Owners Manual

With today's ever increasing demands placed on data transfers with high-definition video content, terabyte storage devices, high

megapixel count digital cameras etc., USB 2.0 may not be fast enough. Furthermore, no USB 2.0 connection could ever come close to the

480Mbps theoretical maximum throughput, making data transfer at around 320Mbps (40MB/s) — the actual real-world maximum.

Similarly, USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1 connections will never achieve 4.8Gbps. We will likely see a real-world maximum rate of 400MB/s with

overheads. At this speed, USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1 is a 10x improvement over USB 2.0.

Applications

USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1 opens up the laneways and provides more headroom for devices to deliver a better overall experience. Where USB

video was barely tolerable previously (both from a maximum resolution, latency, and video compression perspective), it's easy to imagine

that with 5-10 times the bandwidth available, USB video solutions should work that much better. Single-link DVI requires almost 2Gbps

throughput. Where 480Mbps was limiting, 5Gbps is more than promising. With its promised 4.8Gbps speed, the standard will find its way

into some products that previously weren't USB territory, like external RAID storage systems.

Listed below are some of the available SuperSpeed USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1 products:

• External Desktop USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1 Hard Drives

• Portable USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1 Hard Drives

• USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1 Drive Docks & Adapters

• USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1 Flash Drives & Readers

• USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1 Solid-state Drives

• USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1 RAIDs

• Optical Media Drives

• Multimedia Devices

• Networking

• USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1 Adapter Cards & Hubs

Compatibility

The good news is that USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1 has been carefully planned from the start to peacefully co-exist with USB 2.0. First of all,

while USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1 specifies new physical connections and thus new cables to take advantage of the higher speed capability of

the new protocol, the connector itself remains the same rectangular shape with the four USB 2.0 contacts in the exact same location as

before. Five new connections to carry receive and transmitted data independently are present on USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1 cables and only

come into contact when connected to a proper SuperSpeed USB connection.

Windows 8/10 will be bringing native support for USB 3.1 Gen 1 controllers. This is in contrast to previous versions of Windows, which

continue to require separate drivers for USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1 controllers.

DDR4

DDR4 (double data rate fourth generation) memory is a higher-speed successor to the DDR2 and DDR3 technologies and allows up to 512

GB in capacity, compared to the DDR3's maximum of 128 GB per DIMM. DDR4 synchronous dynamic random-access memory is keyed

differently from both SDRAM and DDR to prevent the user from installing the wrong type of memory into the system.

Technology and components