Is Intel harming USB 3.0 before its release?

[Rob Williams]

Charlie at the Inq is a little pissed off with Intel, and it seems he well has the right to be. According to him (could be elsewhere also, I don't know), Intel is only allowing friends (aka: non-competition) have access to the complete USB 3.0 spec. That means these companies can get to work on USB 3.0 products immediately.

But what if you are somehow considered competition to Intel? You have to wait a full six months prior to receiving the spec. For what reason, no one knows, but it's not a good thing.

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/05/09/intel-plays-games-usb3

 

[Rory Buszka]

This is silly. How can this behavior of Intel's be seen as anything less than patently anticompetitive? I suppose it's really nothing new from Intel, after reading the Inquirer article. With luck, there'll be a similar industry backlash to accompany the USB 3.0 spec as there was with USB 1.0, so it'll at least be clear that Intel was the one who wrecked the technology's acceptance.

 

[Rob Williams]

so it'll at least be clear that Intel was the one who wrecked the technology's acceptance.

Which in itself is ridiculous, since they had the biggest hand in developing it.

 

[moon111]

The 10x faster doesn't excite me anywhere near a less power consumption does. I can see 3.0 being a slower to adopt then they would hope. The only real high speed I/O is see being commonly used is the NIC.

 

[Rob Williams]

The 10x faster doesn't excite me anywhere near a less power consumption does. I can see 3.0 being a slower to adopt then they would hope. The only real high speed I/O is see being commonly used is the NIC.

Well, the 10x speed increase would be fantastic for external storage. Imagine thumb drives that could be copied to as fast as a regular hard drive. I am not saying that's what will happen (because it depends on the chips), but it should be a possibility.

 

[Kougar]

Some current thumb drives are badly limited already, any sort of speed boost would be welcome. USB 2.0 will never exceed 35-36 megabytes per second in real life usage, and since the sweet spot for thumbdrive prices is 4GB going on 8GB, you can imagine how it would be a problem!

I am not sure how power consumption can be affected, since USB isn't what consumes much power but rather it's the devices that are attached to it that do.

 

[Rob Williams]

Some current thumb drives are badly limited already, any sort of speed boost would be welcome. USB 2.0 will never exceed 35-36 megabytes per second in real life usage, and since the sweet spot for thumbdrive prices is 4GB going on 8GB, you can imagine how it would be a problem!

I am not sure how power consumption can be affected, since USB isn't what consumes much power but rather it's the devices that are attached to it that do.

Well that's the thing. The theoretical bandwidth limit for USB 2.0 is 36MB/s, but even the fastest current thumb drives on the market don't max that out. It might be due to the shared bus though... other peripherals are hogging some of the bandwidth also.

Still, I do think we can see improvements. SSD's are extremely fast, so to see something like that in a thumb drive would be amazing. I don't know if we'll see quite those speeds, but the USB 3.0 implementation leaves me hopeful. We just need memory chips that can handle those speeds, while not getting so hot that it would melt the thumb drive itself.

 

[Kougar]

Well that's the thing. The theoretical bandwidth limit for USB 2.0 is 36MB/s, but even the fastest current thumb drives on the market don't max that out. It might be due to the shared bus though... other peripherals are hogging some of the bandwidth also.

Still, I do think we can see improvements. SSD's are extremely fast, so to see something like that in a thumb drive would be amazing. I don't know if we'll see quite those speeds, but the USB 3.0 implementation leaves me hopeful. We just need memory chips that can handle those speeds, while not getting so hot that it would melt the thumb drive itself.

Well, I hate to say it but are you sure? http://techgage.com/article/corsair_voyager_gt_8gb/

There should be flash drives faster than the Corsair Voyager "GT" out there since that drive is over a year old, or even if not 33MB/s is already right up against the 35/36 cutoff.

 

[Rob Williams]

Well, I hate to say it but are you sure? http://techgage.com/article/corsair_voyager_gt_8gb/

There should be flash drives faster than the Corsair Voyager "GT" out there since that drive is over a year old, or even if not 33MB/s is already right up against the 35/36 cutoff.

Well that's what I mean... we haven't seen one hit the cap. Whether that's due to the chips or the USB architecture itself, I don't know.