Four years from now, one in four gadgets with USB ports will support USB 3.0 - aka SuperSpeed USB.

That's the shock (not) conclusion of market watcher In-Stat in a report forecasting that a faster version of the hugely popular peripheral interconnect bus will also be very popular, a prediction that will cost you $3995 from In-Stat, but comes free of charge from us.

The USB 3.0 specification - designed to enable data transfer speeds of up to 5Gb/s - was finalised late last year, and silicon developers are already producing early controller chips. NEC, for example, began sampling one this month.

These efforts should see the first USB 3.0-equipped computers and devices debut late this year or early next.

Intel's is backing the standard, so expect it to be supported in the chip giant's chipsets quickly. That will drive take-up in the computer world, while manufacturers of external hard drives the obvious candidates to release the first SuperSpeed peripherals. ®