Owners Manual

Speed

Currently, there are 3 speed modes defined by the latest USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1 specification. They are Super-Speed, Hi-Speed and Full-

Speed. The new SuperSpeed mode has a transfer rate of 4.8 Gbps. While the specification retains Hi-Speed, and Full-Speed USB mode,

commonly known as USB 2.0 and 1.1 respectively, the slower modes still operate at 480 Mbps and 12 Mbps respectively and are kept to

maintain backward compatibility.

USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1 achieves the much higher performance by the technical changes below:

• An additional physical bus that is added in parallel with the existing USB 2.0 bus (refer to the picture below).

• USB 2.0 previously had four wires (power, ground, and a pair for differential data); USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1 adds four more for two

pairs of differential signals (receive and transmit) for a combined total of eight connections in the connectors and cabling.

• USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1 utilizes the bidirectional data interface, rather than USB 2.0's half-duplex arrangement. This gives a 10-fold

increase in theoretical bandwidth.

With today's ever increasing demands placed on data transfers with high-definition video content, terabyte storage devices, high

megapixel count digital cameras etc., USB 2.0 may not be fast enough. Furthermore, no USB 2.0 connection could ever come close to the

480Mbps theoretical maximum throughput, making data transfer at around 320 Mbps (40 MB/s) — the actual real-world maximum.

Similarly, USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1 connections will never achieve 4.8Gbps. We will likely see a real-world maximum rate of 400MB/s with

overheads. At this speed, USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1 is a 10x improvement over USB 2.0.

Applications

USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1 opens up the laneways and provides more headroom for devices to deliver a better overall experience. Where USB

video was barely tolerable previously (both from a maximum resolution, latency, and video compression perspective), it's easy to imagine

that with 5-10 times the bandwidth available, USB video solutions should work that much better. Single-link DVI requires almost 2Gbps

throughput. Where 480Mbps was limiting, 5Gbps is more than promising. With its promised 4.8Gbps speed, the standard will find its way

into some products that previously weren't USB territory, like external RAID storage systems.

Listed below are some of the available SuperSpeed USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1 products:

• External Desktop USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1 Hard Drives

• Portable USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1 Hard Drives

• USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1 Drive Docks & Adapters

• USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1 Flash Drives & Readers

• USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1 Solid-state Drives

• USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1 RAIDs

• Optical Media Drives

• Multimedia Devices

• Networking

• USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1 Adapter Cards & Hubs

Technology and components