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Intel, one of the world's leading chipset manufacturers, is making moves towards providing businesses and personal users with the next step in USB technology, it has emerged.

A press release by the company stated that it had released a number of that will allow hardware manufacturers around the world to embrace the newest incarnation of connectivity technology, with AMD, Nvidia and Microsoft already supporting the early developments.

In a statement on the company's website, Phil Eisler, AMD corporate vice-president and general manager of the company's Chipset Business Unit, said: "Lifestyles filled with HD media and digital audio demand quick and universal data transfer.

"USB 3.0 is an answer to the future bandwidth need of the PC platform."

Further reports from news provider vnunet.com indicated that Intel aims to make the connection the standard used for HD media devices in the future, with the first demonstration in 2007 supporting transfer speeds of 4.8GB per second.

More than half of small businesses (53%) believe that the most important benefit of outsourcing is guaranteed response times for IT support, London based Connect conducted the research in 2007.