NEC develops 16Gbps link usable for USB 3.0, more
updated 10:10 am EST, Wed February 17, 2010
NEC USB 3 controller triples in speed
NEC today said it has developed a new chipset whose bus speeds could more than triple the speed of USB 3.0. By adding a delay to the feedback signal that becomes linked to the data rate, the company says it has conquered the interference that plagues very high speed data and provided considerably more headroom. It expects that USB 3.0 or a similar technology could reach 16Gbps, or about 3.3 times faster than the peak 5Gbps of the official spec.
The speed would amount to about 2GB per second, or enough that multiple solid-state drives paired together wouldn't likely be fast enough to overwhelm the connection.
NEC would still need to obtain approval from an organization like the USB Implementers Forum to make its technology part of a standard but could potentially cut down even very large data transfers to a matter of seconds if approved. The fastest speed due for production so far is Intel's Light Peak, which could provide as much as 10Gbps by the end of this year.
