Microsoft Promises Robust USB 3.0 Support In Windows 8 And Shows Off USB 3.0 Demo

We all know that support for USB 3.0 on Windows computers today isn't nearly as wide spread as most of us would like. The main reason for this is that there is still no chipsets with USB 3.0 controllers onboard. The maker of the mainboard has to use a third party chipset to enable USB 3.0 support. Microsoft is now promising that Windows 8 will have robust USB 3.0 support.

Microsoft is also showing off the data transfer speeds in a demonstration to tease how much faster file transfers will be. It's very impressive to see the claimed 10x speed difference between USB 2.0 and 3.0 in the real world. Once Windows 8 rolls around there should be native support for USB 3.0 in chipsets too.

To show off the gains for USB 3.0 Microsoft built a new test tool called Microsoft USB Test Tool or MUTT with 1,000 different USB devices on a single flash drive. Check out the video at the end of the post to see some of the USB 3.0 demonstrations from Microsoft in action. Microsoft's Windows chief Steven Sinofsky said, when talking about updating the OS for USB 3.0 support or rewriting the OIS:

Don't jump in. Instead, meticulously design a new USB software stack for the new controller while maintaining existing interfaces and behaviors, ensuring every device and driver will work. For older controllers, we retained our existing software stack.

[via Winrumors]