Ready for SuperSpeed ... USB 3.0

USB 2.0 is much faster compared to USB 1.1 which operated at 480 megabits per second, the current 2.0 version of USB operates at speeds up to 14 times faster. But by next year that will be old news and slow speed transfer as Intel released this week specifications for the “SuperSpeed” USB 3.0 that will run up to 10 times faster still ... that’s up to 4.8 gigabits per second.

USB is short for UNIVERSAL SERIAL BUS and started out with version 1.0 at the beginning of 1996. Two and a half years later, version 1.1 came out to address a few bugs that had been reported in the initial release. Then USB 2.0 came out in 2000, many of the big serial COM-port and parallel port cables started to disappear. But what really made USB catch on was the convenience of hot swapping devices. Now this meant your portable hard drive, portable USB thumb drive and printers and scanners could be swapped in and out.

This is good news for photographers who rely on USB. By this time next year Aug 2009, USB 3.0 devices should start showing up in the marketplace. You will eventually be able to copy up to thirty 20MB raw files in one second.

USB 3.0 cables will have some extra contacts in them, but should be backward compatible with USB 2.o devices. To take advantage of the faster USB 3.0 speeds though, you will need new devices and a new controller for your computer.

This is a natural evolution, as image file sizes get bigger, transfer speeds do too.

Doug - Stan C. Reade Photo