The upcoming USB 3.1 standard, which was approved as far back as August 2013, has been demonstrated at Computex 2014 and, most recently, at CES 2015. USB 3.1 is an incremental upgrade over USB 3.0 that raises potential speed from 5Gbps to 10Gbps.
MSI is anticipated to be the first of the major motherboard vendors to deliver a USB 3.1-compatible motherboard to market in the form of the MSI X99A Gaming 9 ACK. Since USB 3.1 is a new standard, the processing chip is a third-party solution, meaning it's not integrated into the Intel chipset.
ASMedia is the only company with a market-ready USB 3.1 solution at present - its flagship controller is the ASM1352R. The MSI X99A Gaming 9 ACK ships with ASM1352R and a Type-A connector, the standard USB port for a motherboard, while a Type-C variation could be arriving as soon as next quarter with the MSI Z97A Gaming 6 motherboard.
In some early testing of the USB 3.1 standard on the MSI X99A Gaming 9 ACK Anandtech discovered that bandwidth of around 700MB/s could be achieved on a makeshift RAID 0-to-USB 3.1 board, since no USB 3.1 storage devices currently exist. That's almost twice as fast as existing USB 3.0 solutions, but a little more performance tuning is undoubtedly required to achieve maximum capability.
While MSI may have a comprehensive selection of USB 3.1-compatible motherboards available before 2015 is over, most consumers will have to wait a long time before USB 3.1 becomes a widely-adopted standard. Until then, it is likely to remain a niche in the market, limited to enthusiasts and professionals who are willing to pay a premium for that extra dollop of speed.
