Universal Serial Bus (USB): Plans to release USB 3.0

Intel and others plan to release a new version of the Universal Serial Bus(USB) technology in the first half of 2008. USB 3.0 is aiming for 10 times the bandwidth of current USB2.0 solutions, or approximately 5Gbps. It will make data transfer rates more than 10 times as fast by adding fiber-optic links alongside the traditional copper wires." "The current USB 2.0 version has a top data-transfer rate of 480 megabits per second, so a tenfold increase would be 4.8 gigabits per second." This should make USB hard drives easier and faster to use." Since this requires fiber optic cabling, USB 3.0 will add a length of optical data cable to the mix. USB 3.0 will retain full compatibility with USB 2.0 (and, one assumes, USB 1.0 as well).