USB 2.0 Gathers Momentum: Higher speed rates to be announced at upcoming IDF

Electronic News, August 30, 1999 by Jerry Ascierto

The USB 2.0 Promoter Group this week at the Intel Developers Forum (IDF) in Palm Springs, Calif. is expected to release a revised and significantly higher speed target rate than was previously expected for version 2.0 of the Universal Serial Bus (USB).

The group, which consists of Compaq Computer Corp., Hewlett Packard Co., Intel Corp., Lucent Technologies Inc., Microsoft Corp., NEC and Philips, said that the revised rate is the result of analyses it has conducted since announcing the original specs at the last IDF in February.

"When we first announced the formation of the group, we didn't have the data, or the engineering people doing the real work, and so we were conservative in our estimates," explained Jason Ziller, a spokesman for the group. "But we realized that we can take the speeds significantly higher without impacting the cost, and we're still using the same cables and connectors and maintaining compatibility."

This could spell bad news for those companies banking on rival 1394, or FireWire, technology, a competing multimedia bus enabling convergence between PCs, peripherals and consumer audio/visual products. While each technology has its own application focus--USB 2.0 for PC peripherals and 1394 for audio/visual consumer electronic devices--the extent to which each technology will overlap remains unclear.

About 3.5 million products with FireWire support were shipped in 1998, a number expected to dramatically balloon to 200 million in only five years, according to Cahners In-Stat Group. Most of these shipments were in digital camcorder products.

However, a threat to FireWire emerged at the IDF in February, when Intel, the technology's chief backer, christened USB 2.0, said to be 10 to 20 times faster than the current version of USB, and announced support for that technology over FireWire.

The USB 2.0 Promoter Group says that the USB 2.0 specification draft is on track for release at the USB 2.0 Developer Conference this October in San Diego, with systems and peripherals expected to hit the marketplace by the second half of 2000.