USB 3.0: Five Things You Need to Know

It’s one of the most successful and versatile computer interfaces out there, and it’s getting a major update.

By Martyn Williams
Fri, July 16, 2010

CIO — IT’S SIMPLER. USB—perhaps the most successful, versatile computer interface yet—is getting a major overhaul. The third version brings big improvements, including higher speeds and better power management. The first devices began hitting stores this year, and a flood of new products is expected to follow. Adoption of USB 3.0 could bring an end to interfaces that use serial ports like e-SATA, which, while fast, require an additional power cable.

IT’S FAST. USB 3.0 features an extra set of pins that creates a faster data bus capable of supporting real-world speeds of between 3.2 and 4 gigabits per second. That makes it about 10 times as fast as today’s USB 2.0 and comparable to using serial ports. A fully bidirectional bus means that data can be sent and received at the same time, further boosting performance. To reflect this, equipment makers have dubbed the new version “SuperSpeed.”

IT’S BACKWARD COMPATIBLE. USB 3.0 sockets are designed to accept today’s plugs and cables, they’ll just operate at USB 2.0 speeds. To get the faster performance, you’ll have to use new cables between compatible devices. Consequently, USB 3.0 will take over the external-drive market by 2013 and ship in 225 million flash disks in 2014, predicts In-Stat.

IT’S SMART ON POWER. USB 3.0 increases the power available via a USB connection by 50 percent to 150 milliAmps, but that doesn’t necessarily mean your laptop battery will run down faster. Whereas the current USB protocol keeps devices powered and ready at all times, USB 3.0 has superior power-management capabilities that allow unused devices to enter idle, sleep and suspend modes, cutting down on power consumption.

IT’S NOT EVERYWHERE. Support for USB 3.0 was added to the Linux kernel last September, and the first hardware controllers and devices appeared at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show show in January. But it’s still an emerging technology. Microsoft (MSFT) hasn’t implemented it in Windows yet, though it’s rumored to be coming soon in the first service pack for Windows 7. Intel (INTC) doesn’t plan to support it until 2011.

What is Tech Briefcase?

TechBriefcase is a new, free service where IT Professionals can Search, Store and Share IT white papers and content like this. Learn more

Bookmark content

Speed up your research efforts with content across the web.

Search and Store

Find the white papers you need. Create folders for any topic.

View Anywhere

Open your briefcase on your iPhone, tablet or desktop. Share with colleagues.

Don't have an account yet?

You are here: Technology Topics » Hardware » 5 Things I've Learned

Most Recent Peripherals Stories

White Papers »

SnagAJob.com Case Study

Online job search site SnagAJob.com needed a quick and reliable online presence. After assessing its web optimization strategy, the company traded its hardware traffic management solution for a virtualized environment that could match anticipated growth. With Riverbed® Stingray™ Traffic Manager supporting its new virtual environment, the company is now well on its way to meeting its goal of 99.9 percent uptime.

Deliver Cost-Effective Business Continuity with Extreme Capacity

IBM DB2 provides application cluster transparency technology that equips organizations running OLTP applications with the ability to deliver high availability and continuous uptime for transactional data, plus the flexibility and capacity they need to remain competitive.

Finding the right cloud solutions for your organization

HP is driving the evolution of what we call the Instant-On Enterprise. It is an enterprise that embeds technology into everything it does to better serve citizens, partners, employees, and clients. We believe that today's Instant-On Enterprises need to think differently about how they source and deliver services that are enabled by technology. They need to take advantage of a hybrid delivery model-one that truly optimizes the mix between traditional IT, private cloud, and public cloud.

Intel and the Intel logo are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.

Converged Infrastructure for Dummies

As you know, everything is mobile, connected, interactive, and immediate. This is exactly why organizations need a highly agile IT infrastructure in order to keep pace with extreme fluctuations in business demand. This book will help you understand why infrastructure convergence has been widely accepted as the optimal approach for simplifying and accelerating your IT to deliver services at the speed of business while also shifting significantly more IT resources from operations to innovation.

Intel and the Intel logo are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.

Seven Priorities for Integrated Network Management - How HP Intelligent Management Center Delivers an Enterprise-class Solution

This white paper describes the major requirements for network management solutions to help the organizations become more profitable, efficient and reliable.

Intel and the Intel logo are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.

Measuring the Business Value of CI in the Data Center

One of the key strategies that IT teams are pursuing to reduce capital costs while boosting asset utilization and employee productivity is the transition to highly virtualized data centers. However, IDC finds that expectations for further boosts in IT asset use and operational efficiency often surpass the actual results for a variety of reasons. These problems can quickly overwhelm any hoped-for benefits as the scope of virtual server deployment expands.

Intel and the Intel logo are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.

Webcasts »

Virtualization Success is a Team Effort

As greater numbers of datacenter servers transition from the physical to the virtual world, the components of virtualization success come to the fore. What scores of organizations have discovered is that success is derived from an optimal pairing of the right software platform with the right hardware platform.

Oracle Database Appliance Best Practices

Business users increasingly demand 24x7 availability of their data while IT departments face the challenge of ensuring maximum availability while operating with limited budgets.

Unlock the Value of Cloud Computing with Workload Automation

Learn how to get the most from your cloud investment in our on-demand webinar from BMC and InformationWeek. You'll hear how integrating the cloud into your production workload brings critical business benefits.

Best Practices to Optimize Your Data Center at Every Layer of the Stack

Date: May 31, 2012
Time: 1 PM EST

Organizations are reaping the benefits of simplifying IT, lowering costs and dramatically improving transactional throughput by deploying optimized application-to-disk solutions. These pre-tuned, tested solutions encompass a wide variety of applications and use cases. Hear from industry experts, and IT executives, how these full-stack solutions can achieve three times faster deployment times and up to 75% reductions in acquisition and operational costs.

Workload Automation Trends and Best Practices in 2012

Find out when you join EMA Senior Analyst, Torsten Volk, for a discussion on the 2012 trends in workload automation and how these trends contribute to better connecting workload automation to business processes. These trends are derived from EMA's empirical research work conducted for the 2012 Workload Automation Radar Report.

Analytics at the Speed of Thought

What if you could run financial and operational planning cycles 10 times faster? Or monitor and adjust marketing campaigns in real time? What if you could instantly visualize how a price change would impact the profitability of thousands of products?

Newsletter Sign-Up »

Receive the latest news test, reviews and trends on your favorite technology topics

Choose a newsletter