In January this year, the consortium, which decides on USB 3.0 specifications, first mentioned they wanted to upgrade the interface. Meanwhile, a bit more than half a year later, they confirm USB 3.1. The best thing about the new specs includes the throughput upgrade to 10 Gigabit per second.

USB 3.0, which is still state-of-the-art, is capable of pushing up to 5 Gigabit per second through the connector cable. With USB 3.1 there will be chips pushing twice of that from one device to another. With USB 3.1 not only the cables and connectors need improvement, the consortium also decided that the cables need to undergo changes. Luckily, like with USB 3.0 and USB 2.0, USB 3.1 will be downwards compatible with older versions of USB. It is expected that the first engineering samples will reach manufacturers by the end of 2014. In 2015 adoption by users should begin.

With a throughput rate of 10 Gbps USB 3.1 will be as fast as Thunderbolt these days but in 2015, it is expected that Thunderbolt 2 is going to be available, which should also double throughput speeds. In this case the upcoming Thunderbolt upgrade will boost performance to 20 Gbps. Nevertheless we wouldn't expect Thunderbolt to compete with USB 3.1, since the latter is a mainstream interface and Thunderbolt is mostly seen in the high-end segment.




Source: Pressemitteilung