USB 3.0 will crush eSATA, FireWire

The USB 3.0 cable is substantially thicker than the USB 2.0 cable as it contains six wires rather than two.

(Credit: Reuben Lee/CNET Asia)

Intel demonstrated a working version of USB 3.0 at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week. Here's why it will make eSATA and FireWire obsolete.

When USB 3.0 is expected to hit the market in early 2010, it will have been 10 years since the now ubiquitous USB 2.0 was introduced (April 2000). The current USB 2.0 specification runs at a theoretical maximum speed of 480Mbps, and can supply power (for those looking for the hard details, you can find the USB 2.0 specification here (zip file).

According to the USB Implementers Forum, there were 2 billion USB 2.0 devices shipped in 2006 (one for every three people in the world), and the install base was 6 billion (almost one for every person in the world). In November 2007, the USB Implementers forum announced the USB 3.0 specifications, and Intel officially demonstrated the technology at CES 2009.

Now, the juice: USB 3.0 promises a theoretical maximum rate of 5Gbps, meaning it's 10 times faster than USB 2.0. USB 3.0 is also full duplex, meaning it can upload and download simultaneously (it's bi-directional); USB 2.0 is only half duplex.

Put side by side with eSATA and FireWire 800, USB 3.0 is far superior. eSATA, an external connection that runs at the same speed as the internal SATA 1.0 bus, has a maximum theoretical of 3Gbps. This makes USB 3.0 faster than eSATA and about six times faster than FireWire 800 (full duplex at 800Mbps).

USB 3.0 also provides another advantage; while eSATA is faster than FireWire 800, unlike FireWire it cannot supply power. USB 3.0 has the advantage of being faster than both, even while supplying power.

Finally, USB 3.0 has improved power management, meaning that devices can move into idle, suspend, and sleep states. This potentially means more battery life out of laptops and other battery-based USB-supporting devices like cameras and mobile phones.

Of course, there are other factors to consider; the FireWire 3200 standard is also in the works and promises to allow 3.2GHz speeds on existing FireWire 800 hardware. USB 2.0 generally doesn't meet its theoretical maximum throughput, due to its dependence on hardware and software configuration, where FireWire gets much closer.

It's hard to say whether USB 3.0's updated architecture will still use more CPU time than FireWire does.

But in the age of powerful hardware (can anyone say "3.2GHz, quad-core CPUs"?), all of this means that FireWire is still not going to match USB 3.0's theoretical maximum of 5Gbps.

The ultimate signal that this war has already been won is Apple's recent decision to ditch FireWire from its consumer line in favor of USB. Previously, Cupertino had been one of FireWire's greatest advocates. And surely the company will be one of the first to adopt USB 3.0.

All in all, we can't wait for motherboard manufacturers like Gigabyte and Asus to start supporting the technology and mainstream PC builders like Dell to start integrating it into their products. Bring on the speed.

Alex Serpo of ZDNet Australia reported from Sydney.

[Lwestlie]

I dunno, it all sounds sketchy to me. I have never seen USB 2.0 deliver on its promises and I don't know if 3.0 will be much better. Theoretical and real world are very different. I will be impressed if 3.0 can do 400MB/s

[Mystigo]

Yes. USB 2.0 doesn't hold a candle to FireWire 800. I just bought 2 FW 800 enclosures to replace 2 USB 2.0 enclosures. Transferring massive files with USB 2 is like watching paint dry. FW 800 is much faster. I am not holding my breath for USB 3.0. It may be a bit faster than FW 800 but dollars to doughnuts it won't even come close to the theoretical maximum. I bet that 5 Gb/s they are quoting is 2.5 in one direction. Then they are going to cut a bunch of the bandwidth out for an isoc channel, and then some more for interrupt pipes. And then maybe divide it all by two so you can have two devices running at the same time, etc.

[pixxelated]

I'll believe this when I see (and use it). The firewire spec still has legs and has always outperformed USB. The spec for future FW iterations calls for 6.4 Gbit/s and it doesn't surprise me that Apple is phasing out the old, slow 400 version to get ready for 800 and 3200 only. The problem with USB is that it doesn't sustain it's peak transfer rates like FW, so even though USB 2.0 may be theoretically faster than say FW 400, the firewire will still smoke it when doing data transfers of any size because it sustains it's speed. USB drops in half or so in real life use. Unless USB 3.0 can sustain closer to it's peak, it will still be slower in use than FW, and maybe even eSATA. I'm not ready to put a nail in FW's coffin yet. I prefer it any day over USB for my work. It's a very noticeable difference when say working with hard drives.

[solitare_pax]

Agreed - and if the hardware isn't compatible with existing USB sockets as USB 1 and USB 2 are, it will have a hard time getting adopted.

I've already got a drawer full of SCSI, ADB, PS/2, and other obsolete connectors - do I want more? No thank you.

[spurs11]

what's up with all the Negative Nancy's on this site? Bunch of whiney nay-sayers and know-it-alls. I've seen this upgrade work first-hand and can reiterate that it is damn sweet. It's one important reason (not the only) why Apple dumped the FW port on the new MB. Pixx (and all the rest), you are leaving out one very important variable but since you're the smart guy, you'll have to wait and see. 3.0 will be the new blazing standard. FW will fall short as 2.0 does.

Lighten up Francis and have some faith people! it's 2009 and besides, this technology is not rocket science.

[abundantsnotbob]

I wish that you could use 2.0 devices in 3.0 ports, but I think that I would still get USB over firewire because I don't have any firewire stuff, but I have alot of USB stuff. I guess it could change the connectors for mp3 players and such. so if most products only came with firewire connections, and most computers had firewire connections, then that would be what I used. As for the hard drives that are much faster because of their connectivity to the computer, if USB is theoretically faster, then the developers will likely go for that. Firewire was mainly an apple thing, and they dumped it, and it wasn't compatible with most computers, so not very many people used it. I don't like it when apple makes new kinds of connections or uses uncommon ones. (iPod connectors, firewire, the new display connectors, etc) I know that apple gets paid for each product that uses the iPod connector, and their other products can only be made by them, so If you want to connect something, you have to buy something else from them. If I were designing a product, it would use USBs, and standard monitor cables, and I wouldn't make a new type of connection that is only useful to people who buy my stuff.

[CBWolf]

I've been a big fan of FireWire, but it is about time that connection ports standardized. USB 3.0 for everybody!

[karpenterskids]

Amen to that!

[sharmajunior]

Yeh! 3.0 for everybody. Finally we can go get external hard drives and products that all support the same thing instead of getting 5 different cables for 1 specific product.

Look at Apple. Even they dumped firewire ports from some of their newer computers.

[fredtheviking]

USB 3.0 has been much hyped and I think it will crush other standards for the same reason it did it the last 2 times. It had more support from hardware vendors and the customers don't care that much about these standards anyway (except for people on this site). In fact, I doubt most consumers will know they have USB 3.0 when they get it. It will just be pushed on them passively.

[BigGuns149]

I would have to differ that USB 1.1 was such a big success. USB 1.1 is so slow that even a CD burner would cap out at ~8X nevermind talking about external DVD drive, Flash Drive, HDD, etc. It is hard for people to recognize it now, but Flash drives have been around for a decade, but they didn't really catch on until USB 2.0 came out. USB 1.1 wasn't a quantum leap. In fact, USB had been around for years before Microsoft even bothered to include full USB support(eg. neither Windows 95 nor the original Windows 98 had full implementations of USB 1.1).

A big issue that I have with some of the USB 3.0 boosterism is that where are the controllers and actual periphials to demonstrate the actual performance? CNET presumes that the CPU overhead will be minor, but they have no actual data. The CPU overhead may be dramatic, but we are all simply guessing until somebody with a real controller in a realistic test (ie. no loopback tests) posts some results. Even somebody with absolutely NO technical knowledge realizes that marketing departments often overstate the capabilities of their products. Why should we be taking their claims at face value? It makes me think that you are either ignorant or a shill for the USB-IF.

Furthermore, while USB 3.0 looks similar it has additional connectors that the computer also needs to take advantage of the higher speed. In other words people will have to buy entirely new cables on top of all the new hardware. eSATA doesn't require anything new for desktop computers other than a bracket in many cases. Therefore adding USB 3.0 would cost more NOT less than eSATA. Furthermore, most people aren't bothered by power adapters. Many external HDDs require an additional power adapter, but we don't see widespread outcry because of that. For many people USB 3.0's promise of not requiring a power adapter is a solution in search of a problem. Furthermore, unless USB 3.0 offers better performance than eSATA I think that eSATA will continue to live on amongst those who care about performance. SATA/300 may offer better performance than USB 3.0 and when SATA/600 arrives in another year it should exceed even USB 3.0's theoretical speed.

You are correct that I think that USB 3.0 will probably be more popular than eSATA or Firewire, but I doubt it is going to make either format obsolete.

[storrey]

Does it really matter though? If hard drives are limited to 3 GB per second, USB 3.0 will exceed the ceiling.

[Notoapplefanbois]

Not necessarily because for all we know, usb 3.0 may replace SATA II or SATA III may come out at faster speed's than both of them hence why we need SSD's.

[jahcriado]

3Gbs is the current max on SATA, SATA 6Gb/s is supposed to be released this year, though most HDDs today (excepting possibly SSD's) don't even reach the 3Gb that SATA can handle. It is always better for your hardware to be able to handle more than is currently capable so that, like USB 2, it'll be around for 10 yrs.

[another_cissp]

A hard drive that can put out data at 3 GB a second. What kind of hard drives are you running? your average hard drive does sustained reads and writes at around 30 MB sec and random reads and writes at about 10 MB sec. You would need 10 hard drives raid 0 together to come close to saturating the USB 2.0 bandwidth.

[zyxxy]

Most hard drives running at 7200 can only stream 20MB to 30MB, which at 8 bits per byte, is only about 240Mb/s.
So any bandwidth above that is essentially wasted in streaming mode. The only value for faster access is to take advantage of the cache in the drive. This is particularly useful on posted writes, but again, if you are reading, or writing, a long stream of data, you are going to be 'platter limited' long before you are I/O limited. The only difference would be perhaps if you has an eSATA connection to a RAID 0 array in an enclosure, but I don't think many of us are running with that option....

[BigGuns149]

If USB 3.0 is like USB 2.0 it the reality not meeting the hype USB 3.0 may not even hit 3GB/sec in any real tests. That issue aside, SSD already do far outstrip the capabilities of USB 2.0. Even cheap "slow" MLC based solid state memory 200MB/sec whereas USB 2.0 tends to putter out at 30MB/sec. Even if 200MB/sec were the limit USB 3.0 would still dramatically increase the performance capabilities of flash drives.

Considering that we are talking about USB 3.0 coming in 2010 at the earliest we really should planning a interface that is designed for the needs of people in 2015+ where having a 3GB/sec interface will be very much appreciated. As others have noted you want to create a standard that has room to grow. Sure, most people would have trouble taxing said interface today, but as history has taught us what seemed obscene performance years ago will eventually seem practically expected.

[kenohki]

How did this make it past editors? This is a parroting of an Intel demo with cheerleading thrown in for good measure. I'm sure USB 3.0 will be great and provide much more bandwidth to applications that require it. I'm not an expert on USB 3.0 but if it has as much overhead as USB 2.0, it won't come near it's theoretical max. And if it still requires the host computer to play traffic cop, then there will still be cases where FireWire 3200 will be superior in a given application (such as those where peer-to-peer transfers are indicated or where certain amounts of bandwidth must be guaranteed for a transfer). I don't think you'll see FireWire going away quickly in the DV space. And the iMac and Mac Mini still have FireWire so what's the deal with claiming that Apple has dropped FireWire from its consumer machines?

I'll use USB 3.0 when it's available just like the next person. And I'm sure it will be widespread, it's cheaper to implement in hardware and provides most of the features that a user needs. But, why does CNET feel the need lately to throw together technically weak pieces and slap a sensationalist headline on them?

[benjwah]

How did this make it past editors? - CNet has editors? Jokes aside, I wondered the same thing. It's the most obvious puff-piece I've seen in a while.

[nicmart]

Even more distressingly, all the interesting bits could have been said in 100 words.

[BigGuns149]

@ benjwah:

The joke about the editors was really good. This is such a puff piece it isn't funny. Anyone who has been following the computer industry for more than a few years realizes that marketing departments overstate their products' capabilities.

[Syliss]

Last time i checked, USB 2.0 had 4 wires, not 2. I would be nice tho for faster transfers.

[groink_hi]

No, USB 1.x and 2.x has only two wires - for the data. The other two wires are used for power. USB 3.0 does in fact add four additional wires for the data.

[cowhide--2008]

that is what i need more speed, so what if i have to buy new cables, adapters and maybe a new computer, i wanted one anyway.

[ss944]

I remember associates telling me that USB 2.0 was going to put Firewire out to pasture... in the interim, all of our PC's came with it and we've installed FW800 and SATA PCI cards because USB is *useless* for throwing around a lot of data (imagery in our case) in any kind of a timely fashion. For instance, scrub through a raw DV stream on USB2 and FW400... the FW400 doesn't skip horribly like the USB does. For users of a lot of data, time means money and USB2 costs us a *lot* more time!

In the market though... whichever is mass produced more means it will be cheaper and will win in the consumer arena, and that by default means USB will be the dominant bus in the marketplace. Not that the speed differential is very tangible for the end user anyway... neither the storage medium, nor Vista/7 could keep up with the theoretical max as both are extremely bottlenecked.

So I predict that Firewire and SATA will go the way of SCSI and Beta... still in use by pro's who know better and demand the performance for their livelihood, while the rest of society sits content drinking their Big Gulp through a coffee stirrer.

[mschwage]

Oh not again- another story touting the glorious speed of USB. I am so sick of manufacturers spouting a bunch of theoretical rubbish about the USB bus, and the press buying the whole story lock, stock, and barrel. I will tell you this: My Firewire 400 (the old Firewire, not FW800) beats the pants off of *every* USB 2.0 device I have used, include USB harddrives (eg, Matrox OneTouch) and USB disks (SanDisk Cruzer, Lexar JumpDrive). There is simply no comparison. USB 3.0? I'll believe if/when I see it. And I'll tell you this: the performance you see on your desktop will be nowhere close to the "theoretical". So don't get all charged up over 3 GB/sec. You'll be lucky to see 1 GB/sec... if 3.0 follows the same miserable path set by its predecessor, USB 2.0.

[another_cissp]

Judging USB and firewire speed using hard drives and flash drive is plain dumb. Niether are fast enough to come anywhere close to saturating the USB or firewire bandwidth.

[benjwah]

@ another_cissp: I've read your comments, and I don't think you understand the difference between megabits per second and megabytes per second

[FellowConspirator]

USB is considerably more complex and has FAR more CPU overhead in implementation than FW (simpler, less CPU) or eSATA (simplest, least CPU). So, sustained USB throughput is typically very low compared to its theoretical peak. That's why you see FW400 typically runs 25-30% faster than USB2 on sustained transfers (despite USB2 having a theoretical peak of 480Mbps).

The biggest concern of USB3 is not so much that, but rather of the enormous burden it puts on the host CPU during sustained data transfer. It's very fast, but there's a fantastic cost for that speed. If you connect to a fast USB3 RAID, expect your system performance to tank and your CPU to overheat.

eSATA is probably not going to be displaced as the best simple-independently-powered-external-storage medium, and FW3200 and FW6400 will probably still have the advantages over USB3 that FW400 and FW800 have today over USB2.

That said, the USB spec encompasses a much wider variety of general devices than FireWire (which supports mainly disks, networking, and A/V equipment) and eSATA (which is dedicated to storage). I would guess that wireless USB3 will have far more impact than wired USB3, and most wireless USB3 devices will probably operate at USB2 speeds for practical reasons that have to do more with the performance of the host than the devices or medium.

[dharper76]

I doesn't matter what speed USB 3.0 is if the harware on the machine cannot support it. If you have a hard drive that is SATA 2 you are limited to 3GB's. So if you are transferring data froma USB 3.0 device it will still only go a 3GB's.

Most Manufacturers are competing to be the best, so if one ups the speed of their device the others reguardless of what connection they use firewire, usb, eSATA or some other type of connection they will boost their speed to be either comparable to or faster.

I am willing to bet everyone will have a competing product ready by the time USB 3.0 is released and actually included on a machine.

[pcito]

This is the best point made so far about this. I think everyone here understands the concept of a 'bottleneck'. Well, the fact is that communication with a drive will have to be controlled by (and limited by) the sata controller itself. Therefore, speed and latency will never be able to be faster than the sata controller can go (currently a theoretical 3Gbs). So USB3 could have a theoretical bandwith of 50 terabits and it wouldn't help at all because the data is only coming at it at the speed that the controller can handle at best.

Note that eSata is basically a direct link to the Sata controller, except that it is designed for external connectivity. Therefore, it provides no measurable slowdown to the data coming out of the sata controller and is therefore as fast as you're going to get - and will remain so for the bottleneck reason I explained above. The data will be limited by the drive or the controller, not the wire. Adding a bigger pipe on the link from the controller to the drive won't increase throughput unless that link was the bottleneck in the first place, which it wasn't, even with USB2.

USB3 connections to drives will in fact be at least slightly slower than eSata because the data will have to travel from the eSata controller (which will limit it to 3Gbs), and then be processed and even translated to USB3 compatible format (and additional step which consumes time) before being sent to the drive, where it will again have to be unpacked for delivery to the actual drive via the external drive hardware (an additional time consuming step including overhead and cost, etc). This will slow the transfer of sequential data down at least slightly, and maybe significantly. Furthermore, it will dramatically increase LATENCY, something which is not addressed or taken into account by this article or most of the comments about it. This means that for transfers of large numbers of small files, performance will suffer significantly. The only way to avoid this is to avoid the need for the additional steps altogether, which is what eSata does by being a direct link to the controller. eSata will remain faster, and additionally will not require additional hardware and firmware to work, so USB3 probably will not "crush" eSata.

On the other hand, USB3 hopefully will remove some of the overhead from the system's cpu to the USB3 controller, which will help partially. I would assume it will deliver a substantial if not fatal blow to firewire 400, and depending on how it's architected, maybe to newer firewire implementations.

[drwam]

Hey, I am an old Firewire guy and I think USB 3 is great. However, the drives are going to continue to be SATA native mechanisms. Therefore, USB 3 drives will use some sort of bridge board to translate between SATA and USB. These boards are not magic and must have some overhead. Therefore, I doubt any of us know what the real world external drive performance will be. I suspect they will all come out about the same once everything matures. If that is true, USB 3 wins by being cheapest and by being backed by Intel. Firewire will continue to do well in specialized areas but not in the consumer space.

[Jermski]

A lot of interesting comments here, but it seems that many dont understand there is a difference between GB/sec and Gb/sec; invalidating some of these statements.

[vocaro]

That's still better than the author of the article, who doesn't understand there's a difference between Gbps and GHz!

[benjwah]

Jermski & vocaro, I believe you both have valid points.

[unwritten_law9]

Who cares it's 2 years away. Maybe if they would push up the date we could get some excitement. USB World anyone?

[notsatch]

A lot of people need to learn to differentiate between GB and Gb...

[H4MM3R]

Missing from the comments is SATA-6/eSATA-6.

For a fair fight compare,

USB 3.0
FW 6400
eSATA-6

FIGHT ON!!!

[benjwah]

That's not a fair fight. USB would get creamed.

[gsmiller88]

I find it quite absurd that USB 2.0 was released in 2000 but none of my computers had it until I bought my iMac in 2006.

[shusseina2]

This was the same situation when the first generation USB was announced, it took a long time to show up in the market place and in fact Apple was one of the first to embrace it, in its first generation iMac.

"The ultimate signal that this war has already been won is Apple's recent decision to ditch FireWire from its consumer line in favor of USB. Previously, Cupertino had been one of FireWire's greatest advocates."

It seems Apple's MacBook Pros and iMac still offer FireWire.

It's understandable Cupertino has been FireWire's greatest advocate, they invented it.

USB is winning in the market place simply because it is cheaper to produce, hence the reason Apple iPod long ago forgo FireWire for USB, that is to keep costs down. That said, I guess you get what you pay for.

[DrtyDogg]

@shusseina2: You've got to be kidding right. . . there where tons of USB devices and computers supporting it prior to the iMac.

[benjwah]

Bullpoop. I remember being in a recording studio a coupla years back, they ran Pro-Tools on a G5 Mac Pro which had only USB1.1 - You better believe we went to lunch whenever transferring files. Every PC I saw at the time ran USB2.

[chris_d]

The problem with USB is it doesn't get anywhere NEAR its theoretical speed. I've had people tell me that USB 2.0 is faster than Firewire (400), but if you put the two side by side, and actually transfer data, Firewire blows it away. USB 2.0 is faster than 1.1, but it's still dog slow. If history is any indication, USB 3 will be slower than Firewire 800 in real-world applications.

[Heebee Jeebies]

My problems with the current USB is that...

1) External hard drives get dropped by windows and when they aren't dropped are way way slower than eStata.
2) Large items like printers, scanners, etc. at least for me and my friends don't want to work through hubs. I have always felt that USB would have been better served with the daisy-chain setup that SCSI hard. You plug-in device in to the computer and then another device plug-ins in to that device and another device plug-ins to the that device and so on. Hubs don't seem to work well or be that reliable. So much so that I have 32 USB 2.0 ports in my computer all done either with on the motherboard connections or through plug-in PCI/PCI Express cards. Only a few things work relaibly through a hub and I have tried many different types and brands of hubs.

USB is ok, but isn't close to what it could have been, should have been and promised it would be. Specifications need to be strickly enforced with no corner cutting to make sure that everything works with everything at the proper speed and with all USB devices and hubs. I don't think that is the case now. You have powered and unpowered hubs and things like that that can really make reliability hit and miss.

Firewire is a joke, always has been and always will be.

eSata is the best option for external hard drive connection. All of my problems with my 12 external hard drives went away when I moved them to eSata enclosures.

Robert

[bommai]

Would you mind explaining to me why firewire is a joke. It takes less CPU power to process than USB. It supports true peer-to-peer connection and daisy chaining with different network topology. It has built in support for isochronous transfers with upto 80% of bandwidth reserved for isochronous transfers. It has great support for control such as DV. It was close to becoming a standard for Bluray and such until HDMI took over due to piracy concerns. Just because it was not as pervasive as USB, does not mean it is a joke.

[man_w_balls]

you obviously must not own/use any FireWire devices.
i have multiple external USB/FW drives, and some can be self-powered...
the ones with USB take 2 USB cables, and the ones with FW take one FW cable - firewire wins
FW400 consistently sustains higher transfer speeds than USB 2.0 480Mbps - FW win

duh

[Heebee Jeebies]

Maybe joke should have been explained more. By joke I don't mean the technology I mean it is a joke because outside of Apple and Camcorders firewire has basically not gone very far. Sure you can find the occasional external hard drive but by and large USB and eSata have much more market penetration. Now that Apple have dropped firewire for a good chunk of their computers firewire has become even more of a joke. Now add in the rapid move to solid state media camcorders that use digital camera media and media card readers and that is just another nail in the firewire coffin making it once again and joke.

Now it could very well be that firewire is the best technology or was but it like Beta in the VHS vs. Beta fight lost. It is now definitely all but dead and the new specification isn't going to change that maybe just have it linger a bit longer.

Robert

[sting7k]

It's a joke because unless you buy the most expensive performance computers you are lucky to even get one FireWire 400 port, or at best you get a mini port.

I have no devices that use FireWire and I have nearly everything you could attach to your computer. You have to really look to find external HDDs that also have FireWire, most are USB and eSATA or only one of those. Even Apple is dumping it in favor of USB.

I've never had the problems with USB hubs that some are mentioning. But I don't see how USB 2.0's problems will transfer to 3.0. Now that 3.0 is full duplexed and 10 times faster AND can power devices that seems plenty good.

[benjwah]

Firewire isn't a joke. It's a tool, used by professionals.
People who drive Corolla's don't look at big rig trucks and say "That's a joke", and the reason many people still use it is because of some of the problems you mentioned with USB.

[OS11]

USB was designed as a low cost, low speed cable connect, and that will forever be its weakness.

Firewire was created to replace SCSI, while paving the way for high speed, real time data transfer. Firewire is a deeply established standard for professional users and will be around for decades to come. But yes, it's overkill for general level PCs since it's more expense and too feature rich for most consumer needs.

eSATA isn't a standard, it's just a hack to add fast external drives. But for that specific use, it is fine.

All 3 have their proper place, none can or will fully replace the other. Easy way to keep it straight:

USB - Consumer
FW - Professional
eSATA - Fast Storage

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