The USB 3.0 standard has been in development for some time now, but it finally looks like we might be seeing that blazing speed in our computers and peripherals sooner than later. In fact, Nikkei Electronics Asia is reporting that USB enabled devices will be making their way out of Taiwan as early as this summer. Certainly, but the end of the year, holiday PC's and external hard drives will be hitting the shelves.

USB 3.0 allows for transfers of data up 5GB/s. Yes, that is not a typo, we are talking about 5GB per second, which is the perfect speed for HD video transfer, HD streaming, blazing fast SSD devices, and almost instant backup. By the end of the year you might be able to carry around a 128GB flash drive capable of backing up your entire PC in just a few minutes. With that kind of data transfer, everything from gaming systems to laptops will become major media streaming hubs. This is a future that I certainly am looking forward to.

Just how fast the standard is adopted waits to be seen, but NEC Electronics Corporation, from Japan, has already begun shipping host controllers this June. With the speed of adoption in the technology world, I would expect us to see working storage devices by September, and PC's by December. I for one welcome the speed bump.

Via SlashGear