The USB Implementers Forum will today unveil USB 3.0, which is said to be ten times as fast as USB 2.0. One of the first USB 3.0 announcements came from MCCI Corp. and Synopsis, which said they would together produce USB semiconductor IP and Linux-ready GPL'd drivers for the spec.

Universal Serial Bus (USB) 3.0 is formally referred to as SuperSpeed USB in order to complement USB 2.0's widely ignored full name, "Hi-Speed USB." Yet, considering that the 3.0 interconnect spec is claimed to offer physical-layer throughput speeds of up to 5Gbps (gigabits per second), compared to USB 2.0's 480Mbps (megabits per second), a little hyperbole may be excused. The technology even eclipses Firewire (IEEE 1394), which offers a 3.2Gbps rate. USB 3.0 is said to be backward-compatible with USB 2.0, and will first appear in discrete silicon products, as opposed to being integrated in system-on-chips (SoCs).

Designed for transferring or streaming large media files, such as video, the technology offers reduced power consumption compared to USB 2.0, claim its boosters. USB 3.0 is targeted initially at PCs, Blu-ray players, hard drives, flash card readers, and optical drives such as DVD, says MCCI.

Spearheaded by Intel and developed by a USB 3.0 Promoter Group comprised of Intel, HP, Microsoft, NEC, NXP Semiconductors, and Texas Instruments (TI), USB 3.0 is being implemented by the USB Implementers Forum. The forum has an identical membership list, except for the omission of TI, and the addition of LSI Corp.

Synopsis DesignWare mixed-signal IP in typical embedded product.
DesignWare is also said to provide implementation IP, verification IP, and hardened PHYs.


The MCCI/Synopsis collaboration will bear fruit sometime in 2009, according to MCCI. The joint product will combine MCCI's SuperSpeed DataPump USB 3.0 software drivers and firmware with a version of Synopsis DesignWare IP (see diagram above) that will be optimized for SuperSpeed USB. The jointly developed product will offer "a complete system-level solution from software to the PHY layers," says MCCI.

KDDI's Au Box uses
Linux USB drivers from MCCI
(Click for details)


T.I., Jennifer Hudson Dominate Charts
(E! Online)
“Virtual platform” targets Linux device developers
Dell expands music tie-ins on festival circuit
(Reuters)
Linux house offers flash life expectancy modeling