The design of USB is standardized by the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), an industry standards body incorporating leading companies from the computer and electronics industries. The new USB 3.0 specification (also called SuperSpeed USB) allows for much faster data transfer speeds than previous iterations - up to 5.0 gigabits per second (Gbits/s), or 500 Megabytes per second (MB/s), about ten times faster than the USB 2.0 protocol. USB 3.0 achieves its high transfer rates by using four additional wires in the data cable for a total of six wires. It supports full-duplex communication, or the ability to send and receive data simultaneously, and is power efficient. Most importantly it is backwards compatible with USB 2.0 devices. However, to achieve 3.0 speeds, a 3.0-compatible device and cable must be used.

What are the benefits of USB 3.0?
With greater transfer speeds, for the first time USB technology will not be the bottleneck for data transfer. The installed base of SATA drives with maximum data transfer rates of 300 MB/s (3 Gb/s) will only be half as fast as USB 3.0. 

With even the typical home user surpassing the one terabyte boundary, and with many at both home and at work utilizing external drives for full drive backups, USB 3.0 will reduce backup times considerably, improving productivity and efficiency. Transferring graphic contents from digital movie and camera flash cards is another area where the average person will see a drastic improvement with USB 3.0.

On the power front, changes to how power is used and distributed mean larger devices (and more of them) can be powered up via USB. The maximum power for USB 3.0 devices has increased to 900mA (up from 500mA in USB 2.0) off single bus-powered ports, in many cases negating the need for an external power adaptor.
 
While the USB 3.0 specifications allow for additional power, they also reduce the overall power consumption of devices as well. There are a greater number of low powered states available for devices so they when the device or host is idle, less powered is used over the bus to the device – great news for mobile PC users.