Not to anyone’s surprise…the USB 3.0 jacks and sockets look exactly the same. Go figure, as part of the specification is to be backward compatible. But taking a closer look, you do see some differences.
The folks from Register Hardware had a peak at the USB 3.0 connectors while at CES 2008 this year. As you can see from the image below, the USB 3.0 sockets have an additional row of connectors. The connectors located in front are to keep the backward compatibility to USB 1.1 and USB 2.0. The connectors placed behind this first row are for USB 3.0.
The new USB 3.0 specification is promising transfer speeds 10 times greater than current 2.0 standards – to that of 4.7Gb/s. There is also a fiber optics connector which hasn’t been made available yet.
As the USB 3.0 specification is expected to be finalized sometime in June of 2008 – we can expect to see product following by the end of this year. Although I am looking forward to the new, faster USB 3.0 spec, not everyone shares the same love. Here is what some are saying:
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