RSS5 Gbps USB 3.0 comes closer to reality with new controller
By Tim Conneally | Published May 20, 2009, 11:59 AM
USB 3.0 has been expected to "arrive" for a considerable amount of time, but due to the lengthy draft certification process, and general lack of pressure to get 3.0 "SuperSpeed" devices out in the market, it wasn't expected to become widespread until 2010. However, with NEC's new host controller, the arrival of the new USB standard could arrive soon.
The host controller is a chip which connects the host system such as a PC to external storage, peripherals or other systems, and NEC's new host controller (µPD720200) is based on the SuperSpeed USB standard which was finalized in November of 2008, more than eight years after the USB 2.0 spec was released.
The 3.0 spec promises transfer speeds of up to 5 gigabits per second with full backwards compatibility with 480 Mbps USB 2.0 (a.k.a., High Speed), 1.5 Mbps - 12 Mbps USB 1.0 (Low Speed to Full Speed). NEC says the new chip requires only 70 seconds to transfer 25 GB of video content to/from a Blu-ray disc, compared to the 14 minutes it would take with USB 2.0.
Throughput benchmarks?
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|25GB (I'll presume the conservative 25 billion bytes) in 70 seconds is 357MB/sec or 2.86 gigabits per second (I think). As usual, approx 50% bullshthead...
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like the new bottleneck will finally be the harddrive. I'm reading these HD benchmarks and the fastest read/write speed I see is 132MB/sec, well below the 357MB/sec given in the promo example (if it can be believed)...
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|Also correct me if i am wrong.
But isn't 357MB /s = 4.46Gbps
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|@iwod: ...No
It's 2.7890625 Gbps (if using 1024MB in GB, or what extremely well said if using 1000 MB in GB)
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|Yes you are right, but this is a new development,and no doubt when usb 2 came out your speeds where not attainable then for hard drives of the time.You look to future hardware developments to achieve said figures!
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|Will this mean that we'll finally have USB monitors without the need for a video card?
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|Why wait?
http://www.xbitlabs.com/...ay/samsung-sm940ux.html
Of course, you are still dependent on the CPU rather than the GPU for the image, so even with the 5Gb transfer rate you aren't likely to get 3D emulation our of it. ;)
Would work great for "tiny" terminals though. :D
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|If a monitor like this used USB 3.0 it would be possible to put a mid range or low end graphics chip in the monitor and simply have the CPU pass the graphics data on to the monitor, kind of like the way the CPU currently passes the data to the graphics card plugged into the motherboard.
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|Why bother with the expense when there is already a bus built specifically for that?
...and they're already using it for "external" graphics cards.
...and who'd want the GPU built into the monitor? It's bad enough having to upgrade the GPU every now and then...but the monitor too?
Sounds like a perfectly horrible idea. I'm sure we'll start seeing them any day now. ;-)
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|Don't people do that anyways when they upgrade their monitors to a bigger size? For what I paid for a 22" monitor you can now get a 24" one.
(What's 2" worth? I don't know, but you should ask any woman what 2" more mean. [smiles] )
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|Meh...
Bought a couple of 22" widescreens a couple of years ago. No intention of upgrading.....ever. I mean seriously...how big do you need 'em?
*shrug*
I'll probably go through 4 or so GPU's in the time I have these. (already on #2...shopping/researching #3)
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|But what if you could plug your video card into your monitor, kinda like a notebook video card? Look at all the exposed surface area that'd be available for cooling, as well as pulling power from the monitor's power source. The idea is intriguing, if USB3 can handle it.
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|"But what if you could plug your video card into your monitor, kinda like a notebook video card? "
Already done with PCI-Express.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XG_Station
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