USB 3.0 is a technology of the next generation for a connection that will let greater interface speeds. Though this technology is not ready as of now for consumers, it is believed to be launched by the year 2010. USB 3.0 is also called “Super Speed USB” by its makers because of its tremendous speed improvements over its previous versions of USB.

To learn how fast USB 3.0 is when compared to its siblings USB 2.0 and USB 1.1, it is crucial to have a look at corresponding data transfer rates. USB 3.0 gives data transfer speed of about 4.8 GBps per sec which means an USB 3.0 device can move a 25 GB file in not more than 70 seconds, which would have taken more than 9 hours for the first generation USB & around 15 minutes for USB 2.0.

USB 3.0 attains such higher performance by means of several technical improvements. One reason is an added physical bus that is designed to work in parallel with the existing USB 2.0 plug. Let’s take it this way, USB 2.0 had 4 wires (one for power, a ground, and two for differential data), USB 3.0 has added 4 more for the two pairs of differential data signals (i.e. for receiving and transmitting) thus 8 connections in total in the plug. The extra two pair supports the target bandwidth requirements for the Super Speed USB, as the two wire differential data signals of USB 2.0 were not sufficient.

Moreover, the signaling process, although still host directed, is now asynchronous rather than polling. USB 3.0 employs a two way data transfer interface instead of USB 2.0’s half-duplex mechanism where data can flow in a single direction at a time.

So we can summarize it by saying that any high-bandwidth device that worked with USB 2.0 will improve if updated with USB 3.0’s support. Currently the devices that can have improved performance with USB 3.0 are as follows:
• External hard drives which have higher throughput that the present USB 2.0 offers.
• High resolution webcameras,surveillance devices
• Handy cams and digital still cameras with USB interface
• Optical media like Blu-Ray disk drives

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