Hi there all,
Dan Harmon back from attending the Intel Developer's Forum held in Beijing last week on April 13 & 14, 2010. TI was one of six exhibitors in the USB Community area of the Exhibit Showcase. I think the numbers were down a bit since the Developer's Conference was just held two weeks earlier in Taipei and I think most companies focused on that event instead of this one - there were over 20 exhibitors at the DevCon in Taipei - see my previous post on this event!
The one thing that really grabbed my attention was that MCCI had a end-product SuperSpeed USB Hub from Buffalo as part of their demonstration - good to see one of these out there as another sign of the market starting to ramp up.
Many of the attendees who I spoke with were from the press and were very interested in the "when" aspect of SuperSpeed USB - a resounding NOW was the message I conveyed!
The other item that I was asked alot was whether I feel Light Peak is going to eliminate the need for SuperSpeed USB before it even really gets off the ground. First thing I would say is that Light Peak is a transport medium that does not actuallly include a protocol - USB includes protocol. As such Light Peak needs a prototcol on top of it to actually transmit data from point A to point B. This means that it is not actually competition to USB 3.0, but rather a complimenter to USB 3.0 - as well as other I/O buses such as eSATA, HDMI, or DisplayPort.
Here is a picture I took of the Lightpeak booth that basically says this same thing - they use the term "cable technology" and mention that it will "...transport multiple existing protocols..." 
Clearly SuperSpeed USB is already "real" as their are multiple silicon suppliers shipping products and many systems and peripherals available on the market. While I see where Intel talks about Light Peak being real this year, I do not expect any production equivalent products this year.
Well back to getting caught up from my travels.
Talk to you again soon, Dan
