USB 2.0, the next generation of the Universal Serial Bus, will be two to three times faster than the performance projections disclosed back in February (CI No 3,605), Intel Corp said yesterday, bringing it up to rates of speed comparable to that of its rival Firewire – also known as IEEE 1394.
Back in February, the seven companies in the USB Promoter Group – Compaq Computer Corp, Hewlett-Packard Co, Lucent Technologies Inc, Microsoft Corp, NEC Corp and Philips NV – announced an early speed estimate for USB 2.0 as being between 120 to 240 Megabits per second, or 10 to 20 times faster than the current USB 1.1. Now the estimate has been revised to 360-480 Mbps, or 30 to 40 times faster than the current version. The Group now says the extra speed can be achieved without additional cost or complexity over the previous estimate.
Pat Gelsinger, Intel Corp’s vice president and general manager, Desktop Products Group, said the speed improvement would help take USB 2.0 into new application areas such as image creation and interactive gaming, and provide an effective upgrade path for today’s USB peripherals. Faster broadband connections, higher resolution video conferencing cameras, next generation printers and scanners and fast external storage units could all benefit from the forward and backward compatible specification, he said. The USB 2.0 specification is on track for release at the USB 2.0 Developer Conference in San Diego in October. But systems and peripherals won’t be ready to support the new version until the second half of 2000.
Meanwhile, the 1394 Trade Association was demonstrating new PCs, hard drives, scanners and other computer and consumer products equipped at the current Intel Developers’ Forum in Palm Springs. Compaq Computer Corp and Gateway Inc are both supporting Firewire. A new magneto-optical hard disk drive from Fujitsu’s Computer Products, and hard drives from two Taiwanese companies, Yano and VST, along with a drive from Mactell Inc, were also shown. Epson Inc was showing a new printer supporting Firewire. Completion of the updated 1394b specification, which avoids some of the technology licensing issues that have plagued the emerging standard, is expected by late this year. 1394b could take Firewire speeds up to the 800 Mbps-1.6 Gbps range, though backward compatibility with current 1394 has not been guaranteed.
