Coming To A Mac Near You? : USB3 Super Speed Peripherals?
Apple and Intel seem to be dragging their heels on USB 3 serial bus implementation in thier logic boards. Why? Does Apple lack cutting-edge innovation? Is Intel Corp incapable of desiging and delivering state of the art integrated circuits? Or would they prefer something more proprietary? Something more patentable, somethng they hold more intellectual property and liscensing rights over, something they can profit more directly from? Can they make billions from USB 3 - or should they come up with some new computer interface, some connector they can get per-port liscensing fees from, something Bigger, Better, Faster - Next Year that they want to sell the world?USB 3.0 SuperSpeed Accessories For Mac? When?
The USB 3.0 spec was finalized in 2009. Chipsets are being manufactured, tested, implemented in computer logic boards and peripherals. On the Windows side of things: ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, etc. are already shipping boards with USB 3.0 support, using NEC's SuperSpeed chipset. All the early legwork being done now - has started showing up in products in early 2010. CES Consumer Electronics Show in January unleashed a flood of announcements... With USB 3.0 products now following. But where's Apple? No word of USB 3 support as of yet in OSX Leopard's kernel drivers - let alone in any shipping Mac hardware.
USB3 : Backwards Compatible With USB 1.1 & 2.0 Speed Peripherals
If Apple ever delivers USB 3 support - It will continue to work with your existing USB 2.0 and 1.1 Mac add-ons: Keyboards, mice, printers, backup hard drives, portable speakers, HD TV Tuner sticks, Digital Cameras - while bringing a new era of high-speed peripherals to the market.
New USB 3 SuperSpeed Cables, Hubs, Connectors and Adapters
Better. Faster. The new USB 3.0 specifications will have the same sized Type A cable connector as USB 1.1 and 2.0. At first glance the 'A' cable looks identical, but inside there are 5 additional pins that USB3 cables will detect to handle the higher signaling rates.
At the device end new 'B' size plugs as seen below will become common, as well as a new mini USB 3 plug standard for gizmos like digital cameras and other small form-factor devices.
Note The New *Shape* Of The Device-End Connector
How Fast Is 3.0 Universal Serial Bus Technology?
SuperSpeed USB from USB IF on Vimeo.
The very first iMac introduced Universal Serial Bus spec 1.1 to the masses. It was 12MB per second, which was fine for 'slow' devices like Apple keyboards, mice and printers. But then along came USB 2.0 - at potentially 480MB per second, it was literally FOURTY TIMES FASTER - a huge leap forward.
While still not optimized for HD camcorders and video (FireWire 400 - 800 has excelled at that) - USB 2.0 was important for OS X hard drive backups, flash-drives, high-resolution scanners and All-In-Ones. USB 2.0 was also important for QuickTime video capture and Mac HDTV tuners which demanded more bandwidth.
USB 3.0 will get even more elbow room with rip snortin' 4.8Gbps SuperSpeed - A TENFOLD leap! USB3 also has refinements for lower CPU utilization, reduced device polling, and smarter, better power management. USB3 also supports BIDIRECTIONAL data transfers - a significant advance over USB2's one-way, uni-directional model.
Why USB 3? - What Gizmo For Mac Needs 4.8Gbps Bandwidth?
In 2010 and Beyond: USB 3 peripherals for Mac will again be TEN TIMES faster than USB 2.0 - Apple friendly HD DV USB3 camcorders, High-Definiton USB 3.0 HDTV tuners for Mac, as well as bandwidth hungry flash memory based Mac SSD - Solid State backup drives in particular will demand and make fantastic use of version 3.0 super-speed advantages. Faster syncing of next generation USB3 enabled iPods or iPhones will benefit as new models adopt this new interface standard.
PCI Cards and ExpressCard USB 3.0 Adapters
Nec Japan NEC Japan recently announced a USB 3.0 controller, backwards compatible with USB 1.1 and USB 2.0 due to arrive at retail mid to late year - supporting USB3.0 Superspeed (5Gbps) along with the older 480Mbps, 12Mbps, and the 1.5Mbps specifications.To get a good sense of the speed bump SuperSpeed USB will provide, NEC's press release compared the transfer a 25GB Blu-ray disc from disc to a computer hard drive: 70 second transfer with USB3.0 interface as compared to 14 minutes with USB 2.0 - Quite impressive! It's cards like these that will likely show up in Mac Pro Towers first.
ExpressCard 2.0 Spec To Support USB SuperSpeed
Current ExpressCard specs just couldn't support USB3's full bandwidth - it's current theoretcial bandwitdh is only 2.5Gbps. So in many ways, the next generation -- ExpressCard 2.0 -- had to wait for USB 3.0 specs to finalize before it's final architechture and needs could be spec'd out. It too will be backward compatible.It'll be interesting to see how this will play out on Mac computers. Apple recently completely REMOVED the ExpressCard slot on 15" Unibody MacBook Pro's, opting for an SD slot instead. That leaves only the current 17" model still supporting Express-Cards at all. And without SuperSpeed drivers in OSX Leopard, the future of USB 3 on the Mac is still unclear.
But in the meantime, the Windows market is getting interesting, and some people are already enjoying the benefits of SuperSpeed with PCI USB3 cards, USB 3 backup drives that are taking advantage of the USB3 drivers Windows now offers.
