According to a recent report from Nikkei Electronics Asia, we can expect to see the first USB 3.0 equipped PCs start shipping out from Taiwanese manufacturers before 2010 comes around.

At the SuperSpeed USB Developers Conference held in Tokyo back in May, the development competition between component manufacturers began to show itself fiercely as the latest prototypes were exhibited with significantly matured technologies over previous showings. It has been said that NEC Electronics is expected to lead the competition with its achievement of becoming the first to bring a USB 3.0 controller to the market.

The company began shipping out host controller samples last month and has plans to manufacture over one million production units per month starting in September. Based on this trend of volume production, it is suggested that the first USB 3.0 controllers will make their ways into PCs before the end of the year. "We will probably hold almost 100% of the market for standalone host controller ICs,” the firm says with confidence.



It has also been suggested that USB 3.0 will allow for HD video streaming due to its support of isochronous transferring. According to one equipment engineer, “It will be able to handle 1080i HD video streams for sure, maybe more.” With 5Gbps transfer speeds, we would sure hope so.

On another note, Windows 7 is expected to make its way into RTM this month, and then into the retail market on October 22nd. Because the USB 3.0 host controllers are just now beginning ramped production, we probably won’t be seeing any driver support in the RTM build as it is releasing very soon. This translates into the fact that Windows 7 will not include any USB 3.0 support at its launch, but Microsoft has stated that it will add support later on.