USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) President Jeff Ravencraft revealed some features of USB 3.0 at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) 2008. It seems USB 3.0 will be able to reach transfer times of 5GB a second, which if you are wondering how fast, is equivalent to 50 full-length high quality movies in a minute! If you compare the differences in speed….

25 GB of data transfer via

• USB 1.1 – 9.3 hours
• USB 2.0 – 14 minutes
• USB 3.0 - 5 secs. (yes, 5 secs.)

At this point it is not yet confirmed which OS would be getting the USB 3.0 first, but there have indications that Windows Vista might be the starter. Ravencraft said, “Our early indications tell us that most partners think that we should support USB 3.0 on at least Windows Vista.”

Availability date of USB 3.0? Late 2009 or early 2010.

[source: techradar.com]