and then one month later, announce usb4 :(

Intel does it again. USB 3...ddr3...rdram...btx...etc

USB 2.0 was released over 7 years ago. By the time USB 3.0 is out it will have been 8 years. To me that is plenty of time between cycles. Chances are that we won't hear about USB 4.0 for at least 5 years.

Intel always seems to be on the edge of the newest technology. Don't forget WiMax is coming with Penryn.

that's umm... okay

good approach indeed, as USB2.0 is slow actually for external disk and so on ... and please reduce the overhead of USB and that translate to better speed... i guess

And cpu off load like firewire.

Thankfully there is backward compatibility. That way my DOS system will still work with it, as will all my USB 1.1 & 2.0 peripherals still be able to hook in. More new toys to play with!!!

ESata on the boards and cases over usb, just think of having a pen drive running at full speed of a hd..add vista's readyboost to it and bam. well it might work lol.

the new standard, it's just about time for an update for USB anyway.

Considering the advances made in the last few years regarding bus speeds and data transfer rates, this announcement is long overdue. Frankly, I'm a little surprised that the initial estimates place USB 3.0 as only 10 times the bandwidth of USB 2.0. I would have expected something like 20 - 30 times the bandwidth. It'll be interesting to see how long it takes mobile phones to embrace the technology. 10 years, I'd bet!

Okay, quick lesson for everyone here. USB 2 speeds are around 420mb (about 60MB) max, minus the overhead. The fastest HDD sustained transfer rates are what? 40MB? Even flash drives (for thumb drives, cameras, cell phones, etc..)top out around that for data transfer. While a faster interconnect may be needed in the future, there is not a single darn thing that could use the full bandwith. When a mass produced non-volitile memory system actually comes on the market, THEN this standard may actually be useful. Until then, there's no reason to buy something labeled with USB 3 support.

lol, 20-30X the speed would be more bandwidth than I would know what to do with! 10X is going to place us at a nice 4.8GB/s, and will probably be the first time ever that USB has an adequit speed for anything. Even I will have to admit that it would finally really truely be faster than firewire (such a sad day). But in firewire's stead could eSATA be competition? I would hope so.

Sure, sounds about the right time.. that's when
the NEW intel m/b's are gonna come on the market (q1, 2008) peryn?

I've been holding out for a system upgrade so, all the new improvements will make me happy:
agp>pci-E
ide/sata1>sata 2
ddr2>ddr3
usb2>usb3
singlecore>multicore

How about an external interface for direct connections to a MB's PCIe lanes. Devices can build in the controller for an external: hdd, NIC, wireless card or AP, video card etc... Imagine taking a box the size of an external hdd, but has your GF 8800GTX and a flash based hdd that has your OS and games loaded... take it to any computer lab, boot off of it and BAM high-end gaming to go! Wish I was smart enough to try to patent it...

Anywho, give us a direct high speed interconnect to the sytem's northbridge and watch the components fly!

Think of those 48 PCIe lanes on an X38 MB... drrooools :)

Well, think about it...

480Mb x 10 = 4,800Mb

4.8 Gb/s (kinda). That's pretty quick.

At 10x, it's 600 MB/s, that'll put it right in line with SATA-3 speeds which will probably be showing up sometime next year. eSATA is great, but if I could get the same performance and power delivered over USB, I'd choose USB.

USB doesn't exactly have a reputation for providing anything close to what it can theoretically provide, so perhaps with USB3 we will finally get a performance level of what USB2 should be providing now...

You'll need/want to hold out a few more months. USB 3.0 spec will be out early next year but will not be in time for the Eaglelake chipset. They'll hopefully have it ready for the Nahalem platform. You'll also get SATA-3 support, 10GBe, integrated Wifi/WiMax and by that time, 16 USB 2.0 ports :-?

10GBe and Wifi is suppose to be on Eaglelake also.

Well, you should get your facts strait before you make a statement like that.

"The fastest hdd sustained transfer rates are 40 MB/s???" Wow, and I thought you read Tom's Hardware? Seeing as how hdd's have a read time between 35 and 80 MB/s. All of which comes off of articles/HDD charts from Tom’s Hardware.

"When a mass production non-volatile memory..." Hmmm, let me think...I read in an article that a non-volatile memory, called pdram I believe, is to be released in a few years. It offers 1000x the read performance that current flash memory does. This is a phase change memory that does not use nano-technology.

The standard flash drive (thumb drive) is to max out transfer speeds by 2008-09. USB 2.0 will be the bottleneck then and a faster standard will be needed.

It’s funny that people always say “We don’t need anything faster/bigger, it’s just a waste to go to something new.” I had USB 1.1 since last year and it worked fine for what I needed it for. Did I go pick out a mother board with USB 1.1 when I finally upgraded my computer…no, nor did I get a system with USB 2.0 for the purpose of having USB 2.0, it just came with what I wanted. It would be a waste to get a system with outdated technology. Will I go out and get a computer when USB 3.0 comes out…no, but my next UPgrade will have the newer technology at the time, that’s the point of upgrading.

http://www.tomshardware.com/20...r_diagrams

I think the above pictures say enough. USB right now is a bottle-neck (in comparison to Firewire/eSata). Yeah, we're advertised a whole 80MB/s, but it's bad architecture. The benchmarked 500GB hard drive shows a serious bottleneck that delivers half the performance of either other option.

I'd rather have Firewire winning this battle since most applications that need speed (video transfer, external storage, ethernet) can't get it through USB.

New technology is always welcomed, by some with just a little bit of common sense, no matter how early or late it comes. I will never understand those "I am never happy with anything new or old" individuals who say anything that is not possitive about USB 3, DDR 3, new technologies in general. "no usb should be 40000 mb/s transfer speed, no we should stick to usb -01" come on people just let it come and be happy about it. Period.

I've just read articles fairly recently about wireless USB, and wonder if you guys think WUSB or USB 3.0 is the next logical step in the USB universe. Any chance they could be combined that anyone knows about?

It's time. We may not need usb 3.0 now but in two years it might be essential. Besides, it's not going to cost $300 for a new usb 3.0 motherboard. It might change the price by $1-$5 max.

USB 3.0 sounds nice and all, but I'd be content with a little more USB functionality in the 1.1/2.0 formats first! How about fixing USB so if I accidentally change ports, the device doesn't have to reinstall itself! Intel and M$ should sit down and discuss that first, then bring on the 3.0...my 2 cents.

I would be happy if I was able to tell which side was "up" when I go to plug in my USB device. You cannot always see where you are plugging in to but you end up pulling the PC out to see the port direction. How about a little nub on the left side or something?

Downside of wireless is that the transmitters will increase power usage of the device. I'll agree heartily that at least for some devices, the convenience outweighs the power consumption increase.

Plankmeister - Stating that you'd expected a far greater speed increase than 10x times... I'm not going to comment... Sigh... It is amazing that they can speed it up by 4x even.

Firstly, the cable length and cable types has physical limits on: The cable itself may become an antenna at certain frequencies for example, or a dead short at the recieving end.

Also, keeping it backward compatible, may cause a lot of other problems, like the driver circuitry that has to switch relatively high voltages (Used in the old USB's) at that pace, will require a lot more power (Look at power consumption when overclocking a CPU).

It is JUST NOT AS EASY as you think, MUCH MORE DIFFICULT THAN many other interconnects. Same for FireWire.

PS: That's goes for you two John, external PCIe would be an even worse nightmare...

This has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with Intel!!! It is a drivers FOR Microsoft Windows that needs to reinstall itself ON Microsoft Windows, isn't it!?! (It happens because Microsoft Windows binds the drivers for USB devices to a certain USB host conntroller, to which there are usually 2 ports connected, instead of binding the driver to the device name itself, which is probabaly a design consideration/issue with Windows itself)

Sorry, I HATE it when Intel gets blamed for Microsoft mistakes, so sorry if I seem to be flaming...

The detriment to the computer peripherals industry that USB has wrought is only balanced out by its universal acceptance and subsequent mediocrity.

IEEE 1394b has been around since the 90's! And compared head-to-head with USB 2.0, it is still superior for applications involving any kind of high-speed data streaming.

How much more could you expect from a technology that was originally developed so you could plug you keyboard and mouse into your computer (allright, not entirely true). I guess it's better than the headline "PS/2 3.0 PROPOSED!" or "COMING SOON - RS-232z"

In response to the guy complaining about extra bandwidth being wasted on hard drives: HDs have disk cache with much higher burst transfer rates than the sustained transfer rates right off the platter! THAT is what makes Windows faster while your OS is devouring all available RAM and the read/write head is going crazy trying to load all your junk under " HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVer sionRun", while simultaneously filling your pagefile cause you're out of RAM!

Ok, yeah, I know, "Who's running their OS of their crappy MyBook?" Just makin' a point. Unless is a virtual machine...

In most computers, the USB port is set with the "plank" (the flat bit with the wires and circuitry on it) on the top half of the port, therefore, the cable must go in with the "plank" on the bottom. It easy to tell if the cable is the right way around because of the two square holes. If the square holes are "filled" by the "plank", then it's the wrong way up - the holes should be "empty". Sorry about all the inverted commas :P