Posted on 01/12/2010 8:02:47 AM PST by ShadowAce
You’ll be hearing a lot about USB 3.0 this year. And well you should, because its potential is vast. But will system vendors step up to the plate to deliver all of USB 3’s goodness?
Speeds und feeds
USB 2.0 has never delivered the advertised 480 mbits/sec because that number technically correct and operationally bogus. If you have data transferring in both directions at the same time it could happen - but for USB disks it never does.
That drops the theoretical transfer rate to 240 mbits/sec, but because of protocol overhead - for example, some signal redundancy to increase data integrity - the payload bandwidth is still lower.
Net net: you’re lucky to get a 20 MB/sec data rate off a disk - when the advertised rate suggests 60. But unless you use FireWire or eSATA that is the best you can get - until now.
Enter the 3
USB 3.0 is a different protocol - USB is a brand, not a technology - and while I haven’t done a deep dive it is a big improvement, while retaining backward compatibility with USB 1 & 2.
The biggest improvement is performance: it can move over 440 MBytes/sec.
The fine print
As noted in the video your mileage will vary. We’re dependent on the system vendors and their driver writers to develop robust support. That could take years.
Mac users face a bigger problem: it appears that Cupertino is doing nothing - zip, nada - with USB 3.0. With their smaller market share and tighter control, little is likely to happen unless Apple actively supports it.
The StorageMojo take
USB 3.0 is a Good Thing. Drives, even flash drives, are getting large enough USB 2 is like sipping the ocean through a straw. The rapid growth of file-based workflows needs more bandwidth - and USB 3.0 looks like a good answer.
Apple is risking their creative professional base if they ignore a fast new I/O bus. Light Peak, an optical interconnect Intel has been working on at Apple’s behest, may be their answer.
But as I noted in Light Peak: black hole
Light Peak is a great idea and doomed. Between obnoxious DRM, costly optical hubs and switches, Blu-ray style licensing fees, Intel over-engineering and Apple’s penchant for twee little I/O ports, Light Peak is almost certain to fail.
With Windows 7 momentum and a major I/O fail, Microsoft may be able to take back much of the creative professional market that gives Apple such a hip image.
Let the games begin!
It's just a relationship of dependencies and how long everything takes. In a project of A, B, C, D tasks, if the only task interdependency is that long task A must be done before long task D, then the total time of the project is A+D -- that's your critical path. You will blow your deadline if you extend A and delay D. You have two short tasks B and C and they aren't in your critical path, they just need to be some time before the end, that's where you can do some schedule juggling if necessary in order to leave A+D, the critical path, alone.
If you've ever made a project timeline with a project management tool, you've probably done a variation of critical path.
Of course, if you're suddenly hearing this at work, that sounds like management by buzzword. Critical path will not be properly implemented, nor will proper after-action feedback occur. In short, you're screwed. Change your name to Dilbert.
And isn't that wireless? ;-)
Actually the concept of critical path(s) I'm not sure how I'd say in other words. Certainly not two.
Intel has postponed the USB3.0 date for vendors until 2012 for the i3/i5/i7 line of motherboards, and for the next generation (and new socket) of motherboards.
It was postponed officially around early October 2009.
However, it will take that long for the integrated HDCP/Dolby Digital passthrough to make it to market in any significant way, as it just came to market this week with the i3/i5 line.
Set-top PCs with integrated cable cards and CPU chip integrated multiple HD monitor support should be on the market by Christmas 2012.
At which point we can finally all start looking like the slothful people in the movie Wall-E.
“Wasn’t Apple late to the USB party to begin with preferring Firewire?”
Not with USB 1.0, the iMacs were the first computers with USB. They abandoned older Mac keyboard, mouse, and printer connectors in favor of USB. Full support for USB on the PC side did not come until Windows 98. Windows 95 OSR2 had only partial support.
The Windows 98 and the iMac both came out in late July, early August of 1998.
I’m telling you, my post was current at the time I posted it. That is some great product from Asus.
This thread has helped me tremendously catching up on the timeline for the i3/i5/i7 line of cpus: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1172451
The USB3 project at Intel codenamed Sandy Bridge was postponed.
It's the WirelessHD that will end up getting tanked because the media moguls think we are all thieves.
Digging into LightPeak I have to ask: What's wrong with TOSLINK?
For one, TOSLINK is slower than USB2. It has awesome bandwidth if you're only doing audio though, which is what it's made for.
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