SuperSpeed USB Data Transfer Demo Shows Promising Speed

There are a couple of things we all want from our computers - less wires and more speed. Our beloved USB connection can provide both of these thanks to wireless USB and the coming USB 3.0 specification. USB 3.0 promises data transfer speeds up to 4.8 Gbps. USB 3.0 was first announced at Intel's IDF 2007. At the time, it was first announced the specifications are expected to be finalized in the middle of 2008 and devices are expected to hit market 2009.

A USB 3.0 data transfer demo at Intel's IDF 2008 has proven that the specification is a little closer to becoming a reality. Fresco Logic has demonstrated data transfer using USB 3.0 for the first time at IDF 2008. The company employed a self-developed software development platform to achieve SuperSpeed data transfer speeds of 350MBytes/s or 2.8Gbit/s using its own USB 3.0 host and device controller IP. To put this into perspective, this is about 60% of its theoretical speed of 4.8Gbit/s. The platform is connected to the PC through a PCI Express port and used Xilinx Inc's Field Programmable Gate Array.