Comments on: USB 3.0 will crush eSATA, FireWire

Intel demonstrated a working version of USB 3.0 at CES last week. Here's what we can look forward to with the new technology.

[Brian]

No wonder Apple dropped the Firewire 400 port on the new 13" Macbooks.

But until USB 3.0 arrives, I will wait.

I feel good about Apple now.

[kzemach]

One thing missing from the article that I find exceptionally good about USB 3.0 is the increased power delivery. 2.0 was 500mA. USB 3.0, if I recall correctly (please correct if wrong) is 900mA. That's almost twice the power. Now externals such as DVD writers will actually work reliably, which in turn further enables net tops and the like. And quite frankly, at that power, you could run a OLPC _FROM_ USB if they would take in that low power. That means the same USB cig socket and AC adapter you use to run your phone would run/recharge a small low power netbook as well. That's cool.

[tipoo_]

i would have liked it if more power could be sent through USB.

[technewsjunkie]

Well Apple has had something better with FireWire, but Intel saw FW eating USB's lunch and it reacted to it with USB 2.
Now Apple is using Intel Chips, and this updated USB 2 and 3 fills the need that FW was created for.

I agree that one ubiquitous Standard is a good thing. So I'm for USB 3. The point is that it is good technology.

Firewire was created because Intel was letting USB languish and wasn't filling the need for a faster bus with power on it.
THAT"S WHAT HAPPENS WITH MONOPOLIES - THEY GET LAZY AND DON'T INNOVATE. Competition, courtesy of Apple, is a good thing for everyone.

[buwish]

I concur with a lot of the coments previously posted. I recently installed a firewire 800 board in my pc to see if it would in fact out perform USB 2.0. Needless to say, it blows it away, especially when transfering large files (1 gigabye plus) from my C drive to my external drive with the firewire connection.

[dennisl59]

So the data transfer(I/O rate) bottleneck gets moved again, what else is new? Been happening for how many years now? Since the dawn of computing. Yawn. Thank You.

[the_iceman]

It's time huh, 2.0 is almost 10 years old now. Glad to hear this news. Patiently waiting it's release.

Agree w/ the reviewer above we need something standard here. USB, eSata, Firewire is too much, lets just pick one that works everywhere...what a concept

[kelmon]

I'll believe it when I see it. In the meantime the "theoretical" claims will remain as theoretical as my having anything to do with USB 3.

anybody notice fw 400 and 800 don't work well simultaneously on an imac (os x 10.5)? you can't upload data from a mini dv camcorder (fw 400) and have a fw 800 hard drive running at the same time. that kind of problem would never happen with usb. there'll be more support at the hardware and software levels for the usb standard. i can't wait for fw to be dead and buried.

[sting7k]

Can you even buy a computer with any FireWire ports anymore? My newest one from dell didn't even have a mini port, and I don't know if I've seen a FireWire 800 port on any PC (other than someone adding a card for it themselves in a PCI slot).

Bring on USB3.0, we need one standard so I can just have 6 of the same port on my computer and not 3-4 different ones for different things. Even if it can only get to 2.5Gbps in the real world, that is pretty fast.

[The_BossApplesauce]

Yeah, and the PS3 had all that theoretical power too. I will believe it when I see it.

[stockyjoe]

Yeah but I have a feeling it will crush my CPU as well.

[BigGuns149]

Yeah, it will take 10 times the CPU overhead! Sarcasm aside, I think that the overhead will definitely make USB 3.0 noticeable slower than eSATA since eSATA is a direct connection to the external HDD.

[inachu]

Early motherboard adopters of USB has many times got the implementation flat wrong or even when late to the game in getting a pc to even boot from USB.
I bought one motherboard off the retail shelf before compusa closed and the BFG motherboard did not support flashing the bios from USB?
Really sad

[chrisx1]

Can hard disk drives read and write fast enough for this to matter?
You can't transfer files faster than the hard drives you are transferring between can both read and write.

[mvincenti]

The article only briefly mentions it but the Firewire bus is still preferred for audio and video applications because the transfer negotiation happens at the bus, not the processor. So the faster that USB goes, the more the processor will have to process. Plus, you can piggyback firewire devices (up to 127!, i think). You can't do that with USB. USB will still be a good cheap interface and will remain on all consumer products but for a professional application (like the MacBook PROs- not the consumer line), firewire will still be preferred over USB. All of your high-end audio and video interfaces are firewire. So long as USB is dependent on the processor, this will not change.

[benjwah]

You're an embarrassment to Australia. Your article was basically an advertisement for USB3 and contained no information that wasn't available 6 months ago.

[nicmart]

Will USB 3 end the malarky about external drives being "bus powered"?

[siriusblackp]

The fastest data rates I have observed between two G5 Macs is via 1000baseT ethernet. Firewire 800 was a close second. USB was only ever intended as a cheap consumer-grade interconnect, not for high performance computing. Ethernet is isolated, faster, inexpensive, and easily configured for TCP/IP and UDP, which makes it easy to use - no driver ********, chipset incompatibilities, or BSOD when you unplug it (yes, Vista does this.) Power with ethernet is no big deal.

The real reason for USB 3 is to make money, and lots of it. And consumers will be the losers.

[JuggerNaut]

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

Ummm... FireWire has its own dedicated controller and doesn't need much CPU time, if at all, whereas USB needs the CPU to get its work done. Yeah, USB 3.0 will crush FireWire 3200, but only in popularity, not speed!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FireWire

[perlmanFamily]

1) Interfaces with and drives will be faster.

2) Someone metioned SCSI daisy chains - he does not remember the need for terminators and strange conflicts.

3) Even with slow drives, FW400 is faster than USB480 due to the lack of memory mapping, CPU overhead and lack of full duplexing.

4) I run Mac with up to 5TB of external drives. 2.5 TB USB2 and 2.5TB FW400. Unfortunately the computer does not have FW800. The FW400 drives run 10 to 20% faster when only data transferring is performed and this increases to a difference of ? 40% when other options are performed at the same time due to the duplexing issue.

4) The FW800 ports on the MBP are compatible with 400 1600 and 3200 as well - Apple has dropped ports from the lower end devices in the past to entice people to buy more expensive models. The loss of FW is really the only significant difference between the two lines.

4) I believe USB is going to full duplex.

5) FW1600 and 3200 have been improved and apparently will work at high speeds with FW800 drives and use the same pins.

6) I have lost data when connections to USB drives were transiently lost - not seen with the FW drives.

7) USB drives appear to power down better.

Having both is better, o/w the standards would not be adopted as quickly.