USB 3.0 to Be Unveiled on November 17th

It is now official, final specifications of USB 3.0 will be unveiled on November 17th and should validate the maximum transfer speed from 480 Mbits/s (USB 2.0) to 5 Gbits/s. From that date, chip designers, motherboard and peripheral manufacturers will start preparing their "USB 3.0 ready" products which should arrive on our shelves for Q1 2009. However, one will have to wait that computer manufacturers and chipset designers (Intel, AMD, NVidia, etc…) will release their first USB 3.0 controllers to see the market for USB 3.0 product really taking off.

While the Firewire forum did not validate the future Firewire 1600 and 3200 formats, the lack of Firewire 400 on the new MacBook might indicate that Apple decided to drop Firewire support on the long-term. Let’s hope that USB 3.0 can finally deliver higher performance levels than those available for years with the Firewire 800.