Why Hi-Speed USB doesn't always mean high speed performance

By Timothy Kung, Cypress Semiconductor
Embedded.com (09/01/09, 08:17:00 PM EDT)

The proliferation of digital media into everyday electronics has changed the way consumers access and enjoy their media entertainment. Consumers today have the ability to listen to their entire music collection, watch movies, and browse photos all on a device no larger than a deck of playing cards. These advancements in technology however, are not without their challenges.

One such challenge is the task of transferring the digital media onto the device itself. The ubiquity of USB on PCs and portable devices has made USB the natural choice as the default method of media transfer. The ease with which USB allows users to transfer media, sync data, and charge their devices has only strengthened its position as a connection standard on mobile phones.

Many first generation devices, however, only supported Full-Speed USB, which allows for data rates up to 12Mb/s. With Full-Speed USB, 100 MP3s could painstakingly take upwards of an hour to transfer to a device. Wait times of this magnitude were unacceptable for consumers, who demanded something faster.

With media capabilities of phones expanding from just music to movies and beyond, the need for a faster transfer connection is growing as both data and storage sizes grows. The industry responded with Hi-Speed USB, offering a theoretical maximum transfer rate of 480Mb/s " 40 times faster than that of Full-Speed USB.

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