USB 3.

0 White Paper
Anton Lawrendra
Apple Inc.
Introduction
Technology keeps evolving. From cars to phones to computers, our world is ever
changing – we can’t deny this, and doing so would bring progress to a screaming
halt. Particularly in this Information Age, the amount of data that we deal with
everyday would have been unthinkable 10 years ago. Because of this, transferring
data back and forth has become too slow. What’s the solution? USB 3.0! Well, what is
USB 3.0 in the first place?

Background
In order to understand what USB 3.0 is all about, background information is needed
first, so let’s start with USB in general. For those that either forgot or don’t know
what USB means, it stands for “Universal Serial Bus”. Pretty much every computer
on the market comes with one or more USB connectors. Back in the day when
parallel and serial ports were the way to go, connecting printers, mice, external hard
drives, and all kinds of other accessories to computers were a real headache.
However, with the onset of USB, connecting various devices to computers is now
quick and easy. The way it works is this:

Upon plugging the USB connector into the slot on the back or side of your machine,
the operating system will detect whether or not it’s a new device. If the device is
new, the operating system will ask for the driver disk; but if the device has already
been installed, the computer activates and starts “talking” to it. The USB standard
uses “A” and “B” connections as to avoid confusion. “A” connectors (left) attach to
the computer, while “B” connectors (right) attach to individual devices:

With this categorization, it’s impossible to ever confuse the two connectors.

Most computers come with at least one or two USB sockets, but that usually isn’t
enough. To deal with this, users can purchase a USB hub, which allows the
connecting of several devices by USB to computers (if needed, the user can chain
several USB hubs together):
Hubs can be powered or unpowered; it depends on whether or not the device
connected by USB is a high-power or a low-power device. A high-power device like a
printer has its own power supply, while a low-power device like a mouse gets its
power from the bus. Up to 500 mA of current at 5 V for USB 2.0 and 900 mA of
current for USB 3.0 (I’ll go more into it later) comes from the computer.

Now onto the USB process, also known as enumeration. As soon as the host (i.e. the
computer) powers on, all devices connected to it are queried and assigned an
address. Devices that are connected after power-on also get enumerated. The host is
allowed to send commands or query parameters with control packets. In addition,
the host finds out what type of data transfer each device wants to perform. For
devices such as mice or keyboards that send very little data, the host chooses the
“interrupt” data transfer mode, named for its guaranteed quick response. For
devices such as printers or scanners that receive data in one big packet, the host
chooses the “bulk” data transfer mode. What happens in this bulk mode is that a
block of data is sent to the device in 64-byte chunks and then verified to make sure
that there are no errors. For streaming devices such as speakers, the host uses the
“isochronous” data transfer mode; in this mode, there is no error correction (unlike
“bulk” mode), and data streams real-time between the device and host. These data
transfers work at some guaranteed rate (usually, but not always, as fast as possible),
but because they are real-time, there is a chance for possible data loss.

While devices are getting enumerated, the host keeps track of the total bandwidth
that all of the interrupt and isochronous devices are requesting. These devices are
only allowed to consume up to 90% of the available bandwidth. After the 90% is
taken, the host doesn’t allow access for any other interrupt and isochronous devices.
The leftover 10% is allocated for control packets and packets for bulk transfers.

USB divides available bandwidth into frames, and the host is the one that controls
these frames. Frames have 1.5 kilobytes, and a new frame starts every millisecond.
Interrupt and isochronous devices are guaranteed the bandwidth they need because
they get their slots during a frame; bulk transfers get the rest of the bandwidth
afterwards.
USB 2.0 has been the standard for years now, with more than 6 billion devices sold.
The way a USB 2.0 cable works is that it has two wires for power (red is +5 volts and
brown is ground) and two wires twisted together to carry the data (blue and
yellow):

With USB 2.0, the maximum attainable data rate for the bus is 480 Mbps (megabits
per second), also called “hi-speed”. Just to put it into perspective, USB 2.0’s
predecessor, USB 1.1, had a “low speed” transfer mode of 1.5 Mbps and a “full
speed” mode of 12 Mbps. So what can USB 3.0 do?

Capabilities
The USB 3.0 standard went official on November 17, 2008 and boasts speeds 10
times faster than USB 2.0 at around 5 Gbps, also known as “super-speed” mode.
Further, USB 3.0 promises to allow full-duplex data transfers, meaning that
simultaneous back-and-forth data transfer is now possible to do. So how is this all
possible? Well, the reason is that USB 3.0 adds four more wires and an additional
ground wire to the four wires (two for power, two for data) from USB 2.0 in order to
receive and transmit data at such high speeds:
In addition to the two-way data transfer capability, USB 3.0 promises new power
management features, including increased bus power to allow for more power
supply to devices. Simple devices such as mice and keyboards don’t have the
problem of not receiving enough power from a USB 2.0 connection alone, but more
power hungry devices like printers require a power connection in addition to the
USB 2.0 connection. USB 3.0 doesn’t fix this problem, but it does provide up to 50%
more power for simple devices (a 150 mA current versus 100 mA) and 80% more
power for more complex devices (a 900 mA current versus 500 mA). This allows
faster charging, less need for a power connection, etc.

Moreover, the new connectors are backwards compatible, meaning that USB 3.0
peripherals will work with USB 2.0 ports, and vice-versa. However, the performance
of the device (speed, power, etc.) will be determined and limited by the 2.0
standard, which again is 480 Mbps.

USB 3.0 connectors are longer than USB 2.0 connectors because of the extra set of
pins that are deeper in USB 3.0 ports:

Thus, because this extra set of pins won’t come in contact with USB 2.0 pins,
backwards compatibility is possible. However, when a USB 3.0 peripheral is
connected to a USB 3.0 port, these five extra pins are activated and provide the
promised speed and power boost.

Shown below are the backwards-compatible “A” and “B” connectors for USB 3.0, as
well as the new “B” connector, respectively:
The backwards-compatible USB 3.0 connectors are very similar to the USB 2.0
connectors, only that they are longer and have some extra contacts. Their shape
allows them to fit into USB 2.0 ports and peripherals, thus making them
conveniently backwards compatible. The new “B” connector on the right is what
allows the super-speed data transfer rate to occur – however, it’s not backwards
compatible since its shape is different.

Applications
Now that we have some background information on what USB 3.0 is and how it
works, let’s go into how we can get it on computers and how we can use it. The way
that many people take is to simply buy a new computer that has USB 3.0 ports
already equipped. However, for people that are content with the computers they
currently have, here are two possible alternatives. One is to upgrade a current
motherboard to one with USB 3.0 ports equipped – this can be pricey however, since
it may require purchasing a new CPU, RAM, etc. Some motherboards, such as the
Asus line of P7P55D-E, have motherboards already built into them and go for a few
hundred dollars. An alternative, cheaper way is to buy a PCI Express card, which has
two to four USB 3.0 ports on the back of it and goes for about $20-$30.

USB 3.0 has three main focuses: 1) keeping backwards compatibility, 2) increasing
speed, and 3) providing better power handling. Backward compatibility has been
covered in enough detail already, so now let’s shift to performance improvements.
Intel’s Jeff Ravencraft, president of the USB-IF (USB Implementers Forum), is
credited for saying: “We have research that shows that after 1 minute, 1.5 minutes
waiting for a transaction, users get impatient…The transfer times have to get much
faster.” Thus, with a rate close to 5 Gbps (as opposed to USB 2.0’s 480 Mbps), the
implications are tremendous. For example, Ravencraft says that a 27 GB HD movie
will take 70 seconds to transfer with USB 3.0, as opposed to 15 minutes with USB
2.0. Further, just imagine waiting for a few minutes instead of a few hours to back
up your computer, or only waiting a little more than a minute to off-load 32 GB flash
memory cards from your digital camera. In terms of technical operations, another
example would be performing speedier tests such as software downloads, thus
increasing the cycle time for a unit to get through a production line from start to
finish. In terms of power consumption, Ravencraft said: “power today is king for
portable devices. It is the pinnacle, the focus for the PC, the notebook, and all
devices. All of these new specs had to be optimized for power efficiency”. A huge
improvement from USB 2.0 to USB 3.0 is that there is no longer any device polling –
USB devices that are connected to hosts can now enter a virtual sleep mode! In this
mode, more power can be delivered to the device, thus decreasing the number of
power issues we have nowadays with portable hard drives needing extra power
from a second USB port. In addition, while USB 2.0 broadcasts information to all
connected devices, USB 3.0 does not, thus saving power as well. And that’s not all:
with USB 2.0, devices that run out of battery cannot be recognized by a laptop. USB
3.0 gives machines the ability to recognize drained devices, thus allowing those
devices to be charged.

Pros and Cons

I’ve already talked about some of the benefits of having USB 3.0, such as increased
speed and power – it’s all covered in the capabilities and applications sections.
However, good always comes with bad, so there are some cons to USB 3.0. First off,
the advertised 5 Gbps speed is only a maximum. Rarely does it reach that high a
speed since there are some limiting factors – let me reuse Ravencraft’s example
about transferring a 27 GB HD movie in 70 seconds with USB 3.0. Users have to
remember that this speed can only be unlocked if their portable storage devices can
write data that quickly as well. Here’s another con: let’s say you have a large
production line that uses USB 2.0 at all of their stations. The question is, is it really
worth it to switch to USB 3.0 in order to possibly speed up production? Recall that
there are a few ways to get USB 3.0 access: choosing the PCI Express card path may
seem cheap at $20-$30, but imagine having to do that for all the equipment on a
factory line. Again, is it really worth it? Thirdly, as fast as USB 3.0 is, another
technology named Thunderbolt promises 10 Gbps, twice as fast as USB 3.0. If a
switch is to be made, why not just switch to Thunderbolt right away?

My Argument, Concluding Remarks

My personal opinion is that it’s worth upgrading to USB 3.0. Taking the factory
example, although replacing or enhancing equipment with USB 3.0 capability could
cost quite a bit, eventually the yields will catch up and rise higher than before. Cycle
times will eventually decrease, and more units can be produced if resources are
used optimally. Second, although the ten times speedup that is promised is only a
theoretical maximum, it still ensures that data transfer will increase drastically –
may not tenfold, but still enough to influence production greatly. And about
Thunderbolt, right now Apple is the only firm making Thunderbolt-enabled
computers; I believe most factories are not using Apple technology since it is pricier
than other alternatives. On the other hand, unlike Thunderbolt, USB 3.0 is already
largely available and can be added on to computers not possessing that technology.
In conclusion, I believe that USB 3.0 is a worthwhile investment.
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