While USB 3.0 is still fairly new in the computer world, Thunderbolt, Intel’s highspeed connection currently offers higher speeds. Since Thunderbolt is offering higher speeds and came out just after USB 3.0, they have been trying to come up with ways to get the USB 3.0 standards higher so that they can more effectively compete with Thunderbolt.
The upgrades that have been proposed would increase USB 3.0 to 10 Gbps throughput bringing it closer to Thunderbolts data transfer speeds. They want to keep the current connectors so that they can continue to be backward compatible with previous versions of USB.
The other goal is to continue to be compatible with current USB 3.0 software stacks so that there are no issues with software that was written with the original USB 3.0 in mind.
While these upgrades are definitely needed, they better keep them coming since Thunderbolt is also working on improvements. Intel announced that they are working to improve data transfer rates on Thunderbolt by 2014.
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