM]

Yeah, woo! Bring on faster syncing between my laptop and desktop!

And, off-topic, but what happened to the high and low rankings? That's generally the only way that I know if I'm having a good or bad day, and if I should be social or anti-social.

[superhobo @ Jan 7th 2009 1:06PM]

Goodbye USB 2.0
You have served us well.

[John @ Jan 7th 2009 1:39PM]

i'm just excited that his name is jeff ravencraft. my name is john eaglestorm. no it's not.

[Miguel @ Jan 7th 2009 1:59PM]

I've charged my dead phone (SE w580i) on USB 2.0 before...

[Fanfoot @ Jan 7th 2009 5:54PM]

Its not really dead as long as we remember it... ah, my sweet, sweet RAZR...

[habby @ Jan 11th 2009 4:56PM]

The USB 3 sounds great but what really surprises me is that PCs are still really power hungry and genrate loads of heat.My new Toshiba gets so hot that I have to take it off my lap every half hour or so.Sure batteries have got better but because prcessor power has increased so has the power usage.

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