If the benchmark claim rings true, LaCie has a new USB 3.0 flash drive which is living up to the USB 3.0 SuperSpeed promise. Things might be coming to fruition with the most recent product from LaCie, the FastKey.
The FastKey has print on the box claiming a whopping 260MB/s transfer speed. If it true, this puts a single flash drive at a faster transfer rate than your best hard drive. As EveryThingUSB points out:
“To put that in its proper perspective a typical 3.5″ hard drive has a peak read speed of about HALF of that and has an average speed about one THIRD of this little bad boy’s performance numbers”
So dumping your buddies MP3 collection of a 1,000s songs will be much easier with this USB 3.0 flash drive, then your portable USB hard drive. But don’t think this convenience, and some would say luxury, come without a price. The LaCie FastKey comes in a variety of sizes, starting at
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PQI introduced their first SuperSpeed USB 3.0 flash drive today, called the U339V. The PQI 3.0 stick is available in 8GB through 64GB sizes. As with any new technology, the performance is lagging behind the specification of performance.
For example the smaller 8GB PQI drive shows a read speed of 55MB/s and a write speed of 10MB/s. Verse the larger 16GB and larger sizes are more like 86MB/s read speed and 20MB/s write speed. If you know anything about flash drives, it just means the bigger sizes are dual channel and the 8GB is single channel.
Still far from the 5Gbps transfer rate USB 3.0 is suppose to offer, but once more advanced controllers come into the market, we’ll see the performance rise.
The PQI drive will be available through
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When Sony officially supports the USB 3.0 specification by supplying a dual USB 3.0 port on their new VAIO laptops, it’s safe to say the transition is picking up steam.
The Sony desktop-replacements are HD VAIO laptops coming with possibly everything you can hope for with the exception of 3D and SSD. The more expensive model ($2,970) will have Core i7-740QM, GeForce GT 425M 1GB graphics card while the lower end laptop ($2,140) will only carry a Core i5-460M and GeForce 310M 512MB. Both Sony VAIO models are stocked with 4GB RAM, the same Blu-ray optical reader, 500GB 2.5″ drive and a dual HDTV tuner as well as a 16.4″ full HD LCD.
In the connectivity department, both laptops will feature not one but two USB 3.0 ports – likely powered by
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If rumors are to be true, Intel will be adding a USB 3.0 chipset to their winter 2010 lineup. The Intel Developer Forum is expected to showcase an Intel Cougar Point chipset for desktops.
For a bit, it was said Intel will forgo the the USB 3.0 chipset in favor of LightPeak technology, but maybe that technology has hit a bump in the road? Odd to have Intel flip-flop like this…or wait, maybe not.Currently integrators are turning to a third OEM for the USB 3.0 like NEC, but the Intel native would help reduce expense of motherboard manufacturers and speed the adoption of USB 3.0 technology into laptops, desktops and tablets.
Source:Â Electronista.com.
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Nexcopy is getting ready to release a USB 3.0 SuperSpeed Duplicator with a 16 port capacity. Nexcopy is currently optimizing the SuperSpeed thumbdrive copier so details are still somewhat sketchy. What Nexcopy is reporting is the USB 3.0 Duplicator will be out in about 5 weeks. It can copy at a peak rate of 65MB/s for a single flash drive; interestingly, performance can jump to 72MB/s with multiple devices connected. For USB 3.0 hard drives, transfer speeds come in at 95MB/s. The number is consistent with either 1 or 8 devices connected to the duplicator.
Nexcopy reports the primary target market are USB 3.0 hard drives as they are more prevalent in the market today, but expect demand for USB 3.0 flash drive duplication to pick up as more become available. In related news, Nexcopy plans to offer USB 3.0 flash drives in 16GB and 32GB size with custom branding as option. They will be sold for $89 and $149 respectively. As for the duplicator pricing, the company hasn’t made any announcement yet.
We’ve been chomping at the bit waiting for a Netbook to have USB 3.0. Last month we heard several models coming out while at CeBIT, but still nothing from the manufacturer websites.
Today SlashGear reported a new ASUS 1018P Netbook with USB 3.0 out-n-about. You can see the bright blue connectors above. To give you an idea of what the ASUS 1018P can do, consider working on a Netbook with Intel’s latest Pine Trail Atom N455 and N475 processors, with Bluetooth 3.0 and USB 3.0 connectivity along with the promise of 10hrs runtime.
In addition [and this is good] the 1018P would come with integrated 3G, though there’s no word on whether that will be a standard-fit feature or an upgrade at time of order.
The last bit of no-news I guess you could say is no word on price points and no word on availability. All I can say is
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We’ve seen the first step in USB 3.0 which is the USB host controller. This gives motherboards the opportunity for USB 3.0 devices to connect. Now we are starting to see other system support peripherals such as the USB 3.0 hub.
VIA announced their USB 3.0 four port hub this week just days before CES 2010. We fully expect others to make a similar announcement during the CES show, but VIA, thus far, has beat everyone to the punch.
The USB 3.0 hub supports 4 downstream ports and one upstream port. The board is powered via AC and VIA claims to have improved the power management in the USB 3.0 hubs to allow attached devices to enter into a lower power state when not being used. The chip itself is based on advanced 80nm CMOS technology which makes it a more power efficient USB hub controller.
VIA did indicate the USB 3.0 hub is not only backward compatible, but also supports the full 5Gb/s transfer rate USB 3.0 calls for. No word on price, but I’m forecasting a 50% increase in price over traditional USB hubs.
SuperTalent announce their USB 3.0 flash drive in November of 2009. Today we have a short video of that drive in action. You can see the performance of the device is much greater than any 2.0 device. How would you like to copy files at 78MB per second?
I spoke with SuperTalent last night and still no word on official price or official launch date.
GetUSB has been waiting for this announcement for about 8 months now. Super Talent just announced the first [of what we know] USB 3.0 flash drive.
Wow.
Wouldn’t you love to have a USB flash drive that could copy files at the rate of 200MB per second? Using a separate UAS Protocol driver with a USB 3.0 port this SuperSpeed drive can reach up to 320MB/sec transfer speeds.
Wow.
It’s a bit large, but hell, who cares. Size is 95 x 37 x13.5 mm The USB 3.0 USB flash drive will be shipping with 32GB, 64GB and 128GB sizes. No word on price, but let me give you an idea…at the time of this writing, Super Talent offers their USB 2.0 32GB drive for
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We’ve been talking about USB 3.0 for almost one year now and last week we hear the maker, Intel, is looking to put on the breaks. This isn’t the first time Intel has rallied the industry, gotten chip makers to support it, then corporate shut it down via lack of integration [Wireless USB].
What the general population might not understand is that USB is a fairly inconsistent bus for enumeration with peripherals. Sure, for the average user their USB devices work, but for an engineer or tech savvy user, they all pretty much agree – USB is problematic.
Maybe this is just one reason why Intel is slowing it’s adoption of it…the other is probably the new development of Light Peak. Light Peak is a fiber optical cable which supports up to 10Gbps [now] and expandability to 100Gbps [future]. Light Peak doesn’t use complicated protocols like
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2010 will be a fun year of USB reporting and blogging with USB 3.0 just starting to break with new products. Today we have the first USB 3.0 WebCam from Point Grey. The webcam has the bandwidth and capability to push a full 1080p video stream without compression.
Since USB host controllers are not yet available, Point Grey has teamed with Fresco Logic to include a USB 3.0 PCI interface card.
EverythingUSB brings up a good point with these new USB 3.0 devices, they will actually become cheaper than their slower, 2.0 predecessors. The reason being: less logic and hardware is required inside the device to do processing such as compression and decompression, USB 3.0 now simply push the data through the pipe.
The Point Grey Webcamera is slatted to display at the IDF 2009 conference in San Fransicso in a couple weeks.
