All USB Storage products, Flash Drives, Thumb Drives, Hard Drives, and SSDs use a transfer protocol called “Bulk Only Transfer” or “BOT” protocol.  This works reliably in Windows and Linux and other operating systems. 

In USB, a Bulk Transfers refers to a transfer of data that must be 100% accurate when it arrives. No errors can be allowed.  For example, if you are copying pictures from your camera to your computer, you want every color pixel to be 100% accurate.  The same is true for printing a picture.

It also means the data does not need to arrive at a certain time.  If an error occurs in a Bulk transmission, the system retries until the data accurately moves to the destination. 

BOT is highly reliable, but the hard drive companies knew that with USB 3.0 a new method would be needed.  BOT basically sends a single packet at a time.  This works well for USB 2.0.

USB 3.0 lets you send packets along multiple USB 3.0 “streams.”  To take advantage of this, Storage companies created a new USB Driver Class, a purely software feature, to enable faster USB transfers on USB 3.0. called “USB Attached SCSI Protocol” or “UASP.”  UASP allows you to send packets along multiple streams in parallel, and even burst the data faster.

ASUS published a web page that does a fantastic job illustrating how UASP works with an animation sequence. I recommend you click on the image ASUS website below and take a look at it.

I should point out you need a hard drive or SSD that supports UASP inside the hard drive’s firmware to support this.

In the USB community, we’ve actually debated the usefulness of UASP.  In our lab, we performance increases of 6-10% for early applications.

In a test of the ASUS motherboard with a UASP enabled ASMedia Hard Drive, shows a speed bump of about 33-37Megabytes per second going from about 261 to 293 Megabytes per second, or about a 13% increase in speed.

Today, mass market hard drives today won’t deliver data fast enough because they use SATA 3 Gb/s instead of the faster 6Gb/s. Most hard drives bridge from SATA to USB 3.0.  Since USB 3.0 has a maximum effective throughput of about 4Gb/s, this is faster than existing SATA 3/Gb/s drives.  SATA can be limiting.  Within 2 years, this will change because hard drives will have either SATA 6Gb/s support, or native USB 3.0 support so SATA will not be the bottleneck.

Note:
   3 Gigabits/second = 3Gb/s = 300 MB/s = 300 Megabytes/second
   4 Gb/s = 400 MB/s
   6 Gb/s = 600 MB/s

If you are building a USB 3.0 product today, it means you will deploy in about 12-18 months which means you should plan for UASP support or at least investigate UASP for your application.

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TI has a concept video demonstrating how their OMAP based phones could pay for a taxi ride. I found a taxi in Tokyo that supports exactly this kind of mobile payment.

The blue dot on the right is where you waive your cell phone.  In Japan the primary Near Field Communications (NFC) appears to be Felica for Felicity Card.  After reading the Wikipedia entry on FeLica I was surprised to discover it’s the de facto standard in Japan and used pretty much in every part of the world also

I couldn’t find anything on-line on the system in this Japanese cab, but I’m curious to know if it is the same or different than the TI OMAP technology, or if the OMAP platform uses FeLica or some other technology. 

I found another technology called Kazzam where you could pay using an App on your iPhone.  It seems cumbersome since you have to type in the cab number and such, which to me seems harder than just swiping your phone across a blue dot.  Maybe it would work combined with FeLica so you could swipe, get the info in and just press approve.

SmartPhone Based Alternatives – Cheaper, but harder to use

But Kazzam or any App based system is a lot easier to deploy since it requires only existing Smart Phones (no special hardware in the cab or on the phone.  You just put a Smart Phone in the Cab Driver’s hand to get an acknowledgement that the person has paid. It would probably even work with a standard cell phone with a text message that says, “The person in the back seat with the iPhone 7 has just paid so you can unlock the back doors and let them out”

Back to Japan

I love the Suica card system in Japan. You add cash to a card that uses FeLica, and you just swipe the card over a reader at the gate entrance to the train station. 

And, you can use it to buy food at train station food places and convenience stores.  It is also built into some cell phones as shown below, but most people in Japan will simply put the Suica in their wallet, or inside their cell phone case, so they don’t need to buy the cell phone with the Suica tech built into the phone.

I’m sure this exists elsewhere in the world, I just don’t get to see it.  In China, I just buy single trip tickets to ride in trains that were built in Japan.

Google iPhone 4S or iPhone 5 and you will get about gazillion hits, hopefully including this Blog

Smartphones drive the need for USB 3.0 in digital cameras and digital video cameras to

From the Apple event Monday

“We’re now on to the camera in the iPhone 4S. “We set our sights on competing with the best point-and-shoot cameras,” Mr. Schiller says. The camera has an 8-megapixel sensor, 60 percent more pixels than the iPhone 4’s camera. It has a backside-illuminated CMOS sensor that captures 73 percent more light. It’s 33 percent faster.” 

                                       – At Apple meeting per NYTimes Blog linked below

This means:

1) Smartphone you buy from Apple (and soon Google and RIM) pretty much can replace mid-range digital cameras.

2) Anyone in the middle to upper income range, every teenager, now doesn’t need to buy a separate digital camera (they probably seldom do anyways)

3) Enthusiasts who like great pictures, have a better mobile phone camera, and don’t need to buy a separate camera.

4) Camera makers had better add features like embedded memory, and USB 3.0 to make their cameras and video cameras viable

Digital Video Camera makers already have lots of storage inside the camera, and usually an SD card slot.  DVCs need USB 3.0 now.

DSCs should follow quickly, if you don’t move now, you will lose to those moving already.

Here links to Live Blog coverage of the Apple Event at the Wired Blog and  the NYTimes Blog and the Wired Blog

Thanks to Steve Jobs

I’m tremendously grateful to Steve Jobs for his drive, his creativity, his tenacity that really pushed everyone to Think Different. 

The Tech World remade itself multiple times in his lifetime directly due to his influence, effectively creating new realms of creativity, competitiveness, entertainment and utility.

Many Thanks Mr. Jobs.

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Why does it matter that Synopsys has more than 30 customers and 40 design wins for USB 3.0?

An excellent question.

Let’s start with this: 

When will PCs have USB 3.0?

In April this year, AMD and the Innovator that invented USB announced USB 3.0 will ship in 2012.

When will Microsoft support USB 3.0?

In the past 5 weeks, Microsoft announced Windows 8 support of USB 3.0 and demonstrated USB 3.0 publically.

When will consumers demand USB 3.0?

Two weeks ago, during IDF 2011, the USB-IF presented InStat Data showing more than 1 Billion USB 3.0 enabled will ship in the next 2 years. 

To me this means if you are making anything with storage in it, a smart phone, a tablet, a camera, a video camera, a media player, it should have a USB 3.0 connection on it by 2014.

"In-Stat expects several hundred million USB 3.0-enabled devices will ship in 2012, including a large share of tablets, mobile and desktop PCs, external hard drives and flash drives," said Brian O’Rourke, research director at In-Stat. "By 2014, we expect many consumer electronics devices to transition to USB 3.0, including digital cameras, mobile phones and digital televisions. Overall, in 2014, we forecast that 1.4 billion USB 3.0 devices will ship. IP suppliers like Synopsys will help fuel this explosion in USB 3.0 adoption." – From our Press Release – Linked below

How long does it take for a product with our USB IP on it (or any IP) take to get to products on shelves?  About 2 years.

It seems to me that marketing people, should have an inner voice saying:

“PCs will have it.

Microsoft will support it

1 Billion products by 2013,

It takes me 2 years to get a product onto shelves,

I should really start on USB 3.0 now…”

– Inner voice, sounds like Spock, you know the logical one from Star Trek

Why do 40 design wins matter?

It matters because our customers use and test our IP in FPGAs and chips everyday in many ways.

It matters because when you choose USB 3.0 IP, host or device, you know that brave pioneers like Realtek and DisplayLink went first, taped-out, and are shipping chips in mass production. Realtek said,

"We taped-out Synopsys’ DesignWare USB 3.0 host and USB 3.0 device in three chips targeted at the digital home and PC peripheral markets, and all are now shipping in mass production," said Jessy Chen, executive vice president of Realtek Semiconductor Corporation. "We chose Synopsys DesignWare IP because of the company’s excellent track record in USB 2.0. With Synopsys’ USB 3.0 IP now fully certified and proven in our chips, we are certain we picked the right IP partner. We have been at the forefront of USB 3.0 development and integration, and have many innovative chips using Synopsys USB 3.0 IP coming in 2012." From our Press Release – Linked below

Why do 30 customers matter?

Customers use and reuse. These are companies that will take market share (maybe yours) because they have USB 3.0. DisplayLink said,

"Working with Synopsys for our USB 3.0 controller, HDMI controller and PHY IP helped us mitigate our project risk and reach volume production with our first-pass silicon," said Jonathan Jeacocke, vice president of engineering at DisplayLink. "In addition, we used Synopsys’ HAPS® FPGA-based prototyping solution to build fully functional systems for at-speed testing of USB 3.0 and HDMI, including architecture validation, performance testing, software development and customer demonstrations. We’ve already started our next design with Synopsys’ IP." From our Press Release – Linked below

Here’s the Press Release with the Quotes from InStat, Realtek, and DisplayLink.

Think about where your products need to be in 2 years. 

Keep your products on track for 2014.

It’s time to move now to USB 3.0.

I recommend Synopsys.  (I could be biased)

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