14 DAY TRIAL // It would appear that the SuperSpeed USB 3.0 interface has genuinely picked up some speed if the number of certified SuperSpeed products has increased by 25% in just one month. Back at the start of March, USB-IF (the USB Implementers Forum) came out and announced that 50 devices had passed its certification tests. Now, the Forum has once again stepped forward to reveal that that figure has grown to 75 and will continue growing as the interface continues to be adopted by electronics from both old and new device classes.
Even though, currently, the only way to enable USB 3.0 support is to use a controller chip, there have been quite a number of mainboards, notebooks, storage devices and other products that make use of the technology. The reason for this is, as consumers likely know by now, that the maximum data-transfer rate achievable through this interface is of 4.8Gbps, ten times faster than what can be reached through the still mainstream USB 2.0 connection. This goes to show just how much popularity products can gain from a tenfold increase in performance.
“SuperSpeed USB momentum continues to explode, with new products rapidly entering the market, furthering the expansion of the SuperSpeed USB ecosystem. Providing our members the opportunity to gather information and insights is a key function of our SuperSpeed USB Developers Conferences. I am pleased to be in Taipei this week to share the benefits of SuperSpeed USB with the industry at large,” Jeff Ravencraft, president and chairman of USB-IF, said.
“SuperSpeed USB is tracking with IDC’s forecast from last year for its adoption. Driven by the need for more and faster data storage capabilities in PCs, we continue to forecast that SuperSpeed USB will ship in 45 percent of mobile PCs in 2012,” Shane Rau, director of IDC’s computing and storage semiconductors research, stated.