Intel plays games with USB3.0Comment Forks and knivesBy Charlie Demerjian: Friday, 09 May 2008, 4:07 PMTHERE IS ANOTHER power game brewing over USB3.0 and it looks like the user is going to pay the price once again.If you remember the OHCI/UHCI mess that made USB1.0 worthless, Intel is about to provoke the same thing for USB3.0.It is power games, user be damned.The problem this time is that USB3.0 is basically an Intel spec, think PCIe2.0 over external cable and you are 98 per cent of the way there. Intel is the driving force here, and it did the bulk of the work, so fair enough.If you are making the usual widgets for it, memory sticks, rocket launchers and sex toys, you can get the specs now. If you are competing with Intel, that is, you are making a chipset or anything with a CPU in it, you have to wait six months. Don't take this to just mean x86 either, ARM, MIPS or PPC and device vendors get equally shafted.This behaviour is not what defines 'standard', it is what defines 'proprietary'. Basically if you are competing with Intel, or are perceived to be competing with it, you have to wait and suck down a six-month disadvantage. The last time this happened was USB1.0. Intel played the same games and the standard was so broken it never worked.What happened then is that the world went around Intel and developed their own spec, and you ended up with UHCI or OHCI, neither of which were compatible. Things sucked, nothing worked, and the 'standard' stagnated from 1995 to 1998. USB1.1 fixed that problem by basically throwing it out and starting over, and USB2.0 was done as a real standard from the beginning. Shockingly it worked, confusing Hi-Speed/Fast/Chocolate-covered/Swift-ish labeling aside.Now back to USB3.0 and Intel is pulling the same dumb tricks again. We are on the verge of people defining another USB3.0 spec so you have will have USB3.0-I and USB3.0-E for Intel and Everyone. Conveniently, they will all be simply labeled USB3.0 and half the devices just won't work on your machine.Come off it Intel! You don't need to play these games. And they only make you look bad once they come out (See above).We might expect such behaviour from the likes of Nvidia or MS, but not you guys.
But think about it, if external data throughput rates continue to rise, we could reach the point where pc's would no longer become self contained. Memory, cpu, graphics are all easily user swappable allowing for even the noobiest of noobs to upgrade their systems in a flash.Good times, good times.
USB3.0 forks as industry gangs up on IntelPower games lead to painBy Charlie Demerjian: Sunday, 01 June 2008, 4:46 PMWELL, IT LOOKS like you and I are going to be in for a world of incompatibility and pain in the coming year, USB3.0 is forking. Intel is playing power games again, the industry is going around it, and we all lose.Word has come to us that most of the industry is not going to wait for Intel, and is forming their own consortium to do it themselves. The two standards won't be compatible of course and both will be called USB3.0, so when you buy a PC or a device, they won't necessarily work together. If you remember the broken mess that was USB1.0, you have a fair idea of what is in store.The reason for this is simple, and while we told you about it before, it is worth telling again. Intel is sitting on the host spec and not giving it out. Their claim is that they want it 100 per cent done before they give it out, which they will. They don't want people going off half-cocked and making incompatible devices and widgets.Device end specs are out, and Intel will tell you that anyone who really desperately wants to can reverse engineer the device end spec and make their own Host Bus Adapter (HBA). While true, this is rather pointless because you would end up with a dozen or four HBAs, and every USB3.0 implementation would need a different driver, things would be incompatible, and a general mess ensues.Intel is trying to claim the high road here. On one hand, they claim they want compatibility, but if you can't wait the six months, you are welcome to make your own incompatible version. They are sharing the HBA spec with some people, but will not share with others, especially if the 'other' competes. This is their prerogative of course, they are doing the engineering, but public statements that are not internally consistent are never a good idea. Then there is the whole concept of an open standard that is not open, see MS for more on that.Intel is playing power games and daring the industry to go it on their own. This time, the industry did, and it is not just the obvious chipset makers this time. Whispers say it will be a virtual who's who of semiconductor and device makers coming out to support the competing USB3.0 standard.In the end, we all lose, and USB3.0 is a lost cause. Based on what is coming, hold off and wait for USB3.1.
Linux first to support USB 3.0Proprietary too slowBy Nick FarrellFriday, 12 June 2009, 12:40IT LOOKS like Linux has stolen the march on proprietary operating systems when it comes to the new USB 3.0 standard.USB 3.0 is supposed to be the next big thing for wires out the back of PCs and hardware manufactures are falling all over themselves to make stuff for them. However so far there has been no operating system that supports the new standard.The Vole and Apple are not including the new standard in the Windows 7 or Snow Leopard operating systems. But it looks like Intel's open sauce community is rushing to fill the gap.Sarah Sharp, a self-styled "geekess" and Linux developer at Intel's Open Source Technology Centre has been working on the Linux USB subsystem.Writing in her bog, Sharp writes that the xHCI (USB 3.0) host controller driver and initial support for USB 3.0 devices is now publicly available on her kernel.org git tree.She said that this means that Linux will be the first operating system with official USB 3.0 support and she is working with Keve Gabbert, who is the OSV bloke at Intel, to make sure that Linux distributions like Ubuntu and Red Hat pick up the xHCI driver.Sharp hopes that USB 3.0 vendors who have prototypes will test with her driver and get the standard out there, er... sharpish. µ
