ArdorPES

No doubt alot of people know what usb is, that is, Universal Serial Bus. Currently on version 2.0, are you ready for the next version of this ubiquitous interface? USB 2.0 (otherwise known as USB Hi-Speed) boosted the original 12Mbps data rate to 480Mmb/s over eight years ago, and now USB 3.0 (dubbed USB Superspeed) is set to multiply that bandwidth tenfold.

USB 3.0 connectors and cables will be 2.0  compatible as well, but you won’t be able to maximize your bandwidth unless you’re using a USB 3.0 cable with Superspeed devices and ports, but at least plugging a 3.0 cable into a 2.0 port won’t blow up your PC.

USB 2.0 cables worked off of four lines – a pair for in/out data transfer, one line for power, and the last for grounding. USB 3.0 adds five new lines (the cable is noticeably thicker), but the new contacts sit parallel to the old ones on a different plane, as opposed to being adjacent to them. This means you’ll be able to differentiate between 2.0 and 3.0 cables just by looking at the ends.

So apart from speed you ask what other benefits is version 3 going to give me?

1. Faster transfers – USB 3.0 SuperSpeed will be 10 times faster than the 480Mbps limit of the version 2.0 meaning transferring 27gb would only take 70 seconds providing your disc can write data that quickly.
2. Faster charging for appliances – The power output will be bumped up to about 900miliamps compared to 100 milliamps for version 2.
3. More Power Efficient – USB 3.0 abandons device polling in favor of a new interrupt-driven protocol, which means non-active or idle devices (which aren’t being charged by the USB port) won’t have their power drained by the host controller as it looks for active data traffic. Instead, the devices will send the host a signal to begin data transfer. This feature will also be backward compatible with USB 2.0 certified devices.

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