The Universal Serial Bus, or well known as USB was introduced to
the PC world in 1996 which dramatically simplified the connection
between host computer and peripheral devices such as mice and keyboards,
external hard drive or optical devices, Bluetooth and many more peripheral
devices in the market.
Let's take a quick look
on the USB evolution referencing to the table below.
Table 1. USB evolutionThis table shows the USB evolution.
Type
Data Transfer Rate
Category
Introduction Year
USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1
5 Gbps
Super Speed
2010
USB 2.0
480 Mbps
High Speed
2000
USB 1.1
12 Mbps
Full Speed
1998
USB 1.0
1.5 Mbps
Low Speed
1996
USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1 (SuperSpeed
USB)
For years, the USB 2.0 has been firmly
entrenched as the de facto interface standard in the PC world with
about 6 billion devices sold, and yet the need for more speed grows
by ever faster computing hardware and ever greater bandwidth demands.
The USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1 finally has the answer to the consumers' demands with
a theoretically 10 times faster than its predecessor. In a nutshell,
USB 3.1 Gen 1 features are as follows:
Higher transfer
rates (up to 5 Gbps)
Increased
maximum bus power and increased device current draw to better accommodate
power-hungry devices
New power
management features
Full-duplex data transfers
and support for new transfer types
Backward
USB 2.0 compatibility
New connectors and cable
The topics below cover some of the most commonly
asked questions regarding USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1.
Speed
Currently, there are 3 speed modes
defined by the latest USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1 specification. They are Super-Speed,
Hi-Speed and Full-Speed. The new SuperSpeed mode has a transfer rate
of 4.8Gbps. While the specification retains Hi-Speed, and Full-Speed
USB mode, commonly known as USB 2.0 and 1.1 respectively, the slower
modes still operate at 480Mbps and 12Mbps respectively and are kept
to maintain backward compatibility.
USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1 achieves
the much higher performance by the technical changes below:
An additional physical
bus that is added in parallel with the existing USB 2.0 bus (refer
to the picture below).
USB 2.0 previously had
four wires (power, ground, and a pair for differential data); USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1 adds four more for two pairs of differential signals (receive
and transmit) for a combined total of eight connections in the connectors
and cabling.
USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1 utilizes the
bidirectional data interface, rather than USB 2.0's half-duplex arrangement.
This gives a 10-fold increase in theoretical bandwidth.
With today's ever increasing demands
placed on data transfers with high-definition video content, terabyte
storage devices, high megapixel count digital cameras etc., USB 2.0
may not be fast enough. Furthermore, no USB 2.0 connection could ever
come close to the 480Mbps theoretical maximum throughput, making data
transfer at around 320Mbps (40MB/s) — the actual real-world maximum.
Similarly, USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1 connections will never achieve 4.8Gbps. We will
likely see a real-world maximum rate of 400MB/s with overheads. At
this speed, USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1 is a 10x improvement over USB 2.0.
Applications
USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1 opens up the laneways and provides more
headroom for devices to deliver a better overall experience. Where
USB video was barely tolerable previously (both from a maximum resolution,
latency, and video compression perspective), it's easy to imagine
that with 5-10 times the bandwidth available, USB video solutions
should work that much better. Single-link DVI requires almost 2Gbps
throughput. Where 480Mbps was limiting, 5Gbps is more than promising.
With its promised 4.8Gbps speed, the standard will find its way into
some products that previously weren't USB territory, like external
RAID storage systems.
Listed below are some of the
available SuperSpeed USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1 products:
External Desktop USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1 Hard Drives
Portable USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1 Hard
Drives
USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1 Drive Docks &
Adapters
USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1 Flash Drives
& Readers
USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1 Solid-state Drives
USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1 RAIDs
Optical Media Drives
Multimedia Devices
Networking
USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1 Adapter Cards
& Hubs
Compatibility
The good news is that USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1 has been carefully planned
from the start to peacefully co-exist with USB 2.0. First of all,
while USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1 specifies new physical connections and thus new cables
to take advantage of the higher speed capability of the new protocol,
the connector itself remains the same rectangular shape with the four
USB 2.0 contacts in the exact same location as before. Five new connections
to carry receive and transmitted data independently are present on
USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1 cables and only come into contact when connected to a proper
SuperSpeed USB connection.
Windows 8/10 will be bringing
native support for USB 3.1 Gen 1 controllers. This is in contrast to previous
versions of Windows, which continue to require separate drivers for
USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1 controllers.
Microsoft announced that Windows
7 would have USB 3.1 Gen 1 support, perhaps not on its immediate release,
but in a subsequent Service Pack or update. It is not out of the question
to think that following a successful release of USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1 support in
Windows 7, SuperSpeed support would trickle down to Vista. Microsoft
has confirmed this by stating that most of their partners share the
opinion that Vista should also support USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1.
Super-Speed support for Windows XP is unknown at this point. Given
that XP is a seven-year-old operating system, the likelihood of this
happening is remote.
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