USB 3.0 PCs may be ready this year

By year-end, computers could ship with USB 3.0, according to industry sources at the SuperSpeed USB Developers Conference in Tokyo.

A report by Tech-On says this capability will come from Taiwanese PC manufacturers. The key enabler is the host controller integrated circuit, which is mounted onto a PC or other USB 3.0 device. NEC Electronics of Japan created the world’s first host controller and shipped samples last montn, paving the way for volume production in September.

It’s worth noting that a report from March pegged the arrival of USB 3.0 for 2010. Perhaps the development from NEC has changed that. If the sources at SuperSpeed are correct, 140 million PCs will carry USB 3.0 by 2011 and another 200 million will follow in 2012.

The obvious benefit to USB 3.0 is speed, at nearly 5 Mbps Gbps, but the Tech-On story says the industry wants to expand applications to include HD streaming. While USB 2.0 can stream video from netbooks to external monitors, one measurement equipment engineer said the next specification could possibly support “1080i HD video streams for sure, maybe more.”

It’s a little early to count on that, especially considering the source is unnamed. However, as more devices support wireless transfer, and other transfer methods getting faster, such as SDHC, USB 3.0 better have some new tricks up his sleeve.