The USB promoter group has just announced the completion of the USB 3.1 standard which will allow USB transfer speeds of up to 10 Gbps. The new specification, which can be seen here, will retain the same backward compatibility the USB standard has always had.
The USB-IF group will be hosting developer days in the USA on August 21st, in Europe on October 1st and 2nd and in Asia for two days in early December. This means key interest groups in the USB specification, such as motherboard vendors, storage vendors and so on, will have an opportunity to discuss and figure out ways to implement the new standard.
With 10 Gbps the new USB 3.1 standard will match Intel’s Thunderbolt standard in terms of pure bandwidth. Given USB’s history we can also expect to see the standard be much cheaper than Thunderbolt is on launch, and continue to fall in price over time as the standard gains market traction much like the trajectory USB 3.0 followed.
Image courtesy of USB-IF
Nice. And to think I don’t even have a single solitary USB 3 device yet but plenty of USB 3 ports.