On 9/21/07, Howard Winter wrote: > I wonder what USB3 would be used for? External disks are already availble with SATA connectors, so I don't see the need for a faster interface there, and I can't > think of anything else that would need speeds above USB2 that doesn't already have a standard (Gigabit Ethernet, for example). The other standards typically do not: * Provide power to the device * Truly support plug and play * Support all the various transfer modes (isochronous, bulk, etc) * Support On the Go functionality - you can't hook two SATA devices together and make a backup. If you do this with ethernet you need a special cable or adaptor, and will probably have to configure the network yourself. Further, would you rather have 20 ports of 5 different types on your computer (probably in the back) and have to match the right peripheral to the right port? What if the intended port is full, do you unplug something, add another card, or drop another port expander (if the interface supports that) onto your already crowded desk? In fact, if USB can do the things those other interfaces accomplish, wouldn't you simply rather have one type of port on the computer which supports pretty much anything you could want to plug in? The reasons for faster transfer speed are obvious for existing applications. I have a 4GB CF card for my camera, and I'd like it to download all my pictures faster than it now does. But there are lots of applications you may not have considered simply because 1) it's not available now and 2) _you_ wouldn't need it... until you saw it For instance, I expect to see high performance video cards plugging into such a port. Right now peripheral manufacturers have to sell them to OEMs to install, or convince the end user to perform the install. On this list that isn't a problem, but for 80% of the computer owning population they don't ever want to open up their computer. There are many products in this category. In fact, I expect to see monitors come out that only attach to this connector, and include high performance graphics engines. Need another monitor? Don't count the number of monitor ports, just buy one and plug it in, including the latest huge, high resolution displays. People don't want to worry about whether their graphics card is dual link capable, they just want to buy a 30" display and plug it in. This will become more of an issue as even the "small and cheap" monitors become 1080p compatible and beyond. High performance computing clusters come closer to home every year. One might choose, for instance, to buy a computer and drop it on top of their old one. Plug the two together with such a fast connection and you can treat it essentially like a single multi-core computer. This is already something done for graphics cards in SLI configurations, but imagine having a connection fast enough that rather than upgrading your computer so you can do video work quickly, you simply buy a video coprocessor to do your movie manipulation and encoding at 10-100x realtime. And you don't have to even move your computer - just plug it in and go. Although it'll require a separate power supply - there's only so much you can do with 2.5W! But I think that the ultimate useful reason is simply media transfer. Soon 1080p camcorders will be on the prosumer market, and even with MPEG4 you're looking at transferring 50GBytes for a clip. No one really wants to wait 13 minutes (best case USB2.0) to transfer that to their computer. When you start seeing that 1TB drives are common, and 10TB drives are readily available, you'll be wondering where this spec is. -Adam -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Moving in southeast Michigan? Buy my house: http://ubasics.com/house/ Interested in electronics? Check out the projects at http://ubasics.com Building your own house? Check out http://ubasics.com/home/ -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist