USB 3.0

USB 3.0 specifications were announced in November by Intel and Intel developer Sarah Sharp has been busy coding the linux drivers ever since. The drivers have been ready and have been scheduled to be merged with the Linux mainstream kernel in the version 2.6.31. Traditionally it has always been that Windows is the first OS to get the hardware drivers and the linux geeks tend to reverse engineer or design it based on the specification but this time around tables have been turned over.

The support of Intel to mainstream linux and to the development of open hardware drivers does seem to be a road of change on the part of the hardware manufacturers who have traditionally been windows centric.

The USB 3.0 hardwares have not made to the market yet although NEC is producing 1 million xHCI PCI-Express add-in cards for september release.

Sarah is also working to ensure that these drivers make it to mainstream distributions like Redhat and Ubuntu, according to the post on her blog.

For those who do not know USB 3.0 specification gives a 10x increase over the existing USB standard delivering a transfer rate of 5.0Gbps. You can read further details here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB#USB_3.0

For those who live on the edge and want to test out the drivers(in case you are the lucky few with the hardware), head on to The Geekess blog at http://sarah.thesharps.us/2009-06-09-13-30.cherry and follow her instructions. For those who would like to wait, wait for the next kernel release.