Intel snubs USB 3.0 in favour of Light Peak

Permalink: Intel snubs USB 3.0 in favour of Light Peak

Although USB 3.0 devices such as Super Talent’s flash drive are already starting to hit the market, it seems that Intel is postponing plans to introduce USB 3.0 chipsets until 2011.

There is speculation that Intel might be favouring the Light Peak technology it demonstrated at the Intel Developer Forum 2009.

This could see a single optic fiber cable serving as universal connector that could replace the current range of connectivity solutions such as USB, HDMI, and DVI.

Meanwhile Super Talent’s drive offers 10x the speed of current USB 2.0 drives.

The SuperSpeed USB 3.0 RAIDDrive utilises a special technology with multiple RAID pairs containing differential serial data channels.

It offers data transfer rates of up to 5Gbit/sec, and will come in 32GB, 64GB and 128GB versions.

Fortunately the drive is backward compatible with USB 2.0 ports, although it won’t be able to show off its super-fast speeds.