The title should not be a surprise here in the USB Community since SuperSpeed USB is now in the market. Still this is a news for developers working on this.
Talking about SuperSpeed USB, the USB 3.0 standard claims that it is 10 times faster than USB 2.0. The theoretical speed is 4.8Gbps (600MBps). However looking at various realistic speed test reports made available by more than one developers, it has been concluded that 3.2 Gbps (400MBps) is the maximum achievable speed for this standard.
The core efficiency is dependent on a number of factors like 8b/10b encoding, packet structure and framing, link level flow control and protocol overhead.
Various tests performed with SLS SuperSpeed USB core indicate the speed of 400MB/s in an embedded system.
At 5Gbps signalling rate with 8b/10b encoding, the raw throughput is 500MBps. When link flow control, packet framing, and protocol overhead are considered, it is realistic for 400MBps or more to be delivered to an application.
What speed can I have in my new product with SuperSpeed interface?
If you have this question in your mind, you are at the right place. One of our clients evaluating the USB 3.0 core practically achieved the speed of 2.5Gbps for IN operation and 2Gbps for OUT operation.
The raw throughput of 500MBps can be observed on the USB 3.0 Development Board (between FPGA and PHY). The picture below shows the board:
2Gbps speed is achieved on this board using SLS USB 3.0 Device core. The block diagram of the core is given below:
