Ruh roh. A senior tech manager at a "top tier PC maker" has come out with some entirely unofficial and equally ominous thoughts on what he (or she) sees as the tough road to proliferation for
SuperSpeed USB. Pointing out that the new interconnect "won't get real traction until it gets integrated in the chip sets," the source opines that Intel won't be offering motherboard integration before 2011 -- an assertion Intel has declined to comment on.
AMD and NVIDIA have been vocal critics of what they see as purposeful delays by the Pentium maker, and if this latest scuttlebutt is accurate, their wild finger-pointing will have been at least somewhat vindicated. Although Intel did release the 3.0 controller spec eventually, this wouldn't be the first (or probably last) time when it has been
seen to drag its feet where doing so is in its interest (eh hem,
Light Peak). For our money, plenty of people who've been waiting for the new standard to show up in machines before pulling the trigger on an upgrade will be disappointed by such news, especially as 3.0 devices are
just beginning to ship.
[Thanks, Jacob]
posted October 22nd 2009 8:07AM
I'm one of those disappointed people. :(
Me too. I was planing to wait a few months to buy a MB with USB 3.0 and the new SATA... :(
@ibelike
If you're willing to go the AMD route (not as fast as i7, but far cheaper), there are USB 3.0 motherboards out. I know ASUS has one. Unfortunately, the ones I saw had 3x USB3 ports and the rest were USB2.
Please correct me if I'm wrong but I believe current implementations of USB3 aren't 'native' so to speak, I don't think they're on the south bridge, rather they use some other method to achieve it. Read it as a comment somewhere so take it with a grain.
You can buy Intel motherboards with USB3 support. They just use discrete USB3 controllers rather than having it integrated into the chipset. It's not the end of the world, it will just cost a bit more.
Totally feel you there- I'm holding out on upgrading- I'm still on a P4!!! But it runs great!
Yay AMD!
is this the new usb 3.0 printer cable? hate spending mony on usb cables. =[
I won't upgrade before either •USB3 or, um, • Light Peak are implemented...so come on, Intel, go go go
I'll be glad to see Light Peak succeed USB 2 instead of USB 3. The latter needs new cables, new devices, new everything unless you want to mess around with adapters and a collection of USB 2 and USB 3 cables with all different connectors and such. Limited to 3 meters with the thick cables as well. Good luck hooking up that printer and scanner on that table 5 meters away.
I really hope that USB 3 will slowly fizzle out and be replaced with Light Peak for general things and Firewire for everything else. The world will be a better place for it.
Aren't (at least) the USB A connectors compatible among 2.0 and 3.0 versions?
AFAIK USB works on longer distances than 3 meters. (Haven't tried with a scanner, tho, to be honest.)
And why should we, with a proper working USB 3 or Light Peak, still need Firewire?
So rather than go with industry standard you would rather wait for an unpublished standard ? Good luck, when it comes to price USB3 will beat everything since it will be everywhere.
Firewire was a great idea and I still use target disk mode from time to time but it failed because of it's closed licensing, and lightpeak will go the same way.
Feels sorry for the people who bought "The first Storage device with USB 3.0". Can't manufacturers install USB 3.0 anyway.
i hope amd provides support this could be a big boost in their sales if they provide usb 3.0 support before intel.
There will be no MB (MacBooks) with USB 3.0!!
Only Light Peak baby!
I guess this is the new FireWire, finely tuned!
This feels like a BS story. Nvidia and AMD were previously upset because they felt Intel wasn't letting them into the discussions of establishing the USB 3.0 standard. Now they're complaining about chipset support for USB 3.0...they can implement their own USB 3.0 strategy without the chipsets. More expensive, but it gets the job done.
Good. I say bring on the Light Peak and leave USB 3.0 to rot.
No power over Lightpeak will make it a fail - it'll die just like firewire did, except for SOME applications, mostly professional ones.
LightPeak cables carry power, so that won't be a problem. The cable itself isn't a fibre optic cable, it's a traditional cable that has two fibre strands (among other things) rather than copper for data. There is still copper in the cable for carrying power.
It's the asians who will shows us what will be the standard I think, it's all about what's cheap to throw in devices and where there are controllers and software driver examples available for at low cost.
If I can get tons of devices with USB3 for normal cost and one or two lightpeak for inflated costs, guess which one I'll end up buying? I'm all for supporting the better technology but you can't fight that battle as consumer, in the past I did try, but all I ended up with was devices that didn't work anymore because there was no support, even from the makers of the devices and makers of the standard.
I'm disappointed also, I was seriously thinking of holding off on buying a Notebook until Feburary hoping to get a Arrandale 32nm, USB 3.0 Notebook. Now this messes up my plans to at least get the USB 3.0 part,I may just get one this Holiday Season now.
As long as you have a Express card slot you can get a USB 3 card when they arrive.
here we go again. one standard for Apple peeps another for the PC world.
more leads, more connectors, more muddle.
well done everyone.
you know what they say: the great thing about standards is there are so many to choose from.
I don't really care much about USB 3.0.
For keyboards, mice, printers etc. USB 2.0 is still fine. It'll be nice for storage i guess, but i already use eSATA anyway so why should i care? :)
Exactly
Wait till eSATA supports SATA III, then all hell will break loose! Well... then again I doubt there are many external uses that are saturating SATA II bandwidth, but still, fun is fun.
What is the big deal about USB3 anyway ? it'll be great for external HDDs but I already have 2 eSATA ports for external drives and since most HDDs can't even hit the SATA2 Max what is USB3 for again ?
Agree completely :)
eSata is fast, but:
1. it only allows for a cable up to 2m in length
2. it doesn't provide power
3. it's not as popular as USB
USB 3.0 has all those points covered and is also fast.
@ibelike
2. there's always Power eSATA ;)
http://www.msi.eu/poweresata/
Are yall really surprised? USB was released a year before Intels own chipsets had a lot of their kinks ironed out if I recall right, just ask Tyan.
I can see this leading to something regarding LightPeak in the next few days\weeks as Intel attempts to sabotage USB 3.0 to get LightPeak to become the next new standard. F#$@ if its better then work overtime and get the specs and standards done.
LightPeak is going to fail even before it's released. It doesn't transmit power. That means all those external hard drives you are hoping to use over LightPeak won't work without external power. Huge pain in the ass. Is this Apple paying Intel to screw things up? I think so.
USB 3.0 is where it's at. Fast, transmits power, and compatible with past devices. Why usher in a new connection and make things yet more complicated? Sure things sound simple by using one connection on paper, but in real life it won't work that way. LightPeak needs to never see the day of light and 3.0 needs to be out now.
"In addition, Intel said it's working on bundling the optical fiber with copper wire so Light Peak can be used to power devices plugged into the PC, he said. "
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-10360047-264.html
Light Peek is the future. One single port going out of the computer can do it all. Why bother with old nonsense like this? One external USB box can connect to all the legacy USB/Firewire/SATA hardware while new hardware takes optical input directly. That would really go a long way to cleaning up the cable messes we live with. That, and wireless of course.
Orrrr USB 3.0 is also fast enough to be the only connection needed. And heyo, it also transmits power. All those external hard drives and other devices you're thinking could be used with LightPeak would require another cable to plug into the wall since LightPeak can't transmit power. This results in MORE cables, rather than less.
Intel should stop dragging their knuckles.
Lightpeak is currently vapourware, usb 3.0 is currently for sale.
Wish they'd hurry up, I'm not buying a new PC until I can get a motherboard with 3.0 on it.
Also, I think people are kinda missing a few points when they think about preferring lightpeak over usb.
Think about it..
No power = usb sticks can't be used.
No power = no ipod charging
No power = your mouse and keyboard now need batteries.
It'll be great for data transfer from solid state memory like HD camcorder footage.. same niche as firewire.
People are getting to stuck on the power thing. How hard will it be to run a copper wire with the fiber cable in order for the single cable to have both power and fiber.
Their smart people over there, im sure they will figure that out.
Where did you get the idea that LightPeak doesn't support power? It does.
The cable itself isn't a fibre cable, it's a traditional bundle that *contains* fibre strands (two of 'em). There's still copper in the cable for carrying power and such.
You guys jumping to conclusions. Light Peak will have copper wound in for power. At the time of demonstration Intel didn't have time to put in copper because they just wanted to demonstrate speed.
Light Peak will carry power in the final spec.
It's sad to see how a company can harm consumers so much for it's own interests by this kind of maneuvres... They do make some nice processors, but that doesn't gives them the right toy around with consumers.
agreed
I think this sort of shows what happens when there's no competition, now that nvidia isn't doing chipsets suddenly intel loses interest in being cutting edge since people will use their stuff anyway.
Does this mean we will see USB3.0 support out first on the upcoming Tegra and Snapdragon devices?
WTF happened to buying PCI cards for things like this? Why do we HAVE to have them on the board. I have like 2 open PCI-e slots and 2 PCI slots. Give me something to put in there like USB3! I won't buy a new MB without onboard USB3 or something valuable. Needless to say I'm now moving back to AMD. I was an AMD fan in the first place but they dropped the ball. Now the Phenom is outdoing the Quad and biting at the heals of i7 at less than half the cost. I blame Dell for Intel's lack of caring. They shove cheap worthless models of Intel processors in their systems and everyone is using the crappy atom and horrible intel graphic sets. Intel has gotten too powerful again.