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Intel's USB "Cool Wall"  (Source: DailyTech, Brandon Hill)
Intel discusses its plans for USB 3.0 technology

During Patrick Gelsinger's keynote at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) today, Intel made a small announcement regarding a group of companies who are now working together to create a "superspeed personal USB interconnect” with 10 times the speed of the current generation technology of USB 2.0.  The USB 3.0 Promoter Group -- which consists of Intel, Hewlett-Packard, NEC Corporation, NXP Semiconductors, Microsoft and Texas Instruments -- looks to make several other major changes.

Along with the 10x speed difference between USB 3.0 and the current generation, the USB 3.0 Promoter Group is taking power consumption and better protocol efficiency into consideration while designing 3.0.  USB 3.0 will be able to use the same architecture of wired USB, though no other specific details are yet available.

To help drive home the importance of USB technology, Gelsinger pointed out the usual USB devices everyday users have in their homes and offices: keyboards, mice, speakers, cameras, etc.  He also introduced a number of novelty items that are powered by USB including refrigerators and mittens.

"USB 3.0 is the next logical step for the PC's most popular wired connectivity," said Jeff Ravencraft, Intel technology strategist and USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) president.  "The digital era requires high-speed performance and reliable connectivity to move the enormous amounts of digital content now present in everyday life. USB 3.0 will meet this challenge while maintaining the ease-of-use experience that users have come to love and expect from any USB technology."

Specific USB 3.0 specifications should be available sometime in the first half of 2008.

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What's that in the pic?
By AmberClad on 9/18/2007 8:41:04 PM , Rating: 2
A bit off topic, but can anyone identify what that large silver thing in the lower-center of the pic is? USB record player?




RE: What's that in the pic?
By CCRATA on 9/18/2007 8:43:06 PM , Rating: 2
those are "cool" usb devices you can find. The one is a record player for recording you old records into mp3s


RE: What's that in the pic?
By Ashrac on 9/18/2007 8:43:46 PM , Rating: 2
I am pretty sure that it is. Remember seeing one of these at the Sharper Image store in Tyson's Corner, VA. Lets you rip records to your pc.


RE: What's that in the pic?
By AmberClad on 9/18/2007 8:47:56 PM , Rating: 2
Small world -- I actually live a couple of miles from Tysons. Might drop by some time to see if they have any other USB gadgets. I've been wanting that white and blue USB drink cooler in that pic for a while now.


RE: What's that in the pic?
By darkpaw on 9/18/2007 10:13:35 PM , Rating: 2
I got a USB drink cooler when I used to raid constantly in EQ. They were blowing them out at Fry's for like $5. Works pretty good too, but took up too much space so its just sitting in my misc cables box now.

A few weeks back Woot had a USB controlled Nerf Missile launcher. Sold out before I could buy one, but neat little things like that are just interesting to me.


RE: What's that in the pic?
By webdawg77 on 9/19/2007 10:12:53 AM , Rating: 2
The only problem with some of the missile launchers is that they require USB 1.1 connectivity. Make sure you have an older PC around just in case :).

Otherwise, they are loads of fun, but take several seconds from "fire" to actually shooting. The good thing is that you'll have people going "what is that noise" while waiting for it to hit them :)


RE: What's that in the pic?
By PrinceGaz on 9/19/2007 10:29:43 AM , Rating: 1
USB is fully backwards-compatible, USB 1.1 devices work fine with modern USB 2.0 equipped computers.


RE: What's that in the pic?
By webdawg77 on 9/19/2007 11:26:44 AM , Rating: 2
Not with these launchers. I have one and have tried it. No go.


RE: What's that in the pic?
By TomZ on 9/19/2007 12:43:47 PM , Rating: 3
That's odd, and if true, then that device is not technically USB compliant.


RE: What's that in the pic?
By Master Kenobi (blog) on 9/19/2007 6:57:53 AM , Rating: 2
I work up just across the street from Tysons Corner. Small world indeed.


RE: What's that in the pic?
By AmberClad on 9/19/2007 8:02:58 AM , Rating: 2
Would that be Microstrategy? Or one of the various defense firms around Tysons?


RE: What's that in the pic?
By roastmules on 9/19/2007 11:09:48 AM , Rating: 2
I live there too..


RE: What's that in the pic?
By Adventure Seeker on 9/18/2007 9:12:16 PM , Rating: 2
I saw one at Best Buy the other day. I'm considering getting one so my wife can burn all her old vinyl to CD's.


RE: What's that in the pic?
By boing on 9/19/2007 3:55:21 AM , Rating: 2
go on ebay and get her an iriver h320/340 it can encode an anologue source from it's line in to MP3 format on the fly.


RE: What's that in the pic?
By kleinwl on 9/19/2007 10:18:06 AM , Rating: 2
You don't need anything special to encode analog sources. One of my friends is using the X-Fi connections to plug in his turntable and is using some hiss/pop software removal... which works really nice, but he paid $500 for.


RE: What's that in the pic?
By Michael Hoffman on 9/18/2007 8:47:43 PM , Rating: 2
During the keynote, he said that silver thing is used for playing LP records! :P


RE: What's that in the pic?
By TomZ on 9/18/2007 8:55:28 PM , Rating: 2
It's nothing new, been on the market for a while now.

http://www.google.com/search?q=ion+audio+iTTUSB05


RE: What's that in the pic?
By Houdani on 9/18/2007 8:53:35 PM , Rating: 2
On that same line ... what are the grey things directly below the blue keyboard (to the NW of the turntable)? Socks?!?


RE: What's that in the pic?
By Michael Hoffman on 9/18/2007 8:55:04 PM , Rating: 2
Houdani, I believe those are the gloves. :)


RE: What's that in the pic?
By AmberClad on 9/18/2007 8:57:26 PM , Rating: 2
Heated USB mittens. I haven't seen any socks-style ones though, so I guess you'll have to figure out how to squeeze your feet into those mittens.

Anyways, after looking over that wall, it seems like they're missing at least one thing: USB rocket launcher :P (ThinkGeek sells at least two models).


RE: What's that in the pic?
By kuyaglen on 9/18/2007 10:11:19 PM , Rating: 2
Funny thats the 2nd thing I noticed. Its directly next to the lp player, on the upper left. I have one.


RE: What's that in the pic?
By AmberClad on 9/19/2007 8:10:03 AM , Rating: 2
Ack, right you are, I see it now. They seemed a lot bigger in the ThinkGeek pictures I've seen, so I didn't expect something so small.


RE: What's that in the pic?
By erikejw on 9/18/2007 10:42:03 PM , Rating: 2
Can it be a cup warmer?
It looks like it but it might as well be something else.


Sony Blu-plug
By timmiser on 9/18/2007 11:59:57 PM , Rating: 5
After reading that list of promoters, I can't help but wonder:

When will Sony and their backers come out with the non-compatible blu-plug?




RE: Sony Blu-plug
By Gul Westfale on 9/19/2007 12:22:42 AM , Rating: 4
sony and apple are currently working together on their own proprietary high speed standard. only their products will use it, it will have several DRM mechanisms, and they will never really make any useful accessories for it. it will be called the butt plug.


RE: Sony Blu-plug
By Bluestealth on 9/19/2007 12:34:40 AM , Rating: 4
A new Firewire-800? why?


RE: Sony Blu-plug
By MGSsancho on 9/19/2007 3:23:30 AM , Rating: 3
its already out. 3.2gb speed. and vista will support it in SP1. well that info was from Microsoft when vista went gold. so it is prolly out of date. I am going to assume things have changes and the next firewireC wont come out anytime soon. It will use the cat5e or cat6 and RJ45 connectors for the physical transport layer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firewire#FireWire_S80...
http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/1394/c/20040726/min...

to date there are not any devices nor chipsets that utilize 1394c


RE: Sony Blu-plug
By ebernet on 9/19/2007 2:41:40 AM , Rating: 5
Sony, I believe you, put Apple, shame on you for even saying that....

Apple introduced ADB (Apple Dekstop Bus) which was actually invented by non other then the Woz himself in the mid 1980s to create a simple, cheap, low speed serial bus. They then licensed it to whomever wanted it (Sun, HP, and NeXT were some of the companies that did), and they used an EXISTING cable (S-Video) - all to connect low speed devices like mice, Keyboards, etc.

ADB was Intel's inspiration for USB....
Apple was the first company to make USB mainstream and create true adoption for it by ELIMINATING ADM and serial ports on their own hardware...

FireWire was invented by Apple with the help of Texas Instruments in the early 90s. It was designed to ease SCSI, another standard they worked with. Apple openly published FireWire and allowed others to work with it. It was far superior to USB - WHICH RAN AT 12 MB!! and was designed for keyboards and mice!!! FireWire was designed to be able to control video as well and had bus power in the 1st Rev - SONY took fireWire and neutered it by killing the two power pins, FOREVER slowing down the adoption of FireWire with their crazy i-Link implementation of it.....

Apple uses, these days, ALL standards - whether hardware OR software -AAC, not WMA which is owned by MSFT or ATRAC by Sony (even though they DO use a proprietary DRM), They use MP4 for video, not some proprietary video CODEC by MSFT....

Sorry I am going off on such a diatribe, I just find it disingenuous in this day and age to lump the EXTREMELY standards compliant with Sony, the company that brought u the 4 wire iLink, MiniDisc, Beta, Memory Stick, ATRAC, etc....


RE: Sony Blu-plug
By MGSsancho on 9/19/2007 3:30:51 AM , Rating: 3
error. its all about licensing. firewire was $1.25 a porn and USB as $0.50 when it first came out. then the prices for USB quickly dropped to $0.25. this was way back when it first came out. apple has a history of supporting the latest and greatest features (lets not get into the gpu + apple debate please.)
Yeah i hate to cut you off and be mean, but its all about licensing. HDMI is expensive. $10k a year and $1.25 a port or unless there is a huge HDMI label on the box, then its $0.05 a port. thats the main reason the consumer electronics industry sucks. and another reason the PC industry hates HDMI and they are working on UDI and DisplayPort. its about the money. then eventually economics of scale.


RE: Sony Blu-plug
By theapparition on 9/19/2007 9:17:22 AM , Rating: 2
Your correct, but it's wasn't only about licensing. Firewire (IEEE 1394) was very expensive to implement in hardware, where USB when first introduced added a virtually negligable cost to a system.


RE: Sony Blu-plug
By TomZ on 9/19/2007 12:47:31 PM , Rating: 2
Yes, mainly because Intel integrated USB support directly into their chipsets very early on. Franly, I thought this strategy would have crushed FireWire by now.


RE: Sony Blu-plug
By sdoorex on 9/19/2007 10:20:40 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
firewire was $1.25 a porn and USB as $0.50 when it first came out.


Freudian slips can really change the entire meaning of a post, but I digress. Licensing is a big problem with the industry. It limits progress because companies only release something that will earn them a lot of money and they don't release products that can't be licensed. This is what create many proprietary formats and connections. Look at the memory card market if you want to see a good example of it.


if they had only...
By tcunning on 9/18/2007 9:16:09 PM , Rating: 5
USB is undoubtedly one of the best PC innovations ever, and I welcome the 3.0 standard. But I wonder, collectively worldwide, how much time is wasted every day by people attempting to plug a USB device in with the plug upside down.




RE: if they had only...
By Varun on 9/18/2007 10:26:48 PM , Rating: 3
I agree 100% not sure why they did not make the connector able to work either way. Especially on Dells! Dell why do you have to put your USB ports upside down compared to the rest of the known world?!?


RE: if they had only...
By martinw on 9/18/2007 10:45:01 PM , Rating: 3
Totally agree. I have 3 different machines, each has the USB slot in a different orientation. Drives me crazy...


RE: if they had only...
By mlau on 9/19/2007 5:56:55 AM , Rating: 1
quote:
USB is undoubtedly one of the best PC innovations ever


You have no clue then how it actually works; if you did
you'd take those words back immediately. Firewire is a lot
cleaner design, with far more intelligence in the individual
nodes (as opposed to USB where the HOST has to POLL EVERY DEVICE for data which wastes lots of power)

USB is for mice, Firewire is for men!


RE: if they had only...
By UNCjigga on 9/19/2007 1:24:56 PM , Rating: 2
Seriously...I remember back when they said USB would make device driver disks obsolete, because the device itself would store all the drivers in flash and send it to the PC (no, not HID profiles). That never happened.


RE: if they had only...
By oTAL (blog) on 9/19/2007 2:07:04 PM , Rating: 2
Can we have a 6 for this gentleman so that if a manufacturer comes around he will know how we feel?
At least with firewire it is easy to know the correct side.

My suggestion for a solution - paint the top part of the connectors black and paint the top part of the ports black. That way you could just look and immediately know the correct position without having to go for trial-and-error or, even worse, look inside the port and the connector (drives me crazy to have to do this).


RE: if they had only...
By TomZ on 9/19/2007 2:14:13 PM , Rating: 2
That suggestion would be no different than the current solution which is to put the USB logo on the "top" of the connector. The problem is that people don't know the orientation of the jack (female) connector, especially in the vertical configuration, i.e., does the logo go to the left or the right?

But I think all rectangular connectors have that property - the user tries it one way and the rotates it 180° and tries again. It's been that way for most other PC connectors for example.


RE: if they had only...
By AmberClad on 9/19/2007 2:14:43 PM , Rating: 2
All of the USB devices I own have the three-pronged USB trident logo on the top side of the plastic part of the connector. It's usually pretty obvious if the connector is upside down...


This device will work faster if....
By ted61 on 9/19/2007 12:11:56 AM , Rating: 2
I can see it now. The old "This device will work faster if plugged into a USB 3.0 port. Click here for a list of available ports."

Every time I plug in a camera I get that line. No I will get two of them. For that type of speed, I may pay attention to where my 3.0 ports are.




RE: This device will work faster if....
By Brandon Hill (blog) on 9/19/2007 12:36:12 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
I can see it now. The old "This device will work faster if plugged into a USB 3.0 port. Click here for a list of available ports."


I don't know why, but that just made me LOL :)


By Michael Hoffman on 9/19/2007 1:11:35 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
I don't know why, but that just made me LOL :)
He was hoping someone would get a kick out of it. :P


By retrospooty on 9/19/2007 10:55:48 AM , Rating: 2
LOL - I was just reading that loveley and familiar message not 2 mins ago... grrrr


By acer905 on 9/19/2007 7:40:00 AM , Rating: 2
Ahh yes... i know that line well... and my normal response "For the love of god shut up! i don't even have that type of port!"

Thankfully i just got a new computer... one that has 2.0 ports...


Wireless USB
By hadifa on 9/19/2007 12:13:35 AM , Rating: 2
Faster USB is good and has it uses but I was more looking forward to wireless usb standard that provides usb convenience and Universality but wirelessly.




RE: Wireless USB
By Gul Westfale on 9/19/2007 12:25:01 AM , Rating: 2
never heard of bluetooth?


RE: Wireless USB
By Bluestealth on 9/19/2007 12:56:13 AM , Rating: 3
Bluetooth has a different use then Wireless USB...
Bluetooth is low-power, low-range, low-bandwidth.
Wireless USB is low-range, high-bandwidth.

Its the technology you might use to connect a scanner, camera, MP3 player, etc.... to a computer.
Bluetooth doesn't have near enough bandwidth to do this.


RE: Wireless USB
By Bluestealth on 9/19/2007 12:58:01 AM , Rating: 2
err I meant to say video camera... but syncing your regular camera would probably be painful over bluetooth...


Roll-out?
By lumbergeek on 9/18/2007 8:53:43 PM , Rating: 2
Hopefully it gets a better roll-out than Firewire-800. I'd like to see it sooner rather than later. 4.8Gb/s? Soo-Weet!




RE: Roll-out?
By Bluestealth on 9/19/2007 12:33:47 AM , Rating: 2
I still can't believe 1394b is still alive.It seems that 1394b is in it for the long haul. Expect a much better roll out then 1394b since it will be integrated into nearly every chipset after a generation or two.

There is a reason 1394b "Firewire-800" was DOA, it had no support from Intel.


RE: Roll-out?
By Master Kenobi (blog) on 9/19/2007 7:11:13 AM , Rating: 2
Indeed, and that is a problem when Intel is the largest chipset and motherboard supplier on the planet.


RE: Roll-out?
By TomZ on 9/19/2007 9:03:18 AM , Rating: 2
I'd prefer to see enhancements in USB that make it technically superior to FireWire, instead of having to support redundant serial port standards on every PC manufactured.


What device best utilizes USB 2.0
By RU482 on 9/18/2007 11:54:00 PM , Rating: 2
what is the fastest data throughput that has been achieved using the current standard?

Do they even come close to the 480Mbps spec?
Just curious




RE: What device best utilizes USB 2.0
By joex444 on 9/19/2007 12:17:59 AM , Rating: 2
It's only 60MB/sec. I'm sure you can find plently HDs that can read at 60MB/sec. Whether the USB2.0 - SATA/IDE interface can handle that is secondary.


RE: What device best utilizes USB 2.0
By PitViper007 on 9/19/2007 8:46:04 AM , Rating: 2
True. But I wonder. Using the 10X number they give in the article, USB 3.0 would have a bandwidth of roughly 4800Mbps or 600MBps. While that would theoretically help to speed up the transmission speeds to eSATA or IDE, the speed at this point is overkill. Neither eSATA nor IDE comes close to actually hitting their theoretical limits. Still, it will help to "future proof" the standard and will allow it to be useful for years to come.

Viper


RE: What device best utilizes USB 2.0
By Etsp on 9/19/2007 8:54:39 AM , Rating: 2
Lets not forget that the 480Mbps is burst speed, my understanding is that USB can not sustain speeds anywhere near that in the real world. At least personally, I've never seen it. As an example, I have a usb/eSata hard drive, and I made it a point to buy a motherboard with an eSata port. It runs so much faster now than it did when it was on USB. Now, I just need a longer eSata Cable.


10x faster?
By HardwareD00d on 9/19/2007 10:59:18 AM , Rating: 1
Does that mean my USB vibrator will work 10x better? Woohoo!




RE: 10x faster?
By TomZ on 9/19/2007 12:49:31 PM , Rating: 2
Hmm, I didn't spot that on Intel's "Cool Wall."


RE: 10x faster?
By marsbound2024 on 9/19/2007 5:57:05 PM , Rating: 4
More importantly... Hardware DOOd has a vibrator?


Good for external HDD's
By siberus on 9/18/2007 8:42:37 PM , Rating: 2
If they can lower the latency then this could be a good alternative to external sata.




RE: Good for external HDD's
By GoodBytes on 9/18/2007 9:22:01 PM , Rating: 2
eSATA and firewire?!


More power.
By Lazarus Dark on 9/19/2007 11:51:01 AM , Rating: 2
I'd like to see more power over usb. This may be a problem for ports on the motherboard itself, but a standard spec for high power hubs would be great. I could plug in 3.5 portable hard drive or other higher power devices without having to snake a cable to the wall outlet too.




RE: More power.
By TomZ on 9/19/2007 12:45:23 PM , Rating: 2
I agree, the current limit of about 2.5W is a bit too low. It might be too late to change that, however.


About time
By Polynikes on 9/19/2007 8:24:50 AM , Rating: 3
It's about time, USB just isn't cutting the mustard with today's ballooning file sizes.




Wireless USB?
By Wizard on 9/21/2007 10:25:23 AM , Rating: 2
This is strange as in a local magazine it read that USB 3.0 was already out(i know, i know i am wrong now). But what ever happened the wireless USB "3.0" that was released?




Wondering
By iwod on 9/23/2007 5:14:46 AM , Rating: 2
If they would fix the in efficient protocol so that USB 3 will actually perform somewhere close to 4.8Gbps instead of only 50% efficient like in USB 2.0

Would USB port able to support more power output so you could connect a 3.5" HDD without the need of external PSU?




Fragile?
By HappyCracker on 9/24/2007 8:25:43 PM , Rating: 2
I work with fiber optic cables daily and they aren't the strongest things in the world. The last I heard, they'd gotten plastic fiber to run at 1 Gb/s. With the 5 Gb/s they're shooting for with this one, it seems they would have to be using glass fiber which, like I said, isn't very resilient. Does the cable have built in bend radius control and something to keep the glass from being crushed? I'll be interested to hear how this one goes.




"Intel is investing heavily (think gazillions of dollars and bazillions of engineering man hours) in resources to create an Intel host controllers spec in order to speed time to market of the USB 3.0 technology." -- Intel blogger Nick Knupffer









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