21. November 2008 by David Peterson.

It wasn’t all that long ago that I wrote an article comparing USB 2.0 vs. Firewire. Just for prosperity sake I’m going to leave that article up, you can see it here at our parent company JDP Digital, Inc

Hot off the press Computerworld.com reports (November 17, 2008) that the standard for the new USB 3.0 has been set. These new units will be able to reach theoretical transfer speeds of 5Gbits/sec. That is 10 times faster than our current 2.0 speeds which were set at 480Mbits/secs. We are now talking about Giga bits vs. Mega bits.

What does that mean for you the end user? 10 times the transfer speed means that 1GB of data can be transferred in just over 3 seconds. It takes 33 seconds for a 2.0 device to transfer that amount of data.  Here is how the website MaximumPC.com states it… “The example Intel likes to give out when talking about the new speed is that transferring a 27GB HD movie to your future media player will only take 70 seconds with USB 3.0, while it would take 15 minutes or more with 2.0.”

Look for the new devices in 2010 but there is a small hurdle that has to be crossed. Our current operating systems don’t know what to do with 3.0. There has to be new software developed and implemented for our operating systems to move forward. Microsoft among others is already ahead of this problem.

Our USB Flash Memory retail store currently sells 2.0 1GB USB flash memory for around $7.50/unit. I bet in 2010 the same unit will sell, if you can even buy them, for around $0.99/unit. I still chuckle, back in 2002 a 1.0, 512MB unit was selling for $375.00 – got to love technology.

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7. November 2008 by David Peterson.

Just because you have a 2.0 USB flash memory drive doesn’t necessarily mean that it will be lighting fast. In the production of your 2.0 flash memory drive there are several factors in the BOM (Bill ofMaterials) that can affect the speed of the device.

If you just use your USB flash memory to download music or transfer normal work files you probably would not notice the difference in speed between two 2.0 drives. But some applications like Windows ReadyBoost require specific random writing speeds. Microsoft says those random speeds are 2.5MB/sec. for random reads of 4KB of data, and 1.75MB/sec. for random writes of 512KB of data. Those speeds are not exceptionally fast but in my business I have run across many units that cannot reach those levels.

Why?

You run into two major costs when building a drive. They are the I/O Controller, and the type of memory chip used.

The I/O Controller as the name implies handles the input and output of information between the USB drive and the computer it is plugged into. The number of channels the I/O controller has acts as a speed regulator. The more channels that are moving the data, the faster the drive performs.

The type of memory used in the drives is either expensive SLC (single-level cells) or inexpensive MLC (multi-level cells). SLC memory has higher transfer speeds (about twice as fast) and lower power needs. MLC memory is typical in today’s USB flash memory due to its cost.

So how does a typical consumer know which USB flash memory to buy to get the fastest speeds? You really don’t know – my advice is to buy the more expensive drive since it is the cost of the memory and I/O Controller that make up a significant portion of the production cost.

PS: Just for giggles (actually I was checking a competitor) I bought a 1GB no-name 2.0 flash memory unit off EBay for $1.99. Guess what? It couldn’t achieve the base speeds for ReadyBoost.

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