USB 3.0 data speed 5Gbps, faster than ever before

One of the announcements to come out of the IDF keynote this afternoon was Pat Gelsinger's discussion and demonstration of USB 3.0 technology. Although still in the prototype stage, USB 3.0 is aiming for 10 times the bandwidth of current USB2.0 solutions, or approximately 5Gbps. Since this requires fiber optic cabling, USB 3.0 will add a length of optical data cable to the mix, though USB 3.0 will retain full compatibility with USB 2.0 (and, one assumes, USB 1.0 as well).

Gelsinger expects the final version specifications to be finished by the first half of 2008, with USB 3.0 peripherals realistically appearing in 2009 or 2010. There are an increasing number of devices that could potentially take advantage of the additional bandwidth, including external hard drives, flash readers, video cameras, and the all-new USB-compliant llama expected to be genetically delivered from the Andes sometime in late 2011. Obviously a USB llama wouldn't be much use without a USB 3.0 device—ever tried downloading from a llama over an old 10BaseT network? Yeah. It'd be worse.

As for the other, official features of USB 3.0, there remains quite a bit of information we don't know, and it would have been nice for Intel to have included additional information. USB has long been criticized for relatively high CPU usage. This has inevitably become less of an issue as CPU performance has improved, but devices capable of using USB 3.0's higher bandwidth capabilities could make CPU usage a problem again unless the issue is addressed during spec development. Issues like cable length, available power provided, and the number of devices per channel are all unrevealed as yet, and possibly unresolved. The Inquirer has a few more details on the spec (and the rest of the keynote) if you're interested.

As far as future market competition, its target of 5Gbps puts USB 3.0 ahead of current eSATA (3Gbps), which is really the only other device protocol under active development that might challenge it as a peripheral interconnect. Although an IEEE 1394c protocol has been developed and published as of June 8 2007, no company has announced an intent to produce a product or chipset that utilizes the standard. FireWire remains supported in certain sectors, but I'd personally be surprised if the combination of USB 3.0 and eSATA doesn't push FireWire out of the market completely. As for the nascent specification, the proposed 5Gbps speed is great and all, but hopefully the development committees will acknowledge some of the other concerns regarding the USB 2.0 protocol and incorporate solutions for them, rather than carrying them over into another product generation.