SuperSpeed USB (USB 3.0): More than just a speed increase

By Dan Harmon, Consumer & Computing Interface Product Marketing Manager, Texas Instruments
Planet Analog (Jul 05, 2010)

SuperSpeed USB (USB 3.0) has been getting a lot of attention now as products become available in the market. The most obvious benefit is the more than 10 times increase in speed over USB 2.0 high-speed; 480 Mbps to 5 Gbps – but there are several others. This article looks at what is new and better with SuperSpeed USB protocols and power management versus USB 2.0.

More than just a leap in speed

Hopefully. by now you have heard of SuperSpeed USB and are familiar enough to know it is the next evolution of the Universal Serial Bus (USB). If not, I recommend watching a short video (Reference 1) that talks about the basics of the specification and how it compares to High-Speed USB, or USB 2.0. The most obvious difference in SuperSpeed USB is the over 10 times speed increase from 480 Mbps for USB 2.0 to 5 Gbps.

The USB 3.0 Promoter’s Group focused on delivering customer value in three other primary areas: 1) foremost, after the speed increase, was improving the power efficiency of the bus; 2) next was maintaining backwards compatibility; and 3) was improving the data transfer efficiency itself.

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