First Driver for USB 3.0

Linux kernel "Geekess" Sarah Sharp announced in her blog of June 7 that the first groundbreaking driver for USB 3.0 devices are now available. The driver supports the Extensible Host Controller Interface (xHCI) for the new USB 3.0 standard.

Greg Kroah-Hartman already queued the patches for Kernel 2.6.31, "so Linux users should have official USB 3.0 support around September 2009. This means that Linux will be the first operating system with official USB 3.0 support" wrote Sharp, who was also active at Open Source Bridge in Portland, OR. The source code mostly under her name is on git.kernel.org.

Just recently NEC Electronics introduced the "world's first" USB 3.0 host controller. Sarah Sharp is looking forward to tests on NEC's device, of which the company "expects rapid adoption."

The basic specifications for USB 3.0 show it to have a transfer rate of 5.0 Gbps. The standard was announced in November 2008 by the USB Implementers Forum, Inc. (as we reported in December). Board of directors of the Forum are represented by companies such as NEC, HP, Microsoft and Intel (which has the current chairmanship). xHCI is a specification created by Intel.