Originally posted on September 20, 2007 @ 2:44 am
Ask any computer user and they will tell you that one of the things that they look forward to are fast transfer speeds. The advent of USB has put us in the right path. Even with the introduction of Firewire (which was admittedly a faster protocol), USB continued to be the popular choice and it has continued to be developed as evidenced by USB 2.0, which offered faster transfer speeds. But with the advent growing capacities of storage drives and the increased demand for data transfers for various computer peripherals, USB 2.0 just could not cut it anymore. It’s good news that USB 3.0 is now being developed.
During the Intel Developers Forum, the formation of the “Superspeed” USB Promotions Group was announced. This new collective will be tasked to develop the specs for USB 3.0 that they are hoping will be able to become the standard for the next five years.
It’s too early to really know what USB 3.0 will be but preliminary information includes backwards compatibility with USB 2.0, lower power consumption, and a ten fold increase in transfer speed, that is, from USB 2.0’s 480Mbits/s to 4.8Gbits/s.
Let’s see how this will develop in the coming months.