Texas Instruments introduced a USB 3.0 transceiver that’s said...

Texas Instruments introduced a USB 3.0 transceiver that’s said to complete data transfers from a 25-GB Blu-ray disc in as little as 90 seconds. At current USB 2.0 data transfer speeds, the same data would transfer at about 14 minutes, TI said. The USB 3.0 interface could be integrated into TVs, camcorders, personal media players and other video-based consumer devices by the end of 2011 or early 2012, said Dan Harmon, consumer and computing interface product marketing manager. “We see some of the first CE products with USB 3.0 being TVs because they tend to be host-controller based.” He envisioned consumers inserting a thumb drive into a TV’s USB 3.0 slot and watching a movie or a slide show of digital stills. USB 2.0 solutions now use DSP processors and controllers on a single chip with an external transceiver to complete the data transfer. “We think that six months to a year from now processors will start becoming available with the 3.0 core integrated on chip and they'll need an external transceiver to make the full USB 3.0 communication possible,” said Harmon. While speed is the primary advantage of USB 3.0, he said the technology is more power efficient as well, drawing one-third the current of USB 2.0. Although peak current is two times higher, the faster data transfer rates and bus efficiency protocol gains tip power advantages to USB 3.0. “With 900 milliamps supplied instead of 500 milliamps you also have the ability to do bus powering with external products that you can’t do with USB 2.0,” Harmon said. Examples might include multi-dongle input devices such as video switchers that allow simultaneous connection of several video sources that output to a display via USB or HDMI. “As you go to full HD resolution USB-to-HDMI switches, the higher power gives them the capability to have better throughput and processing power in the box,” Harmon said. He noted that the USB Device Working Group is working to define the USB video display interface which would enable a direct USB connection between video devices so that no conversion to a graphics format is required. “Today camcorders use USB for sending still images primarily,” Harmon said. “With a video display driver, you could start streaming live video.”