Wednesday, July 8, 2009

CES 2009: USB 3.0 slower than expected

Any wonder at all the latest incarnation of the prosaic USB standard with its outdated and awkward master-slave topology, underperforming NRZI encoding, and clumsy CPU cycle stealing bus mastering scheme doesn't live up to the hype?

Evidenced by the results of all the benchmarks I've ever run in the lab, USB 2.0 is crushed by Ultra Wide SCSI, an early 1990's technology. Let's ponder USB with its anemic power capabilities, frightfully short cable runs, and well over a decade old performance capabilities. What was USB's advantages other than ubiquity again?

I realize many USB otaku have bought into the Intel fanboi TV spot [1], but maybe people should be tossing rotten fruits and vegetables at Ajay Bhatt.

[1] Truth is, Intel was only one many firms with patents contributed to the original USB pool. Intel later bought many of them after the fact. So the whole "rock star inventor" thing is a little suspect no? In fact, Wikipedia cites him as one of the co-inventors. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Serial_Bus#History

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