USB 3.0, Advantages & Improvements Compared with USB 2.0

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• published: 28 Jul 2014
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http://www.futureelectronics.com/en/Search.aspx?dsNav=Ny:True,Nea:True,N:537 Today we will be talking about the USB 3.0 standard for computer connectivity, which is the latest, most advanced development of the USB host adapter protocol promoted by the USB Implementers Forum. We will also look at the advantages for using USB 3.0 connections in your application. First, let’s consider some of the advantages and improvements of USB 3.0 when compared with the previous major standard, which was USB 2.0: 3rd Generation of the USB specification, SuperSpeed: 5.0 Gbps transfer rate, increased bandwidth, improved flow control, improved power management features, improved protocol & electrical interface efficiency, backwards compatible with USB 2.0. All USB 3.0 connections also permit forward compatibility, so USB 3.0 devices can be connected to USB 2.0 ports. So as we saw, USB 3.0 adds SuperSpeed, which is a new transfer mode with transfer speeds of up to 5 Gbps. This is more than 10X faster than the top speed of USB 2.0, which is only 480 Mbps. As USB 3.0 is backwards compatible with 2.0, it preserves the 4 data transfer types: bulk, control, isochronous and interrupt. It also similarly offers 4 similar connector types: Standard-A, Standard-B, Micro-A & Micro-B. USB 3.0 offers greater bandwidth because it now uses two unidirectional data paths, one which is for receiving data, and one for transmitting data. This is an improvement upon 2.0, which uses one-way communication. It should therefore be noted that USB 3.0 is full duplex while USB 2.0 is half duplex, which means that the potential total bandwidth of USB 3.0 if used both ways is 20 X that of USB 2.0. This is very important when we take into consideration that today’s applications are much more data-hungry than when the 2.0 standard was implemented. The faster speed and higher bandwidth of 3.0 is better suited for higher data communications. Due to the ability of USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 ports and connectors coexisting on the same machine, and because these ports and connectors look similar, USB 3.0 devices often have a blue insert or an SS sign, for SuperSpeed, to differentiate them from older-generation 2.0 devices. Another benefit of USB 3.0 is its power efficiency, which is an important consideration in computer architecture. Some key power management enhancements are: continual device polling replaced by asynchronous notifications which uses fewer resources, link power management states between host and device which enables power savings when the connection is idle between the host and device, transition to low power states can be initiated by host or device this minimizes the amount of power drawn from the host, SUSPEND capabilities for portions of circuitry or functions not in use. http://www.futureelectronics.com/en/Search.aspx?dsNav=Ny:True,Ro:0,Nea:True,N:4294938421-900 USB 3.0 is ideal for RAID applications, Solid state drives, Smartphones, Blu-ray burners, Multi-channel audio interfaces, HD video cameras, Video adaptors, Webcams and other real-time audio/video streaming applications. For more information about USB 3.0 devices visit our website at www.FutureElectronics.com.