Several facts to start with:
USB3 Vision committee was created in 2011 to begin development and monitoring of new USB 3.0 standard for camera control and streaming.
XIMEA is part of the Technical committee that is committed to enhance the existing standardization effort based on GenICam which has gained popularity over the last several years.
USB3 Vision was finalized and released on January 18, 2013.
Thus rapidly increasing the simplicity of use for both camera users and software vendors.
Single set of camera attributes and controls to learn.
Single set of standard attributes and controls for software to support.
XIMEA has been shipping their cameras since end of 2011.
Now after finalization of the standard, models also support USB3 Vision which means special support for software from such companies as National Instruments, MVTec, Matrox and A&B Software because their software supports USB3 Vision as well.
You also can program your personal image processing algorithm for OCR (optical character recognition) for example.
With so many available software packages interoperability is key.
Since not all vendors support USB3 Vision yet, XIMEA has another plugin type of solution.
xiAPI is SDK which has proprietary interface that provides a bridge to third party applications.
For example, you can use Cognex VisionPro AIK package, which serves as a translational layer between XIMEA API and Cognex API.
However, using a camera with USB3 Vision support will ensure the highest level of overall system interoperability.
For more detailed information, please use our technical support.