USB 3.0 and SATA 6G put to good use: benchmarks
By Paul Miller 
posted October 31st 2009 1:26AM
posted October 31st 2009 1:26AM
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posted October 31st 2009 1:26AM
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I see what you mean, it's taller than the 1.1/2.0 USB-B connector.
USB, in attempting to encompass every kind of device, has always had lots of protocol overhead that has slowed it down. In contrast, Firewire and SATA were always primarily designed for hard drives, and transfer data efficiently with much less protocol overhead.
Therefore it is not surprising that increasing USB speed makes things a lot faster, whereas increasing SATA speed does not. SATA is already operating very efficiently, whereas USB was not.
Wrong. The reason USB was slower was because the bus speed was lower (480Mbps for USB2 vs 3Gbps for (e)SATA2) and because it relied on the CPU (SATA and Firewire don't). The reason why devices get faster with USB3 vs SATA3 is simply because USB2 was too slow to support those devices at full speed to begin with, while no devices (except for SSDs) were close to saturating SATA2. SATA3 was mainly developed to support SSD's insane speeds, while USB3 is basically just catching up to SATA2 to better support external hard disks.
I wouldn't go out and buy a bunch of USB3 and SATA3 stuff though. Lightpeak will end up replacing both connectors in the near future, and while the SATA protocol will probably stick around quite some time after that, I don't imagine that the USB one will.
Naw, actually USB and Firewire use the same protocol, and Firewire was still faster at 400mbps than USB2 at 480mbps. The problem is really due to the chipsets in the hard drive enclosures from what I can tell. Same reason most USB card readers are rather slow, but a few go faster. The vendors uses the cheapest chips possible and they aren't super fast.
USB is indeed stuffed at 2.0 (high speed) speeds by any decent hard drive, so 3.0 should be faster.
Firewire was designed for digital video I think, any way the reason it's faster is because it uses DMA to get the data whereas USB uses interrupts and more overhead, but when they designed USB3 they did do an effort to fix a lot of those issues, not just because they needed fixing but also to make the USB3 speeds even possible in the first place.
You know where to get the lowdown though (watch out, technical pdf's): http://www.usb.org/developers/docs/
I was reading the Max PC article on the card.. and dnt quite understand if this card will achieve full speed on a PCI-e x1 slot or not?... Thats all my desktop has.. and its fairly new...
Any thoughts guys?
So how does USB 3.0 compare to eSATA?
Which incarnation of SATA? There are quite a few and the most recent one is pretty damn fast, even when there are no devices that can even hope to max it yet.
Note that ESATA is just SATA with another more robust and better shielded cable and connector so with a breakout bracket any SATA can become ESATA.
Basically you'd use what's available for external devices, and eSATA is not so popular probably because of licensing cost? And not for flashkeys and 2.5" because original Esata doesn't have powerlines which is now corrected in new specs but that was done a bit late in the day.
(I know it's convention to spell it eSATA but all the letters are acronym so it makes no real sense to lowercase the e of 'external')
I thought that the port would be the same as 2.0....
It is the same shape and has 2.0 pins but it also has extra pins for 3.0
Part of it is the same shape. But there's a whole extra part. Kinda ugly/stupid/big if you ask me.
Apple/Intel Light Peak is where it's at!!
Get the "Other OS" option back and leave the rest to the otakus.
In before the "you are posting in the wrong thread" :)
More light peak drivel from the apple crowd.. the connector with no power, so it won't be able to power things like, oh, I dunno.. mice, usb sticks?
Not like anyone uses those much.
Intel didn't finalize the implementation details, in fact they say they do that in talks with the manufacturers, but right now intel seems to see the fiber as a fast multiprotocol thing that then ends in a dock and becomes whatever protocol you need, like HDMI or USB, and since it has capacity a dock could get the whole shebang over one cable.
So if there will be a direct to device connector I'm sure it will then be specified with power, but for a long line to a dock at the other side of the house it's more practical to not bother with power, so I guess there will be more than one style of connector, similar how it is now with audio and TOSLINK, that cab;e doesn't need power since the receiving device is powered.
So don't claim things that don't exist yet to be claimed about.
Incidentally wikipedia says there will be power, but I guess that's also projection.
A dock on the other side of the house? Why do I want a dock on the other side of my house?
The obvious thing I want to do from far away is watch TV, and I'd kinda prefer a wireless connection for that honestly. The multi-pin dock connectors on laptops work just fine for the docks I've got honestly. Be nice if they were a standard, but I could care less about how they hook up.
All the other stuff I use, Ethernet/USB/RCA cables/HDMI/Mouse/Keyboard/etc I don't really want replaced with another new cable standard that requires I throw all my stuff out and pay more for an optical solution. Sure there are some things (drives) that would benefit from the higher speed, but the other stuff wouldn't, and there's little point in tossing everything.
I doubt this thing will ever see the light of day in its current form.
@Wwhat
Jeez no one realizes that the average high end drive is only 1.5Gbps?! I think that 6Gbps on USB is good enough for me, I'm not spending thousands on a couple SSDs
It'll be great when and if light peak is introduced by companies like Sony and Apple. It simply isn't here now and I'd be surprised if it would be as economical as USB. Then too, the number of peripherals it will work with will be staggeringly small compared to USB- just as FW800 is, right now. All this aside ... any technology which increases speed and bandwidth is welcome ... it motivates other technologies to compete along these lines and at diminishing price points. The consumer, unless shackled by corporate loyalty, always benefits from competition.
Since lightpeak is seen as a good way to transport multiple protocols by intel, you could in fact get a USB3 connector dock with a lightpeak cable to the computer, that way everybody has their moment in the sun.
Talking of which, I think lightpeak might make it finally practical to just put your computer in the (cool) cellar and have a silent connection dock on the desk/wall.
Although we'd need a remote hard reset button I guess for when the thing locks up.
Itis a shame it took so long for firewire to be more commonly phased out in favor of usb