USB 3.0 spec nears completion

USB: Everyone loves its ubiquity and simplicity, but it's starting to show its age in an era of terabyte hard drives. USB 3.0 has been in the works for at least a year, and it's finally now to the point where actual hardware is being produced.

Maximum PC got a deep dive into USB 3, complete with a look at all the cable formats available. Check out the story at this link for detailed pictures of each of the connectors (that's the standard "A" connector shown above; contacts now run vertically instead of horizontally). While things look considerably different internally if you check out the connectors, old cables and equipment will be backward compatible with all existing USB hardware. (It gets even weirder if you look at the mini USB connectors: The new cables feature a split design that's twice as wide as the old mini connector, with a little gap in the middle. The prevailing theory, which I'm told the USB folks won't confirm, is that you can plug your old USB gear into just half the connector and it will still work.)

The big bonus of course is speed: Maxing out at 4.8Gbps, USB 3.0 is 10 times faster than the current USB 2.0 spec. And while you sadly won't see that level of speed in the real world, you should at least see a huge improvement over current equipment (which doesn't really approach 480Mbps, either). A full gigabit per second performance for standard file copies (to an external hard drive, for example) is likely doable. Another big innovation: USB 3.0 separates upstream and downstream data, so you should actually be able to get an additional performance boost since you can read and write at the same time.

Even better: Faster charging over USB. Current USB power is a measly 100 milliamps, which is why it takes all day to charge your iPod. USB 3.0 jumps to 900 milliamps, so gadgets will charge considerably faster.

Max PC says not to expect products until late 2009 at the earliest, and then begins the long slow process of upgrading desktops and laptops to the new connectors and controllers. Still, this is one change I'm definitely looking forward to.

LINK: Everything You Need to Know About USB 3.0