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Intel upgrades USB 3.0 spec to SuperSpeed Bernard Cole San Jose, Ca. - Intel Corp. has released a nearly complete specification for a USB 3.0 controller chip that pushes data rates for the all-purpose connector up to 300 Mbytes/sec. The Extensible Host Controller Interface (xHCI) draft version 0.9 aims to enable interoperable silicon for the so-called SuperSpeed USB interface that can deliver data rates up to 300 Mbytes/second at the application level. Intel plans to release a revised xHCI 0.95 specification in the fourth quarter. The current and future specs will be released under a royalty-free licensing agreement. As part of the version 0.9 release, a number of companies including AMD, Dell, Microsoft and NEC expressed support for the Intel spec. The spec is a significant leap up from today's USB 2.0 which has a maximum of 480 Mbits/s (about 60 Mbytes/sec). It requires a new physical layer using two channels to separate data transmissions and acknowledgements to hit its higher speed targets. In place of the polling and broadcast mechanisms used in USB today, the new spec will employ a packet-routing technique and only allow data transmissions when end devices have data to send. The new link also will support multiple flows per device and is capable of maintaining separate priority levels for each flow. USB 3.0 proponents hope it will finally supplant Firewire. But it will face challenges in doing so, especially if they want to anything close to the five-meter reach of USB 2.0. To learn more, go to www.intel.com or www.usb.org.
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