Usb 3.0 Brings Optical Connection In 2008

[dserban 0]

Intel and others plan to release a new version of the ubiquitous Universal Serial Bus technology in the first half of 2008, a revamp the chipmaker said will make data transfer rates more than 10 times as fast by adding fiber-optic links alongside the traditional copper wires.

 

https://www.cnet.com/news/usb-3-0-brings-optical-connection-in-2008/

 

Intel showed off prototype USB 3.0 connectors and an add-in card at Intel Developer Forum.

 

Edited September 19, 2007 by dserban (see edit history)

[ethergeek 0]

I like the idea of fiber-only connections some day...one wire, many wavelengths, blazing fast.

[faulty.lee 0]

But the fact is that, fiber optics will increase the complexity of the chip and circuit, on both the motherboard/usb card and the devices. Further more, fiber optics cable are known to be "exotic" and thus expensive. Fiber optics is also quite fragile, have limited bending radius. You might goes like, "****, i just broke another $50 dollar usb3 cable!" I would actually like to see devices that can chain up multiple usb port in parallel to achieve higher speed. More like PCIe. PCIe is also using differential serial connection. 1X is equal to 1 set of serial connection. 16X is 16 pairs. FOr some SLI system, you're limited to 16X per motherboard, so if you plug 2 16X video card, you are actually getting 8X per card. So it all depend on the device and the user to decide how much can it compromise. Same method can be use for usb. If you want more speed, you plug more usb connector into individual port, of cause you can plug the second connection into the one belongs to the same hub. You need to plug into the next actual port to gain some speed. So if you device can support 4X the current usb2 speed, it can provide 4 port, and up to you to choose to plug in 1 to 4, where 4 will be maximum speed. At the same time also it can help solve the problem of powering the device. Some external hard disk require a second usb port to supply more juice to the hard disk. So might as well increases the throughput at the same time. In actual fact, i only see reason for external storage devices requiring higher throughput.

[Grafitti 0]

I suppose a ways down the line, when 50 or 100GB flash drives become commonplace, that the USB 3 specs would come in handy. You wouldn't have to worry about bending the cable if you're plugging the device straight in to a port on the computer.

[Sten 0]

looks nice!it would be faster than 2.0 (which is a good thing), so like transfer would be quicker and easier.i cant wait

[HellFire121 0]

So looks like we are looking at about 5gb/s connection there. USB 2 is about 480mb/s i think so 10x that is 5gb/s.Pretty nice speeds for new generation devices such as new video recorders that can spit out huge files, also nice for huge size flash drives that can function like hard drives. You could have like a personal computer right in your pocket, just find a pc that has been released recently and load up your stuff.Should be cool to see when it's released-HellFire

[vizskywalker 0]

Further more, fiber optics cable are known to be "exotic" and thus expensive. Fiber optics is also quite fragile, have limited bending radius. You might goes like, "****, i just broke another $50 dollar usb3 cable!" tongue.gif

That's not true anymore. Although it was true of old fiber optic systems, advances both in the understanding of how light travels through devices with high indexes of refraction and advances in manufacturing technique allow fiber-optic to be extremely flexible. Especially fiber-optic cable that's wrapped. For example, Yale has been using extremely flexible fiber-optic cable as a security system in their computer labs for years now. The cable runs from a source through the lock slot on their computers to the input spot on the source. If the signal ever ceases, then a computer has been moved since the cable has broken, and the alarm goes off. It used to be quite annoying because it meant monitors couldn't be moved very far, but now it's not an issue. Also, one fiber-optic cable is extremely cheap. In fact, the gold used in high quality USB 2.0 devices (which adds maybe between 10 to 50 cents to the cable's cost) probably costs more than the amount of optic cable being put in USB 3.0 devices. Large bundles of fiber-optic that are inches thick is expensive, but each individual cable is about as thick as a hair. I think this is an interesting idea. It could even make networking via USB far more feasible, which would be cool.
~Viz

[toby 0]

Copper is limited to what we generally get, up to 30mpb/s. If fibre optics are what are used (albeit massively wide strands) for the cross country internet and so on, then this step seems a bit late.What's the blue glow?

[ethergeek 0]

That's not true anymore. Although it was true of old fiber optic systems, advances both in the understanding of how light travels through devices with high indexes of refraction and advances in manufacturing technique allow fiber-optic to be extremely flexible. Especially fiber-optic cable that's wrapped. For example, Yale has been using extremely flexible fiber-optic cable as a security system in their computer labs for years now. The cable runs from a source through the lock slot on their computers to the input spot on the source. If the signal ever ceases, then a computer has been moved since the cable has broken, and the alarm goes off. It used to be quite annoying because it meant monitors couldn't be moved very far, but now it's not an issue. Also, one fiber-optic cable is extremely cheap. In fact, the gold used in high quality USB 2.0 devices (which adds maybe between 10 to 50 cents to the cable's cost) probably costs more than the amount of optic cable being put in USB 3.0 devices. Large bundles of fiber-optic that are inches thick is expensive, but each individual cable is about as thick as a hair. I think this is an interesting idea. It could even make networking via USB far more feasible, which would be cool.
~Viz

I'm glad someone took the time to research this...I knew that fiber had gotten cheaper in the past few years, but I had no idea that the gold plating cost more than the fiber...though if you remove all the manufacturing costs, fiber is really nothing but sand anyway, and we have tons of that compared to gold.

As for increasing costs...that's inevitable. SATA devices used to be more expensive in the PATA days, but now SATA is standard and costs no more than PATA devices of similar size. Once we start a big push to fiber, manufacturing capacity will increase, costs will go down, and we'll all be happier. It's the early adopters who will basically pay the premium to subsidize the R&D as always anyway

[Unregistered 0111405241546 0]

Wow, already upgrading to 3.0! Lol most of my computers still have usb 1.1. I'm still upgrading to usb 2.0. Most of the things I use are fire wire anyways. It's always good to know you can transfer things really fast though, all my documents and files keep growing bigger and bigger.

[xboxrulz1405241485 0]

Sounds great. I just hope that Apple and the IEEE updates Firewire or at least make Firewire-800 the standard. I don't like using FireWire 400 for my external drives.xboxrulz

[Saint_Michael 3]

Well at least we know it will have backward compatibility, but the problem I would see is the USB hardware like external HD's are going to be uber expensive once again. Right now the prices are at their lowest right now because of how long USB 2.0 been out for awhile now, granted it will take time for those prices to go down; however, I would think that the USB 3.0 would be in PCI card form until motherboards begin to manufacture them with that extension. Hopefully more news about this will come out about this later on.

[xboxrulz1405241485 0]

Ya, I'd think USB 3.0 would be expensive since it has optic fibres. However, I think the prices would go down once fibre optics prices come down.xboxrulz