AfterDawn: News

Linux is first OS to support USB 3.0

Sarah Sharp, of the Intel Open Source Technology Center has said today that Linux will be the first operating system to officially support USB 3.

The support will soon be integrated into the Linux kernel.

"This is a giant project that I've been working on for the past year and a half. It's gratifying to see the code finally released, and exciting to know that hardware is on its way," says Sharp. "I hope that some USB vendors who have prototypes will test with my driver."



USB 3, sometimes referred to as SuperSpeed USB has potential data transfer rates of up to 4.8Gbits/sec, a 10x improvement from the current standard, USB 2.

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 12 Jun 2009 20:05

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• 21 comments

• Bluevoid

  "Dude, I think I just filled the cup."

  12.6.2009 20:29 #1

• jony218

  Who needs 4.8gb per second? No hard drive known/unknown can work that fast. It sounds great on paper though. I know blueray will never be able to read/write at those speeds. I don't think there's anyway to test those speeds except underground with the IBM "DeepThought" supercomputer.

  12.6.2009 22:05 #2

• varnull

  Ever run a cluster with 64 gigs of ram? .. didn't think so XD
  I would have loved to be able to shove data into the ram across the nodes at those kinds of transfer speeds instead of constantly fighting the inherent network latency.
  

  
  
  Free open source software = made by end users who want an application to work.
  I would rather you hate me for who I am than love me for what I am not.
  “It is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could someday facilitate a police state.” - Bruce Schneier

  12.6.2009 22:10 #3

• 21Q

  o__o I can only say awesome, as I can't find better words despite my vocabulary. I've been holding out on building a new machine until 3.0 was supported by windows something. At this rate windows 10?

  12.6.2009 22:21 #4

• bomber991

  Originally posted by jony218: Who needs 4.8gb per second? No hard drive known/unknown can work that fast. It sounds great on paper though. I know blueray will never be able to read/write at those speeds. I don't think there's anyway to test those speeds except underground with the IBM "DeepThought" supercomputer.It's Gbits, which you divide by 8 to get Gbytes, 0.6gb, or 614.4mb per second.
  
  Either way, yeah who needs that speed today? Not any casual consumers that's for sure but what about 5 years in the future? That's when we'll all have 20+ megapixel photo cameras and all of us will have highdefinition video cameras.

  12.6.2009 22:26 #5

• bobiroc

  Yippee. They support it and it is not even out yet.
  
  Quote:At this rate windows 10?Windows 7 will support it. Simple update or driver install. So will other operating systems. This is not big news.

  13.6.2009 02:11 #6

• bobiroc

  Quote:Yippee. They support it and it is not even out yet.
  
  Quote:At this rate windows 10?Windows Vista & Windows 7 will support it. Simple update or driver install. So will other operating systems. This is not big news.

  13.6.2009 02:11 #7

• Bluevoid

  Agreed. An OS supporting it is nothing. Mobos sporting the technology will be the first real achievement. We'll see when it begins to get implemented. At least now we will have full use of HDD speeds for the next 5 years before another bottleneck.

  13.6.2009 03:24 #8

• etkasoe

  One more victory for the good guys

  13.6.2009 06:59 #9

• 21Q

  Quote:Yippee. They support it and it is not even out yet.
  
  Quote:At this rate windows 10?Windows 7 will support it. Simple update or driver install. So will other operating systems. This is not big news.I know. I'm just pointing out with how fast they pumped out a new OS, even though it's mostly a giant fix, that they might release windows 10 before they decide to support it. Of course it's an exaggeration, but I think it gets my point across.

  13.6.2009 13:46 #10

• atomicxl

  One use for this is the audio industry. Most USB2 interfaces don't let you simultaneously record more than 2-4 tracks at 192kHz/24-bit. With USB3 it seems like you could actually mic an entire drum kit, guitars, keyboards, etc and have it all going into your computer at once... while sending multiple tracks out from your computer for hardware effects processing or routing to a console. Usually you have to buy a PCI interface to get the type of bandwidth needed to make that possible.
  
  Now you could potentially be able to do that and have it fit in a backpack or briefcase.

  13.6.2009 19:48 #11

• theridges

  Originally posted by atomicxl: One use for this is the audio industry. Most USB2 interfaces don't let you simultaneously record more than 2-4 tracks at 192kHz/24-bit. With USB3 it seems like you could actually mic an entire drum kit, guitars, keyboards, etc and have it all going into your computer at once... while sending multiple tracks out from your computer for hardware effects processing or routing to a console. Usually you have to buy a PCI interface to get the type of bandwidth needed to make that possible.
  
  Now you could potentially be able to do that and have it fit in a backpack or briefcase.
  i Guess it all depends on how serious you are with music, if you really wanna record like that time to get off the pc and on to a Mac Workstation with Pro Tools or some other device/Software.
  
  But onto the usb 3.0,
  i really dont know what to think about usb 3.0 like varnull said for system ops im sure there excited but for the average consumer i really dont think its needed but everything has to be updated thats how they make money because we buy things over and over again because we are impatient.

  14.6.2009 04:23 #12

• Mez

  theridges, I do not know much about studio recording but as far digital music goes, Apple sepecializes in lo-fidelity digital products such as itunes and AAC. Why would I trust any audio app Apple made?

  15.6.2009 08:50 #13

• DXR88

  if im not mistaken isn't USB on the hardware level and if it is, boasting about an OS supporting Version 3 doesn't really make a whole lot of sense.

  15.6.2009 13:44 #14

• LucHs

  Maybe it's overkill today, but so was a 500 GByte harddisk 3 years ago.
  
  And remember, when you use it as a bus, the transfer capacity will have to be split up between the different applications using it.
  

  Clever New multimedia and other products blog
  http://www.cleverandeasy.com

  15.6.2009 15:02 #15

• Mez

  LucHs, a 500 G HD wasn't over kill 6 years ago. MAYBE 10 years ago.
  
  Except for jony218, I think the sticky point is how much are the values inflated not that it is too fast. It is like saying a road can handle a car going 500 mile per hour. To test you need a car that goes that fast. USP speed depends on the speed of the CPU. Every bit needs to be processed by the CPU. I prefer the eSATA approch which bypasses the CPU.

  16.6.2009 07:09 #16

• atomicxl

  Quote:i Guess it all depends on how serious you are with music, if you really wanna record like that time to get off the pc and on to a Mac Workstation with Pro Tools or some other device/Software.Not gonna get into it, but i'll just say that the Windows PC is a perfectly valid platform for making and recording music. And while Pro Tools is the most popular DAW, it's not the only valid one. You've got Logic is insanely popular for Macs. To the point where Apple purchased them and you can usually find it, along with Pro Tools, in most studios. You've also got Cubase (my preference) and Sonar. No matter what you're using, be it Pro Tools or something else, USB3 can give you alot of bandwidth for hardware makers to play around with.

  17.6.2009 15:58 #17

• djgizmo

  Yep, I agree wit atomicxl.
  
  As a audio gear guy myself, USB3 will be something very nice for everyone. Not only will it be relatively cheap to introduce, it'll increase overall bandwidth for all devices. No more the need for Firewire 800, as this will kick the crap out that in theory.
  
  Like atomicxl said, PC/Windows is a valid format for music / audio production... i should know, I use it myself and once you have your system tweaked, it works just as good if not better than Mac OS.

  18.6.2009 02:54 #18

• DXR88

  Originally posted by djgizmo: Yep, I agree wit atomicxl.
  
  As a audio gear guy myself, USB3 will be something very nice for everyone. Not only will it be relatively cheap to introduce, it'll increase overall bandwidth for all devices. No more the need for Firewire 800, as this will kick the crap out that in theory.
  
  Like atomicxl said, PC/Windows is a valid format for music / audio production... i should know, I use it myself and once you have your system tweaked, it works just as good if not better than Mac OS.I find firewire to have better multitasking capability's, than USB.

  18.6.2009 16:15 #19

• Jacob2dj

  Quote:Originally posted by jony218: Who needs 4.8gb per second? No hard drive known/unknown can work that fast. It sounds great on paper though. I know blueray will never be able to read/write at those speeds. I don't think there's anyway to test those speeds except underground with the IBM "DeepThought" supercomputer.It's Gbits, which you divide by 8 to get Gbytes, 0.6gb, or 614.4mb per second.
  
  Either way, yeah who needs that speed today? Not any casual consumers that's for sure but what about 5 years in the future? That's when we'll all have 20+ megapixel photo cameras and all of us will have highdefinition video cameras.
  And it's probably the sum of data in each direction like with USB 2.
  So 4.8Gb/s = 600MB/s = 572 MiB/s = 286MiB/s in each direction. This will cap performance when making sequential transfers on more than 2 HDD's simoultaneous.
  But still I can't wait to get USB 3. USB 2 can only transfer 30MB/s, and eSATA isn't always working very well with plug'n'play.
  
  MB = 10^6 bytes
  MiB= 2^20 bytes

  18.6.2009 18:34 #20

• mscritsm

  Quote:Originally posted by jony218: Who needs 4.8gb per second? No hard drive known/unknown can work that fast. It sounds great on paper though. I know blueray will never be able to read/write at those speeds. I don't think there's anyway to test those speeds except underground with the IBM "DeepThought" supercomputer.It's Gbits, which you divide by 8 to get Gbytes, 0.6gb, or 614.4mb per second.
  And that's just the raw bitrate. There's always things such as protocol overhead, burst and addressing modes, etc. that make the effective rate much less. The hardware design on both ends also makes a huge difference. Really bad designs have a small fifo in the chip which can support the maximum transfer rate, but poop out once the fifo is filled or emptied because they can't transfer the data into or out of the fifo fast enough.
  
  I've worked with several different protocols such as SCSI, Fibre Channel, etc., and a good rule of thumb is that with a good design you can sustain about 50% of the raw bitrate for large transfers.

  20.6.2009 09:09 #21