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Initially, USB provided two speeds (12 Mbps and 1.5 Mbps). With rapid adoption and success of the USB standard and the increasing power of PCs and computing devices, the USB 2.0 specification was defined in the year 2000. USB 2.0 provided upto 480 Mbps of bandwidth while keeping software compatibility with earlier USB applications. With ever increasing bandwidth requirements, in 2008 the USB 3.0 specification (providing 5 Gbps bi-directional bandwidth) was released. USB 3.1 is the next logical step in this progression. It provides 10Gbps of bi-directional bandwidth while maintaining backward compatibility with previous USB versions.

In this post, we will analyze the technical differences between the USB 3.1 and USB 3.0 specifications. The aim is to enable people familiar with USB 3.0 to quickly understand the main aspects of USB 3.1.