The 'world's first' USB 3.0 flash drive is here, despite Intel's disinclination to support USB 3.0

Hard to say if the first USB 3.0 has a smooth sail without Intel's support

Super Talent, a California-based manufacturer of flash drives and DRAM modules, announced their new 'SuperSpeed USB 3.0 RAIDDrive' yesterday. USB 3.0 is a significant and overdue improvement to USB 2.0, offering transfer speeds which are ten times faster than USB 2.0. Over a week ago, we reported that Intel were reluctant to develop USB 3.0 compatible chipsets, and Electronista have recently reported that Intel are still maintaining their stance of delaying the release of any USB 3.0 compatible chipsets until 2011.

According to NVIDIA spokesman, Brian Burke, quoted in Electronista yesterday, Intel have 'no competition in chipsets' and have 'decided that innovation is not needed for USB any time soon'; with 'no one to push Intel to innovate, PC enthusiasts are left with' no other options – implying that Intel are happy to wait until 2011, and maybe longer.

Intel are a dominant figure in the market, but is it only their apparent confidence in their market position, which is to blame for the delay in developing USB 3.0 compatible chipsets? It seems that companies such as Super Talent, are not concerned enough about Intel, to halt production on any USB 3.0 devices. Other manufacturers, such as Asus are reported to be developing motherboards with USB 3.0 support.

Assuming we will be able to use Super Talent's new flash drives, let's take a closer look at them. The flash drives are backwards compatible with USB 2.0 and 1.1, and have three different capacities: 32GB, 64GB and 128GB.

The flash drives (pictured) measure 95 x 37 x 13 mm, and can deliver transfer speeds of up to 200MBps, and up to 320MBps when used with 'a separate UAS Protocol driver with a USB 3.0 port'. They come with a limited lifetime warranty and 'more than 10 years data retention'. To receive updates about these and other Super Talent USB 3.0 products, you can register here; although it may be a long time before you can use these flash drives on a fully-compatible system.