A new USB 3.0 Promoter Group, backed by Intel, HP, Microsoft Corporation, NEC Corporation, NXP Semiconductors and Texas Instruments, announced plans to create a superspeed personal USB interconnect that can deliver over 10 times the speed of today’s connection. The companies said the boost becomes necessary as digital media file sizes increase up to and beyond 25 Gigabytes.
USB (Universal Serial Bus) 3.0 will create a backward-compatible standard with the same ease-of-use and plug and play capabilities of previous USB technologies. Targeting over 10x performance increase, the technology will draw from the same architecture of wired USB. In addition, the USB 3.0 specification will be optimized for low power and improved protocol efficiency. USB 3.0 ports and cabling will be designed to enable backward compatibility as well as future-proofing for optical capabilities.
A completed USB 3.0 specification is expected by the first half of 2008. USB 3.0 implementations will initially be in the form of discrete silicon.
http://www.usb.org
