USB 3.0 - Speed continued

USB’s other competition is Firewire. Like USB, Firewire has gone through different revisions to keep up. Currently, the Firewire 800 is faster than USB 2.0, but it hasn’t been as successful as USB. It still offers great competition for USB. USB 3.0 should put USB back on top of Firewire.

Apple is one of the few companies that still fully supports Firewire. Even Apple has been feeling the heat of USB. All of their iPods have migrated to USB due to the demand from PC users. Some companies still offer Firewire on a few of their computers, but far more offer USB. A typical computer can have as many as 6-8 USB ports, but you will be lucky to get a single Firewire port.

USB 3.0 will offer a big boost in possible speed. The target speed is 5.0 Gbit/s, which is about 10 times faster than the current USB 2.0. This will allow files to be transferred a lot quicker. So how do they magically make a connection so much faster? It’s not magic. Little has changed to create this faster connection. The USB 3.0 spec calls for two additional high-speed connectors. We will see in the next section whether these new high speed connections achieve backwards compatibility.

Compatibility

One of the greatest advantages for USB over any other connection was that USB 2.0 was backwards compatible with USB 1.1. You no longer need any devices or converters to plug your existing hardware into your computer. The great news is that USB 3.0 will still hold the backwards compatibility, despite being designed differently. There won’t be any benefit to plugging a 1.1 or 2.0 device into a USB 3.0 host, and if you plug a USB 3.0 device into an older host, it will drop down in speed. The connector will undergo some minor changes, but will physically hold the same old connection pins.

Computer parts are becoming more and more energy efficient nowadays, and USB 3.0 will follow suit. No information is available about how it will cut down on power use, or how efficiently it will work. It appears that this may even stretch down to the USB 2.0 and 1.1 lines as well. Devices, such as mice, need constant power to work. I’m not sure how you can lessen power to a device that needs a certain amount of power.

Next: Physical Hardware >>
 

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