USB 3.0...

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I don't understand the current obsession with USB 3.0. I have just spent most of my day working with two new USB 3.0 cards and a couple different external HDD solutions. This is not the first time I've explored USB 3.0. This is just the latest round with a couple new products I received the other day and new software. The latency is terrible, most all the compatibility issues I could produce 3 months ago are still here. The standard is flawed and "superspeed 5Gbit" is a joke -- is that even acceptable marketing? It's really 4.8Gbps before loss to data overhead.

...Testing with the NEC chipset, latest BIOS and drivers. Windows7 64bit, EVGA SR2 motherboard PC w/ i7 6-core OC at 4.1GHz, 12GB RAM, EVGA GTX480 OC video...

Trust me, you guys don't want this shit.

6Gbps eSATA FTW. done.

Dear Intel. I'm refusing to buy a new computer until I can have PCIe 3.0 and LightPeak. Please make it so. Thank you for making 6Gbps SATA an integrated part of Sandy Bridge. I wish you would make up your mind as to whether or not USB3.0 is mature enough to include. You have my blessing if you wish to not include it, ever, in any new chipset.

Dear Apple, I forgive you for your lack of interest in USB 3.0. Please just add two more PCIe slots into the next Mac Pro and kick Intel in the Ass so we can have LightPeak and ExpressCard 2.0 on the next MBP's. Would be cool on the iMac too.

 

[Michael Hastings]

Dear Intel. I'm refusing to buy a new computer until I can have PCIe 3.0 and LightPeak. Please make it so. Thank you for making 6Gbps SATA an integrated part of Sandy Bridge. I wish you would make up your mind as to whether or not USB3.0 is mature enough to include. You have my blessing if you wish to not include it, ever, in any new chipset.

Dear Apple, I forgive you for your lack of interest in USB 3.0. Please just add two more PCIe slots into the next Mac Pro and kick Intel in the Ass so we can have LightPeak and ExpressCard 2.0 on the next MBP's. Would be cool on the iMac too.

Second. Please send this to Steve.

 

[PatrickW]

I don't understand the current obsession with USB 3.0.

People are susceptible to marketing.

Hopefully LightPeak delivers.

 

[Elsie N]

I don't understand the current obsession with USB 3.0. I have just spent most of my day working with two new USB 3.0 cards and a couple different external HDD solutions.

Jeff, wonder if it will be any better when directly supported off the Motherboard... like in an AMD system?

 

[Albert Astorga Zepeda]

I Second that...

I Second that...

I don't understand the current obsession with USB 3.0. I have just spent most of my day working with two new USB 3.0 cards and a couple different external HDD solutions. This is not the first time I've explored USB 3.0. This is just the latest round with a couple new products I received the other day and new software. The latency is terrible, most all the compatibility issues I could produce 3 months ago are still here. The standard is flawed and "superspeed 5Gbit" is a joke -- is that even acceptable marketing? It's really 4.8Gbps before loss to data overhead.

...Testing with the NEC chipset, latest BIOS and drivers. Windows7 64bit, EVGA SR2 motherboard PC w/ i7 6-core OC at 4.1GHz, 12GB RAM, EVGA GTX480 OC video...

Trust me, you guys don't want this shit.

6Gbps eSATA FTW. done.

Dear Intel. I'm refusing to buy a new computer until I can have PCIe 3.0 and LightPeak. Please make it so. Thank you for making 6Gbps SATA an integrated part of Sandy Bridge. I wish you would make up your mind as to whether or not USB3.0 is mature enough to include. You have my blessing if you wish to not include it, ever, in any new chipset.

Dear Apple, I forgive you for your lack of interest in USB 3.0. Please just add two more PCIe slots into the next Mac Pro and kick Intel in the Ass so we can have LightPeak and ExpressCard 2.0 on the next MBP's. Would be cool on the iMac too.

That (ExpressCard 2.0) would be really nice to have specially on the Now Powerful iMac. even more awesome would be to have the standard 7 PCIe slots in a Mac Pro. But like I have said before. I do not see it happening. and the worse thing is that, I can't come up with a racional reason as to why.

I would Second that only if Jobs would have ever given a hint that Begging or even asking kindly works with them. Folks Apple in Not RED. it would be Marvelously Profitable to se a RED-Apple.

 

[PatrickW]

That (ExpressCard 2.0) would be really nice to have specially on the Now Powerful iMac. even more awesome would be to have the standard 7 PCIe slots in a Mac Pro. But like I have said before. I do not see it happening. and the worse thing is that, I can't come up with a racional reason as to why.

I can see a high end mac pro, more storage and expansion and it being branded as the Mac Pro Server.

 

[Raphael Varandas]

Thanks Jeff... nice advice.
Cheers

 

[Albert Astorga Zepeda]

Terrific Idea.

Terrific Idea.

I can see a high end mac pro, more storage and expansion and it being branded as the Mac Pro Server.

Now that they have killed the Xserve this would probably appeal to the Home studio and some small business users with no need for a Rack Mount Solution.
The Big Question is. Will it ever Happen?. Base on apple's way of doing things. Most likely not.
and Speaking of servers. and while we are at it. why not ask them add a ExpressCard 2.0 to the smallest server they have. the Mac Mini Server.

 

[Tom Gleeson]

Snail trail

Snail trail

I don't understand the current obsession with USB 3.0. .

Jeff,

I don't doubt the accuracy of your USB3.0 experience but this obsession is about the huge demand for inexpensive and ubiquitous solutions for moving the terrabytes of data we now produce. Storage is cheap but moving it is painfull and now we are looking at a new generation of cameras that will produce even more. This is a real issue with the Epic and will only pissoff some clients when it takes overnight just to dump the data making the Alexa look good. Bring on Lightpeak

 

[Christian Edwards]

I don't understand the current obsession with USB 3.0. I have just spent most of my day working with two new USB 3.0 cards and a couple different external HDD solutions. This is not the first time I've explored USB 3.0. This is just the latest round with a couple new products I received the other day and new software. The latency is terrible, most all the compatibility issues I could produce 3 months ago are still here. The standard is flawed and "superspeed 5Gbit" is a joke -- is that even acceptable marketing? It's really 4.8Gbps before loss to data overhead.

...Testing with the NEC chipset, latest BIOS and drivers. Windows7 64bit, EVGA SR2 motherboard PC w/ i7 6-core OC at 4.1GHz, 12GB RAM, EVGA GTX480 OC video...

Trust me, you guys don't want this shit.

6Gbps eSATA FTW. done.

Dear Intel. I'm refusing to buy a new computer until I can have PCIe 3.0 and LightPeak. Please make it so. Thank you for making 6Gbps SATA an integrated part of Sandy Bridge. I wish you would make up your mind as to whether or not USB3.0 is mature enough to include. You have my blessing if you wish to not include it, ever, in any new chipset.

Dear Apple, I forgive you for your lack of interest in USB 3.0. Please just add two more PCIe slots into the next Mac Pro and kick Intel in the Ass so we can have LightPeak and ExpressCard 2.0 on the next MBP's. Would be cool on the iMac too.

Thats a bummer man had high hopes for usb3 ...have you tried the 4 way sli on that board ?

 

[Michael Hastings]

People should remember that it was the iMac that basically dragged the world away from rs-232 and into USB. Think it will be the same with light peak - iMacs, towers, laptops, appletv, iPad, iPod, iPhone - all with one blazing fast lightspeed interface, no? MiniUSB for backward compatibility and charging (EU mandate)

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

this obsession is about the huge demand for inexpensive and ubiquitous solutions for moving the terrabytes of data we now produce.

Which is why I don't understand the obsession with USB3.0. It is not as fast as existing solutions. Not established, unproven, flawed in both specification and in current implementations... Huge overhead and latency due to both how it was designed to work and due to backward compatibility.

Even in "super-speed" 4.8Gbps mode, it has terrible latency and bi-directional performance. It can only beat out 3Gbps SATA on large, sustained transfers. It's no match for 6Gbps SATA. All HDDs out there are SATA and SAS interfaced, so you add more latency into the mix by throwing them into a USB housing.

Storage is cheap but moving it is painfull and now we are looking at a new generation of cameras that will produce even more. This is a real issue with the Epic and will only pissoff some clients when it takes overnight just to dump the data making the Alexa look good. Bring on Lightpeak

I'm using eSATA. I've been using it for several years. There's an improved SATA spec that should be approved literally any week now that supports 18Gbps per channel. OCZ has a variant on this as an open spec of their own, which is available now and is very stable, it's 20Gbps per channel. LightPeak looks good and is 10Gbps per channel and while slower than upcoming SATA and OCZ IBIS specs, it can run much longer distances. 10G ethernet is an established standard that can run over both UTP copper and fiber and it is getting to be cheap. It will be the common form of ethernet within the next 2 years I bet.

I see no reason for the market to push forward with USB3.0 when we have LightPeak so close, 6Gbps SATA since nearly 2 years ago, and 10Gbps eithernet with POE support since several years ago and it's now affordable and about to become dirt cheap.

Thats a bummer man had high hopes for usb3 ...have you tried the 4 way sli on that board ?

Haven't tried the 4-way. Actually I had dual GTX480 cards in here and they ran great, but other than for gaming or CUDA development, it was worthless. So I pulled the second 480 and used it to build another system. I'm actually writing a GPU-accelerated app right now that's running on these systems. But it's not CUDA based and is using OpenCL, which doesn't scale as well across multiple GPUs right now. Or at least not until nVidia and ATI step it up a notch, but ATI is just dragging their feet and nVidia has become too invested in CUDA.

 

[Elsie N]

Which is why I don't understand the obsession with USB3.0. It is not as fast as existing solutions.
Even in "super-speed" 4.8Gbps mode, it has terrible latency and bi-directional performance. It can only beat out 3Gbps SATA on large, sustained transfers. It's no match for 6Gbps SATA. All HDDs out there are SATA and SAS interfaced, so you add more latency into the mix by throwing them into a USB housing.

Agreed it's not as fast as the 6Gbs SATA III, but it is at least faster than USB 2.0. May not be entirely suitable for Epic footage but I think it can be worth having for other uses. (Disclaimer: I have to defend USB 3.0 in order to justify the msi 890FXA-GD70 motherboard and SATA to USB 3.0 HDD docking staiton I just purchased)

Interestingly, the mobo mentioned above has something like 5 internal SATA III connectors and none that are natively external... only a SATA II external connection. Also interesting is that, at least on Newegg's site, I can only find one affordable SATA III HDD, a Western Digital 1TB drive. Could find no other brands that are SATA III. Would really like to go the OCZ Revo SSD drive for my OS, but would like to see a price drop before springing for it. It apparently is on a par with SATA III.

 

[Deanan]

Which is why I don't understand the obsession with USB3.0. It is not as fast as existing solutions. Not established, unproven, flawed in both specification and in current implementations... Huge overhead and latency due to both how it was designed to work and due to backward compatibility.

Even in "super-speed" 4.8Gbps mode, it has terrible latency and bi-directional performance. It can only beat out 3Gbps SATA on large, sustained transfers. It's no match for 6Gbps SATA. All HDDs out there are SATA and SAS interfaced, so you add more latency into the mix by throwing them into a USB housing.



I'm using eSATA. I've been using it for several years. There's an improved SATA spec that should be approved literally any week now that supports 18Gbps per channel. OCZ has a variant on this as an open spec of their own, which is available now and is very stable, it's 20Gbps per channel. LightPeak looks good and is 10Gbps per channel and while slower than upcoming SATA and OCZ IBIS specs, it can run much longer distances. 10G ethernet is an established standard that can run over both UTP copper and fiber and it is getting to be cheap. It will be the common form of ethernet within the next 2 years I bet.

BTW, The OCZ is external pci-e to a raid chip to normal SSDs/controllers repackaged.

 

[Elsie N]

BTW, The OCZ is external pci-e to a raid chip to normal SSDs/controllers repackaged.

Deanan, aren't they offering their technology (connectors) for a reasonable price so they can utilize, say, the Southbridge on a motherboard? Seems I read this somewhere.

 

[Frank Glencairn]

eSata is faster than the most HDs anyway, so why bother?

I got an external eSata docking station. You just stick a raw SATA HD in the slot and use it like a very large floppy disk. Solved my storage needs at a rate of 4 cent per MB. On top of that, it has a second slot where you can stick in an other HD and make a 1:1 copy without even the need of a computer. Works fine as a stand alone HD copy station on set. And all that for under 40 Euros.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.c...py+dock&cd=1&hl=de&ct=clnk&gl=de&client=opera

Frank



Frank

 

[Elsie N]

That's pretty neat. It's also what I was hoping RED would make to offload footage from the 1.8" SSD to either a larger SSD or HDD.

 

[Deanan]

Deanan, aren't they offering their technology (connectors) for a reasonable price so they can utilize, say, the Southbridge on a motherboard? Seems I read this somewhere.

As far as I can tell, it's practically all commodity stuff except maybe for the pci-e expansion which might be commodity also.

 

[Harry Clark]

USB is good for...
printers and the lens light on my Red One.
I don't get it. USB3... whatever.
Cheers,
Harry

 

[Stephen Strangways]

Blackmagic Design seems to like USB 3.0. They say the can move uncompressed 10-bit 1080 over it in realtime.
http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/ultrastudiopro/
http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/ultrascope/

I think that people have forgotten how flaky USB 1.0 was when it was first introduced.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpj1SgQQ984

Once motherboard with USB 3.0 integrated become more common and device manufacturers get some experience building devices with it, I think things will improve.