USB 3.1 shows big gains over USB 3.0, early tests indicate

 

USB 3.1 was a hot topic at CES this year, with multiple vendors talking up the standard’s performance and new, reversible connector. Shipping hardware is still some months away, but early performance data is looking solid — particularly given that third-party controllers tend to improve over time.
Anandtech has teamed up with MSI and Asmedia to benchmark USB 3.1 and compare it against third-party solutions from VIA as well as Intel’s own native solution. The results vary, but many metrics are quite impressive — particularly comparing random read performance at queue depth 32 between the USB 3.1 Asmedia and native Intel USB 3.0 performance.

 

Even compared to the VIA controller, which does quite well here, USB 3.1 is 27% faster. Compared to Intel, it’s 1.7 times faster. In real-world file copy tests, the Asmedia USB 3.1 controller completes the work in 75% of the time it takes the Intel integrated USB 3.0 controller and half the time of the VIA solution. Intel has demonstrated solutions capable of up to 800MB/s in RAID connected via USB 3.1; Anandtech’s early hardware hit 650-700MB/s in analogous testing. Generally speaking, Intel’s controllers tend to outperform third party controllers for a given standard, but they also tend to ship later — and it’s not clear when Intel will add USB 3.1.
Looking back to USB 3.0, Intel was remarkably late to add direct chipset support for the new standard — it took the company three years to deploy its own USB 3.0 solution after the first motherboards shipped with third-party controllers in 2009. At the time, it was widely believed that Intel dragged its feet on USB 3.0 hoping to replace it with Thunderbolt as the mainstream peripheral interconnect on most devices, but that never materialized.
Intel has yet to announce when it might add USB 3.1 support and AMD hasn’t announced it either, but I expect a similar third-party support situation to evolve. Companies like Via, Renesas, Marvell, and Asmedia will add the capability first, with integrated chipsets following after.
What’s more interesting, at least to me, is what improved storage performance could eventually mean for the venerable SATA connection. Currently, most motherboards sport an array of 4-12 SATA ports, but features like M.2 and mSATA allow for an SSD to be integrated directly on the motherboard. Combine this option with fast external storage, and you’ve got a set of solutions that could obviate the need for SATA ports at all — or, at the very least, reduce the number of additional connectors to 1-2 for expansion purposes.
Right now, that’s a non-starter — USB 3.1 doesn’t support features like TRIM — but in the long run, USB 3.1, future iterations of Thunderbolt, and PCI Express-based storage directly on-motherboard could eliminate most of the need for internal storage cabling at all.




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