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I find that hard. Have you seen a fiber optic network cable before? You have to have a sheething that protrudes into the device in order to protect the light emissions from outside the device and cable. Building that into a current USB cables would not produce a cable that would still work in older USB revisions.
And if they make it thinner, then it will likely be very likely to break.
Either way, you still have the issue of people trying to plug the old USB cables into new USB3 devices and wondering why they are not getting the speed they expected. So my original point is still valid.
The only real solution is make it a different cable - perhaps a USB C/D cable, instead of the current USB A/B would be the only way to avoid confusion (then the devices would have to support both to be backwards compatible, or at least the USB3 hubs and root devices would have to) - but then you'd just as well call it something else.
Have you seen a fiber optic network cable before? You have to have a sheething that protrudes into the device in order to protect the light emissions from outside the device and cable
But USB already has that, the metal shield around the USB plug would act as a light shield, it'd be tricky, but you could build the optical coupling into the end of the plastic insulation that the contacts are mounted on. The tricky thing is getting the alignment right.
http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-9780794-1.html
The link shows a picture of the card and cable and it's got a USB standard connector on it.





Member since:
2005-11-18
Yes the cable will be different, but they might be able to make it work with the same plugs, just like with USB 1.0 and USB 2.0. So if you have a USB 3.0 plug into a USB 2.0 port it'll just work at 2.0 speeds. That might be possible, but I'm just talking w/o looking at any specs here.