USB thumb drives that are bigger than my hard drive circa 2001 are great. Waiting 5, 10, 15 minutes for the files to move to that USB 2.0 drive isn’t so great. Now that USB 3.0 is becoming a common thing in laptops and devices, we can finally get faster flash drives as well.
Intel’s next generation of processors, which you may know by the name Ivy Bridge, received a big boost this past week as the platform received official USB 3.0 certification. Super-fast data transfer speeds FTW!
AMD couldn’t have expected Intel wouldn’t be snapping at its heels soon after announcing yesterday they’d be supporting USB 3.0 in two upcoming chipsets. Though AMD didn’t specify a timeframe, Intel has said their Ivy Bridge silicon would debut in 2012 – and told developers to work on both Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 [CNET]
You may’ve noticed there are many laptops and PCs out there that support USB 3.0 now, but unfortunately both AMD and Intel haven’t added support for the latest version in their chipsets before. This is set to change with AMD’s A75 and A70M chipsets, which will be the first to be branded “Superspeed USB”. Previously, PC builders have had to use third-party controllers if they wanted to include the much-faster USB 3.0. [The Inquirer]
At first glance you wonder if this USB key needs to go on a diet. Like something from ten years ago, it seems much bigger than it needs to be. Oh, but then you find it’s packing 120GB in there, and will dump it all at a rate of 260MB/s. Suddenly it’s not a big USB key, it’s a tiny external SSD.
