During Intel Developer Forum in Beijing earlier this week Jeff Ravencraft at USB-IF said that USB 3.0 is hardly the end of USB but the popular standard has at least one more upgrade to come before there will be talk of a successor – if it will ever be needed.
Jack Ravencraft is VP of USB-IF (Universal Serial Bus – Implementer’s Forum) that in principle is a collection of manufacturers that develop new USB standards and verifies that new chipsets follow the USB specifications to ensure that all of our USB products will work with every USB port.
During IDF (Intel Developer Forum) Jack Ravencraft told Semiaccurate that the USB standard still has plenty of room to stretch and that it has potential to reach up to 25 Gbps. This is quite a big difference from Intel Thuderbolt and USB 3.0 that have theoretic maximums at 10 Gbps and 6 Gbps respectively. Although Intel has said that Thunderbolt could scale up to 100 Gbps, which is four times higher than USB.
USB-IF has the possibility of releasing a new USB design at 25 Gbps today already, but the problem is to produce new circuits for a standard that would be many times more expensive than USB 3.0. This standardmight arrive in 3 to 5 years or perhaps later when can actually use these kinds of speeds, not too mention the discussed peak speed of Thunderbolt …
