USB 3.0 Equipped PCs Will Be Shipping by End of the Year

Taiwanese manufacturers might have positioned themselves to begin shipping SuperSpeed USB (aka USB 3.0) before the curtain falls on the year 2009, according to the July issue of Nikkei Electronics Asia. The magazine believes that it was quite evident from the various prototypes on display at the SuperSpeed USB Developers Conference held in Tokyo May 20-21, 2009 that the commercial rollout of the next-gen USB interface in PCs is nigh.

Japanese company NEC Electronics Corp shipped samples of the first USB 3.0 host controller in early June and expects to churn out a million every month beginning this September. The first devices based on the interface will most certainly be external hard disk drives, with more exciting applications like hd video streaming expected to follow later.