Intel has unveiled the new USB technology called USB 3.0. It is far superior than the current USB 2.0. USB 3.0 has 10 times the bandwidth of existing USB 2.0 connections. It is expected to hit the markets in 2009 or 2010. The transfer speed of USB 3.0 is really jaw dropping, which is about 4.8Gbit/s that is 614MByte/s. The time required for data transfers will be reduced dramatically, for example transferring a movie of 30 GB will take around 74 seconds( 1 min 14 sec) in USB 3.0 whereas it will take around 17 to 18 minutes with USB 2.0.

The other major feature of the technology is that it uses interrupt driven protocol in place of polling system when the host is looking for traffic. In simple words  your pc will not waste any resources to see whether the connected peripheral is trying to send data. It will also be backward compatible i.e. you can plug-in a USB 3.0 cable into a USB 2.0 device.

One of its features that might impress you is that you can read and write data simultaneously, which is not supported by USB 2.0. Microsoft, AMD , Dell, Nvidia Corporation and NEC are supporting the new specification released by Intel which it has made available royalty free.