USB SuperSpeed Power Spec To Leap From 10W To 100W

Lucas123 writes "While news stories have focused on the upcoming jump from 5Gbps to 10Gbps for USB SuperSpeed, less talked about has been the fact that it will also increase charging capabilities from 10W to 100W, meaning you'll be able to charge your laptop, monitor, even a television using a USB cord. Along with USB, the Thunderbolt peripheral interconnect will also be doubling it throughput thanks to a new controller chip, in its case from 10Gbps to 20Gbps. As with USB SuperSpeed, Thunderbolt's bandwidth increase is considered an evolutionary step, but the power transfer increase is being considered revolutionary, according to Jeff Ravencraft, president of the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF). 'This is going to change the way computers, peripheral devices and even HDTVs will not only consume but deliver power,' Ravencraft said. 'You can have an HDTV with a USB hub built into it where not only can you exchange data and audio/video, but you can charge all your devices from it.'"

Comments

we've had a few

[nimbius]

fairly robust fibre optic solutions to date that carry data and are far more energy efficient. im confused as to why our peripherals dont use them

Re:we've had a few

[Anonymous Coward]

because fibre optics can't carry power?

Re:we've had a few

[Anonymous Coward]

Less power isnt the point...I want my data cable to also be my power source

Re:we've had a few

[alen]

how do charge your device via fiber?

i through my apple lighting port cable into my bag and keep my iphone plugged in all day long to charge it

Re:we've had a few

[goombah99]

fairly robust fibre optic solutions to date that carry data and are far more energy efficient. im confused as to why our peripherals dont use them

No power?

Re:we've had a few

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

fairly robust fibre optic solutions to date that carry data and are far more energy efficient. im confused as to why our peripherals dont use them

Given what users can do to strain-relief-equipped multistrand copper power cables, they may not be quite ready for optical fiber...

Re:we've had a few

[Githaron]

What about making a cord that has two "wires". One would be fiber optic to enable the fastest possible data transfers with the lowest interference. The other would be a traditional copper wire that powers the device.

Re:we've had a few

[rjr162]

because fibre is much easier to break/snap than copper. Same reason the company my friend works for who installs media distribution systems into Lufthansa aircraft don't spec it out with fiber lines.. they use CAT 7 with the TERA style ends, because an over-zealous mechanic is more likely to snap a fibre optic line with his zip tie than a copper line

Re:we've had a few

[Dahamma]

Sounds like that would make devices and cables larger and more expensive by requiring two completely different interfaces in one connector...

Re:we've had a few

[Sponge Bath]

how do charge your device via fiber?

[old homeless drunk from Terminator]: Hey, buddy, did you just see a real bright light?

Re:we've had a few

[Mashiki]

Odd, I thought using zip ties was illegal on aircraft. Due to the fact that they can cause vibration damage to cabling, and make it wear through exceptionally quick. While it's been awhile since I was last at a fab plant, they were using low abrasion cloth such as silk to tie cabling together.

Re:we've had a few

[Anonymous Coward]

Small world :)

The reason they chose "off the shelves" ethernet cables is much more likely because it's cheaper.
The issue with this is that it's completely not ok if you want to get certified (linefit) by Airbus/Boeing, it won't pass fire tests, it's also not very reliable when submitted to vibrations like in an airplane.

You can actually make ethernet cables that are aircraft compliant, but they cost 10 times more, use specific connectors, specific wrappings, etc...

Now regarding fiber, I can tell you that stuff is resilient (depends on the kind, some will break more easily). Caught our feet in it quite a few times to the point of tumbling, and it bent but never broke. Always worked after that, which actually surprised us. It's also lighter than copper, and there are repair kits that work really fine just in case. Downside is that you will need an optic copper converter at some point.

Re:we've had a few

[jandrese]

Because Fiber optics solutions require transceivers to convert the electrical signals to light and back again. These are relatively expensive for commercial products that want to tick off a feature for a few cents. TOSLink is a bit of an exception because it is so low bandwidth that you can do it with pretty cheap hardware, but even then it is viewed as a somewhat premium feature.

Also, as everybody else noted, you can't send enough power over a fiber connection to charge a phone, so now you have an expensive hybrid solution where you have to run a copper cable anyway.

Re:we've had a few

[magarity]

because fibre optics can't carry power?

OK, since this is /. I feel the need to point out that fibre optics just do a lousy job of carrying mechanically useful power. The little light pulses themselves are a transmission of power. It would be quite inefficient to convert it to power some machine with it but "can't" doesn't apply.

But never mind all that. The real story here is the naming sequence in USB. It's like "Topper" in Dilbert. Soon they really will have to consider "Ludicrious Speed USB".

Re:we've had a few

[Anonymous Coward]

Light is energy. You're just not putting enough into the cable yet!

Re:we've had a few

[Anonymous Coward]

Fiber optics carry optical power just fine.

Re:we've had a few

[mirix]

Old military electronics always had wires laced (maybe they still do this, haven't been into any new equipment).

It's laced with a heavy waxed cloth, similar to extra wide tooth floss. Originally cotton, probably something synthetic now. There would be loops every inch or two down the wire bundle, connected to each other. I'm having a hard time explaining that for some reason.

Do you mean something like this?
Here's a picture

Re:we've had a few

[meddle99]

because fibre is much easier to break/snap than copper. Same reason the company my friend works for who installs media distribution systems into Lufthansa aircraft don't spec it out with fiber lines.. they use CAT 7 with the TERA style ends, because an over-zealous mechanic is more likely to snap a fibre optic line with his zip tie than a copper line

What kind of installer would use zip ties on fiber? I do QC for the world's largest communications provider, and I would fail any install where that happened.

Re:we've had a few

[cheater512]

Expense is an issue. Do you really want your keyboard to have a fibre optic transceiver in it?

The reason why USB is so widely used is because it is universal. Its the same for hard drives, keyboards, thumb drives, etc...
The expense for fibre is fine for higher value items like hard drives, but not for low value items which USB excels at.

Also there is USB 3.0 for a compromise.

Re:we've had a few

[rjr162]

The installers dont use them... the mechanics, well I guess its happened before

Re:we've had a few

[RKBA]

I'm old enough to remember exactly what you're talking about. My first ham transmitter was an old military ARC 5 and I used an old navy receiver that received everything imaginable including ultra-low frequencies below the 160 meter ham band. Ah, the memories!

Re:we've had a few

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought they forbid CAT cabling in aircraft after a horrible fire was exacerbated by it.

Re:we've had a few

[Anonymous Coward]

because fibre optics can't carry power?

Hence solar power is a lie?

Re:we've had a few

[GuB-42]

Well they tried to switch to DOG cabling but it didn't work.
So in the end I believe they simply used the same kind of cables but with more fire-resistant insulation.

Re: we've had a few

[iamhassi]

Because it's a waste? You got your new green ultrabook, trying to be small and light, little 50 watt charger, and uh oh, now there's a 100w USB spec? Oh ok, well I guess this needs a larger 250 watt power brick now, and bigger battery just so it can say it offers the latest USB. Sure that adds a lot of weight, but don't want to lose sales because it's using the "old" USB. And think of how many other devices that will be built with larger, less efficient power supplies because of this spec? I, for one, do not welcome our new 100 watt USB overlords

Re:we've had a few

[Anonymous Coward]

In a standard copper data-cable, the wires that carry the signal don't carry the power. When using the full 100watts for USB3.0, you can't even transfer data because the data lanes are used for power.

A fiber cable with 2 copper wires for power can carry the same amount of useful power as a copper cable with 4 copper wires with 2 dedicated for data.

Re:we've had a few

[wagnerrp]

Even plenum rated cable?

Re:we've had a few

[RockDoctor]

Old military electronics always had wires laced (maybe they still do this, haven't been into any new equipment).

It's laced with a heavy waxed cloth, similar to extra wide tooth floss.

It's not just the military, and it's not dead. NASA still secure much/ most of the cabling on spacecraft using "lacing" (as our ITs call it on this side of the pond). Hmmm ; searching for the pages I saw not-long ago ... the knots (this article has been re-used several times, including by the Planetary Society, who at least cite their sources), there is a detailed NASA standard available here.

Different ITs (instrumentation technicians) I've worked with have had different styles. Some would lace ; some would use hundreds of (sefl-extinguishing) plastic tie-wraps. Generally I found that the lacing was neater, and more flexible. But most ITs didn't have the skill or training to use it (I'd struggle to follow that NASA spec ; but I'm not an IT.)

Someone mentioned aircraft mechanics damaging wiring that should be laced, by using tie-wraps. The NASA spec covers this : "9.6.2 Plastic straps are usually installed by tooling. Tooling shall be tension-controlled to meet the strap-tightening requirements previously stated (Requirement)." Which is exactly what my better ITs (not coincidentally, the lacing ones) have always specified too. Not that most of our staff paid the slightest attention, and since a tie-wrap torque-setting tool could cost several days pay, few of our managers would wear the cost of the tools for the field staff.

Re:we've had a few

[RockDoctor]

because fibre is much easier to break/snap than copper

If that's an issue (I stopped pulling cables for work before fibre was even "extremely rare", let alone commonplace ; I know that I don't know.), then wouldn't it be plausible to make the conductors of (say) steel with a thick(ish) copper coating, to combine the mechanical stiffness of the steel with the (relative, but should be unimportant) corrosion resistance of the copper? Or, taking a strand from power lines, aluminium conductors with the fibre stranded between the three (power, return and ground)?

charging smartphones by USB

[goombah99]

I have an iphone 5 and like newer samsungs and ipads these want to draw 2.1 amps from USB, which is a no-no for standard USB. THere are a number of USB hubs that pretend that they are apple/samsung compatible, promising 2.1 amps. But what they don't tell you is that you can't have 2.1 amps if the hub is connected to a computer. It will only act as a USB high current charger when it is incapable of making a serial connection. It's either a serial port or a high current charger but not both.

I'm guessing this is because a lot of devices expect their current overload regulation to come from the USB hub which is limited to 0.5 amps by spec.

Will this superspeed use the same USB plug and thus have the same limit of either being a charger or a USB port, or will it do both at the same time.

Re:charging smartphones by USB

[unixisc]

They may, but I'd assume that the cables would be very different. The main question I have though - having too many speed grades - low speed, full speed, high speed, super speed and now a new super speed - would the higher speeds automatically be degraded since the USB bus controller has to manage both the keyboard buses as well as the drives.

Re:charging smartphones by USB

[Gaygirlie]

You just said it yourself: the current specs say the upper limit is 0.5 amps. With USB3.0SS the upper limit is raised to 100W and therefore it can both charge and carry data simultaneously.

Re:charging smartphones by USB

[localman57]

Not if you put a USB hub of the higher speed inbetween. USB 2.0 and higher require that if a hub supports superspeed, then it has to retransmit the incoming lower speed data at superspeed rates to minimize the amount of time it ties up the bus. I assume 3.0 is the same.

Re:charging smartphones by USB

[NatasRevol]

Unless its 220V power.

Re:charging smartphones by USB

[CastrTroy]

I'd like to know how this is supposed to work. You are going to have a lot of trouble getting 100W out of a laptop USB port. Are these only going to only be available in desktops? Even there there's probably quite a few desktops that don't have 100 "extra" watts in their power supply to provide to some peripheral. Although you can get a very high wattage power supply, you don't really need that much with modern processors, and SSDs. Especially if you don't have a particularly fancy video card.

Re:charging smartphones by USB

[bfandreas]

And then there is ASUS.

A lot of their tablets get charged by an USB compatible plug. Yet they need 15V to charge. So what ASUS did was cross a couple of wires in the cable and have their chargers detect those crossed wires to serve up 15V. Which basically means that while the plug fits their stuff doesn't charge when connected to a computer or a lot of standard USB wall warts/external battery packs. And that is annoying. There are standards for 15V chargers and they simply don't use them.

Annoyingly they haven't really fixed this for the Nexus 7. That 7incher has similar specs to their Transformer line(apart from the awesome IPS displays; compared to my Prime the Nexus 7 quite dark) but it does charge at 5V. Yet on a standard USB charger it charges so little that if the display is turned on all it does is keep its current charge.

This is where I truly like my old Moto Xoom 1. It needs 15V. It has a 15V charger and it uses a stock 15V DC charging connector.

I do understand that tablets have an awefully big battery and people still expect them to be fully charged in less than 2 hours. But it is abundantly clear that USB doesn't quite cut it. So this new spec is a good thing if it removes the neccessity of such annoying shenanigans. Given how long it took to get USB3 out in the wild we may not want to hold our breath waiting for this and this change is at least 3 years late. USB primarily was meant to transfer data to peripherals and sufficiently power them to be functional. That has shifted to transferring data and supplying enough delicious electricity within 2 hours to run the device for 8 hours. Even if you want to be naive and overly simplistic about that you could say that USB might be underspecced by a factor of 4.


A lot of computer power supplies will need to be specced up. Otherwise our new 100W mice and keyboards might fry them. But at least we will not have to worry about heating our rooms in the winter :p

Re:charging smartphones by USB

[jandrese]

My guess is that the 100W delivery will be optional, and most manufacturers simply won't support it. In fact that's big enough that I don't expect to see it on many devices at all. Even your average desktop has no way to deliver 100W from the motherboard without plugging in supplemental power from the power supply (which we already do, but it would be yet more cables), and you will of course need a bigger power supply to support that.

What I really hope is that the spec has a negotiation protocol where both ends agree on the maximum amount of power they can handle and use that. So if you plug in your smartphone to a desktop, the smarphone will say "I can use up to 40W to charge, but need at least 1W", and the desktop will say "I can supply 20W", and the phone will go "ok" and let them charge. That could still be a nightmare though if someone then plugs in his second smartphone and the desktop replies with "I have no available USB power left, so you don't get to charge".

Trying to support 100W on all 12 ports of a Motherboard is obviously not going to happen, but I do like that this will let you run things like full size optical drives and hard drives off of USB. The old limit was too arbitrarily small, but the new one is much too large for widespread support. The best we can say is that it opens up a comfortable middle road where you can run most computer peripherals off of USB power potentially, except for Laser Printers.

Re:charging smartphones by USB

[serbanp]

The concept is rather easy. After a negotiation preamble (checking that both ends support the silly-named USB), the power port will change to a higher voltage (20V as spec'ed) so that the current stays reasonably low. For the full 100W though, the sorry cable will have to pass 5A, which is not easy.

The problem is that all the things that must be done to keep the appearance of an USB-port compatibility are expensive to implement, making the whole concept unattractive.

Re:charging smartphones by USB

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe they mainly push for it to replace the now non-standard "PoweredUSB" that is used a lot in cash registers and some industrial equipment. So that there is one standard that everyone can use instead of going for a (or maybe multiple) proprietary solution(s).

Re:charging smartphones by USB

[Anonymous Coward]

Hopefuly, there are smart enough people to divide numbers.

Re:charging smartphones by USB

[Anonymous Coward]

Samsung chargers are 0.7A
Apple chargers aren't just high draw, they also have some current shape on connect that acts like a security by obscurity to prevent other high draw USB chargers from working.

Re:charging smartphones by USB

[jrumney]

There are a number of USB hubs that pretend that they are apple/samsung compatible, promising 2.1 amps. But what they don't tell you is that you can't have 2.1 amps if the hub is connected to a computer. It will only act as a USB high current charger when it is incapable of making a serial connection. It's either a serial port or a high current charger but not both.

That's part of the spec. The current limit is 900mA when a data connection is simultaneously present, and up to the rated limit of the cable and connectors when there is no data connection to interfere with.

Re:charging smartphones by USB

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple chargers aren't just high draw, they also have some current shape on connect that acts like a security by obscurity to prevent other high draw USB chargers from working.

It is not a current shape, it is a negotiation protocol, either by data communication using Apple's proprietary protocol or via (non-standard) resistance across the
data lines. And its not done as security by obscurity, but so ports that are not capable of delivering the current, and are missing the overload protection that they are supposed to have, are not turned into a fire risk by plugging in an iPhone or iPad. The fact that the negotiation is non-standard prevents chargers built to the USB standard from charging iDevices at high current, but that is more because Apple implemented this before the standard existed than they wanted security by obscurity. I'm sure you can find the appropriate resistor values listed somewhere on the net if you look, I recall an article in EE Times a while back about making a high current charger that can be compatible with both Apple and standard USB specifications.

Dangerous

[DoofusOfDeath]

I'm not a fan of a "data" cable that can kill me.

Re:Dangerous

[h4rr4r]

Then stop wrapping them around your neck.

Re:Dangerous

[Anonymous Coward]

It will most certainly not kill you. The voltages supplied by the USB cable is far below what it needs to push enough amps through your body to disrupt any bodily function. People usually say "it's the amps that kill you", what it should say is that "it's the amps that PASSES through your body that kills you". If I remember correctly from the specs it will provide no more than 15 to 20 volts maximum. Which is still considered safe.

Re:Dangerous

[skids]

Having looked at the PoE specs, it would be very hard to start a fire or shock oneself with that technology. It is very careful about only providing juice when it sees a valid endpoint on the other side and ensuring that the line resistance is not too high. About the only way to defeat it would be to inject a point resistance on a very short patch cable (within a few feet of the switch) which would dissipate the heat budget for a 300-foot cable in a small area without exceeding the resitsance budget. That would be hard to do simply by running over a cable with a chair.

Given USB's repeated history of slipshod designs I'm less confident that a sane power negotiation protocol will be designed in. (Anyone know?)

The TFA mentions them seeking government standards that require devices to be powerable off USB. While I'm in favor of ending the vendor-specific-charger nonsense through standardization perhaps even to the point of legislation, I would hate to see such a manuver sabotage PoE's place in the market just when laptop and tablet power is getting low enough to have a one-plug enterprise-worthy power+data solution.

Re:Dangerous

[Trepidity]

In theory it should also be doing some kind of negotiation before pushing power, such as ensuring that it has a connection to something that speaks USB on the other end (as opposed to, say, your finger, which doesn't), and that resistance is within the expected range for the cable. It's not "always on" current like an electric socket is.

Re:Dangerous

[Joce640k]

OTOH 20 amps is enough for a USB powered Tesla coil, which might kill you.

Can't wait!

Re:Dangerous

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The original spec included a provision for 'fuck-youSB' power; but patent issues with Tazer inc. led to that being dropped...

Re:Dangerous

[wiredlogic]

You can't get the full current out of the power supply without going through a negotiation phase. If that doesn't happen the interface defaults to normal current limit of 0.5A. The same thing happens today with the USB 2.0 charging ports capable of delivering up to 2.1A.

Re:Dangerous

[denzacar]

About the only way to defeat it would be to inject a point resistance on a very short patch cable (within a few feet of the switch) which would dissipate the heat budget for a 300-foot cable in a small area without exceeding the resitsance budget. That would be hard to do simply by running over a cable with a chair.

How about a dog or a cat biting into it?

Or a small child deciding to lick an open end of an USB extension cable dangling from the desk?

Re:Dangerous

[ericloewe]

USB is strictly for short distances, due to timing concerns (if I recall correctly). PoE isn't going anywhere, but it's not like manufacturers were interested in adding complexity to their laptops for a very small subset of users (within a niche that's small in its own right) who would pay for such a thing.

Re:Dangerous

[sim2lew]

In theory it should also be doing some kind of negotiation before pushing power, such as ensuring that it has a connection to something that speaks USB on the other end (as opposed to, say, your finger, which doesn't), and that resistance is within the expected range for the cable. It's not "always on" current like an electric socket is.

You don't push power or current, you draw it. Your finger presents such a high resistance that I'd be surprised if you could even draw a microamp from a 100W@5V supply, let alone the full 20 amps.

Re:Dangerous

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

PoE had the advantage(in terms of safety) of being heavily designed around the "As much power as possible; but Do Not trip any limits that would cause this to be treated as a power cable, rather than a data cable, for regulatory or insurance reasons" constraint.

Since the whole point was to make it cheaper to operate small ethernet-connected peripherals, it was absolutely necessary that nothing happen that would cause all that twisted-pair running through the walls to suddenly void your fire insurance or require a licensed electrician to go over the place with a fine toothed comb(since, at that point, you are getting dangerously close to the cost of just running a few more AC jacks and using the cheap plugpacks).

Since USB's terrible length limits more or less entirely remove any in-wall or permanent installs(that don't run over proprietary converters, which are free to do whatever they want, since there is absolutely no expected standardization between brands, models, or even necessarily anything other than the two devices that shipped in the same box), they probably won't have the benefit of grim imaginary fire marshals standing over their shoulders.

Re:Dangerous

[skids]

Like I said with PoE, there is constant monitoring of the electrical characteristics of the line. A dog biting into a live PoE link that had already completed negotiation would most likely trip the detection, and power would be removed within a tenth of a second. The dog could be especially unlucky and manage to hit it in just the right way to cause itself harm, but the probability of this is low AFAICT. Stray ends of PoE cable do not supply power until they detect a signature using a low voltage, low current probe, and damaging oneself with them (unless you were playing around with electronics components) would be very unlikely.

I can't speak for USB, Firewire, or the proposed 100W USB; I simply have not read those specs. I do see that some mention of other specs (e.g. HDBaseT) opting to comply with the PoE standard.

Re:Dangerous

[skids]

but it's not like manufacturers were interested in adding complexity to their laptops for a very small subset of users

You are aware that corporations, not just individual consumers, buy lots of computers and gadgets, no?

Re:Dangerous

[ericloewe]

How many corporations, faced with the question: "Should I pay *non-insignificant amount of money* more so that we don't need power bricks, or should I just buy a couple of extras in case a few fail prematurely?", will decide to spend said amount, multiplied by the sometimes massive number of systems purchased?

Very few, if any.

Re:Dangerous

[ThePeices]

How can it kill you?

Re:Dangerous

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not around your neck...but close enough...

Re:Dangerous

[Dogtanian]

In theory it should also be doing some kind of negotiation before pushing power, such as ensuring that it has a connection to something that speaks USB on the other end (as opposed to, say, your finger, which doesn't)

Speak for yourself... I'm so smart, my finger *does* speak USB. :-P

Re:Dangerous

[Anonymous Coward]

Not unless it's poorly designed... 100W isn't even close to able to kill unless it's at 60Hz.

Re:Dangerous

[Anonymous Coward]

(as opposed to, say, your finger, which doesn't), .

Not YET,
http://xkcd.com/644/

Re:Dangerous

[Anonymous Coward]

It is the voltage that is relevant not the frequency, and you only need a fraction of an amp to stop your heart. You need a reasonable voltage to overcome your body's electrical resistance. My physics teacher always said something like be careful with anything over 50 V regardless of whether it is AC or DC.

Re:Dangerous

[ceoyoyo]

It IS the amps that kill you. What they fail to mention is that the voltage is doing the pushing.

Re:Dangerous

[skids]

Corporations that already have PoE deployed for their IP phone systems, APs, cameras, and alarms, that's who.

Re:Dangerous

[Anonymous Coward]

My USB knife launcher can kill 1 W.

Re:Dangerous

[geminidomino]

as opposed to, say, your finger, which doesn't [speak usb]

And why the hell not? It's 2013 FFS. We've got so many elements of Shadowrun well underway, but no damn datajack yet!

We've been robbed, my friends. ROBBED.

Re:Dangerous

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, your finger *doesn't* speak USB?

Hell on power supplies

[Tvingo]

So if you have 4 USB SS ports on a motherboard that motherboard is going to have to be able to supply 400W @ 5V? You can't be serious. We'll need dedicated power connections on the motherboard just to supply this.

The example of using a TV to power multiple devices raises the same concerns. Now the TV power supply will be much more complicated. Rather than power just the 60-70W the TV draws it needs to have a power supply that could supply 100's of extra watts?

The only application I see for this is to use 100W USB SS ports on walls for a common household DC standard interface. That could be interesting, but integrating it into devices is not simple. It adds levels of complexities to the devices that will need to supply the power.

Re:Hell on power supplies

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a ridiculous thing to say. Not every device is going to draw 100W!

Re:Hell on power supplies

[msauve]

I doubt the spec will say a device must be able to deliver 100W. It will be allowed, not required. There will be negotiation involved to determine the max power a device will deliver/can draw.

Really, the only use you can see is a wall outlet? How about standardizing laptop power on this, eliminating all the proprietary "brick on a leash" power supplies, much like has happened with (most) cell phones? How about a single cable connection between a desktop and printer (no separate power cable for the printer)? How about a USB air conditioner, not just a fan (jk :-) )?

Re:Hell on power supplies

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

That's a ridiculous thing to say. Not every device is going to draw 100W!

No; but if there is a nontrivial risk that any device is going to, every USB connector needs to be sturdy enough to handle being the lucky winner, and the power supply needs to be sufficient for at least one such device, along with a graceful, not-too-likely-to-result-in-user-rage-and/or-returns, mechanism for informing the user about power limits if the PSU isn't up to the task of multiple such devices.

The uncertainty will be exciting.

Re:Hell on power supplies

[NemoinSpace]

I don't think you get the whole power "rating" thing. - unless of course you meant .1mbW.

Re:Hell on power supplies

[Bearhouse]

You beat me to it. Plus, want to bet that even if the devices do claim to able to supply 100w simultaneously to 'n' ports this will be via a very inefficient power supply that will, for most people, most of the time, just be sitting there unused but wasting more power than it should have done if just designed to power the unit it was supplying...

Mind you, if I can throw out the dozens of power supplies I have plugged in around the house for just ONE standard, that's a big win...

Re:Hell on power supplies

[Gaygirlie]

So if you have 4 USB SS ports on a motherboard that motherboard is going to have to be able to supply 400W @ 5V? You can't be serious

Most likely you'll have one USB3.0SS -port capable of putting out the full 100W and the rest will be limited to something much, much lower. Possibly even zero ports that can do the full 100W. Then the manufacturers will be making these highly-expensive, "premium" motherboards that sport more 100W ports so as to gouge money from the people who want that functionality.

Rather than power just the 60-70W the TV draws it needs to have a power supply that could supply 100's of extra watts?

Well, good thing, then, that the spec makes the 100W - support optional? Also, it's perfectly possible that the TV will have e.g. 4 ports, but share the 100W between all of them -- if you have 4 devices connected, with each only taking 20W you're good, but if some device requests 80W either it or the other devices will be denied.

Re:Hell on power supplies

[maxwell demon]

Have fun connecting that printer to your laptop while battery powered ...

Re:Hell on power supplies

[localman57]

The laptop has the ability to just say no. Properly behaved devices on the current USB bus must ask the host if they can switch from the minimal 100mA to the 500mA current limit. If the host says no, you're not supposed to do it. If the printer pulls it anyway, that's a problem with the printer, not the laptop.

Re:Hell on power supplies

[localman57]

I'm guessing what we'll see is hubs that support this, with their own power brick. You plug the hub into the PC to deal with data, and the device into the Hub. This is already the case if you want to support multiple devices that add up to more than 500mA. You have to plug them into a powered hub.

Re:Hell on power supplies

[c0lo]

So if you have 4 USB SS ports on a motherboard that motherboard is going to have to be able to supply 400W @ 5V? You can't be serious. We'll need dedicated power connections on the motherboard just to supply this.

You'd better believe it.
For the USB4.0, we're prepared the spec for an integrated mini-generator at 1kW at least: you see, your phone is not mobile if you are not mobile; and you are not mobile unless you can at least ride a scooter. But why stop here? use 20 USB4.0 hubs and you won't need a Tesla.

Re:Hell on power supplies

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Have fun connecting that printer to your laptop while battery powered ...

A small prize will be awarded to the first rootkit that successfully uses only ACPI power-draw data to successfully recover the text being sent to a laser printer...

Re:Hell on power supplies

[Anonymous Coward]

Properly designed supplies will only deliver rated current in the face of an effective short, so the worst that would happen on any decent laptop would be a fast battery drain.

On poorly-designed laptops you'll get roasted chestnuts.

Re:Hell on power supplies

[tlhIngan]

So if you have 4 USB SS ports on a motherboard that motherboard is going to have to be able to supply 400W @ 5V? You can't be serious. We'll need dedicated power connections on the motherboard just to supply this.

Not to mention what voltages are involved.

At 100W, you're not going to use 5V anymore - you're talking 20A, and your USB cables will be like jumper cables to have the ampacity without losing it all in the cable (cable losses are IIR losses - they go up with the square of the current).

You're probably going to make it a 48V Vbus (to keep with industry standard voltages), where your cables are now only going to carry just over 2A, which still makes for decently thin cables that can be packed up and moved. But of course, it means your power supply has to be able to supply 48V. And the voltages are getting high enough to be dangerous. And probably needing new plugs and connectors so the PCB creepage distances are maintained - don't want it to arc over to neighbouring traces now, do we?

Re:Hell on power supplies

[LordLimecat]

Yea, you really dont want your laser printer drawing its power from your laptop over USB (unless you really like blowing fuses / other parts).

Re:Hell on power supplies

[LordLimecat]

At 100W, you're not going to use 5V anymore - you're talking 20A,

If I recall, wattage = V * I.
So in this case, 5V * 20A = 100W.

Re:Hell on power supplies

[Svartalf]

Not at 5V. 20V. Moreover, the device in question will have to allow, via negotiation, the jump from the 10W mode to the 100W one. I suspect you'll have to provision the motherboard to go into that mode (if it supports it...) and you'll be on your own to have a supply that sources the voltage, I suspect...

Re:Hell on power supplies

[tlhIngan]

If I recall, wattage = V * I.
So in this case, 5V * 20A = 100W.

Yes, but you're going to need fat ass jumper cables for your USB cables because the gauge of the wire determines its current handling capacity (or ampacity).

If you want wires that are comparable to what we use today and still pass in 100W, you need to use higher voltages.

The major problem is that thin wires have high IIR losses - the square of the current times the resistance is how much power is lost in the wire. If you want to carry more power more efficiently, you use higher voltages. And past a certain point, the wire just can't carry the power, period. If your cable has a resistance of 0.1 ohms, and you pass in 20A, you're talking about 20*20*0.1 = 40W of power lost in the cable (as heat). Decrease the resistance 10 times and you're still talking about 4W loss through the cable, or nearly what high-power USB (500mA) provided. Of course, we're also assuming your cable doesn't burn up from the heat and catch fire.

In fact, if you're passing 20A through 5V, with a sufficiently small tip, you'd have a welder.

Re:Hell on power supplies

[Wookact]

It looks like it will be 20V at 5A

Re:Hell on power supplies

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree, I don't think we'll see every port implement the full 1000w. What I think is more likely is that we might see power budgets be more complicated then just "every port can support the maximum amount of power the pec says it can"

A laptop may only do 100w. Your 4,000$ desktop might do the full 10000 and maybe you're TV does 50w.

"This device is requesting more power then can be provided" might be an error we all see more often.

Re:Hell on power supplies

[hairyfeet]

And then you can marvel at your support costs shooting through the roof because 'I bought this TV because it has 4 ports but only 2 work at a time!"

This is why I think every geek and engineer should have to work at a job directly supporting the consumer at least once because you really wouldn't say things like that if you had actually had to support consumers before. The nice thing about USB is its so brain dead simple to use but this is gonna take what was simple and easy and make it a complex PITA unless the OEMs just ignore it.

Re:Hell on power supplies

[cynyr]

What I really expect is that the end devices get smarter...

the message on your phone says "Medium speed charging enable due to power restriction" or something like that.

Re:Hell on power supplies

[noh8rz10]

"My printer is broken. when I plug it into my desktop it works fine, but when I plug it into my laptop it won't even turn on" Crappy printer, I'm totally returning it and shitting on it on amazon.

i predict a 10x surge in replacent parts

[NemoinSpace]

100W Hot swappable. I really don't think the chinese are up to it. I'll have to double check the specs. (Will they)?

Re: i predict a 10x surge in replacent parts

[dgatwood]

Inrush is still probably limited to a few hundred mA. After negotiation, the device can power up additional components that draw more power. Devices won't be drawing that much power while you're plugging it in.

Re: i predict a 10x surge in replacent parts

[robot256]

Unplugging a 5-amp 20V connection is still going to produce some arcing. That takes a toll on both connectors, so you could easily end up with a warranty nightmare if there isn't a suitable plug-preemption mechanism going on.

Re: i predict a 10x surge in replacent parts

[LordLimecat]

Existing USB plugs are designed so that some pins disconnect quicker than others, letting the system know that you are unplugging. Theres no reason that couldnt cut the draw of current to prevent arcing, and I imagine that such a cut could happen quicker than you could finish pulling the plug.

Re: i predict a 10x surge in replacent parts

[alannon]

Take a look at the conductive "pins" (strips) on the inside of a USB connector (cable side). See how they're not all the same length? When you're pulling out the plug, the shorter pins (that don't carry power, only data) lose contact first, triggering the hub end to cut off the power pins before the power pins break contact. The reverse happens when you plug it in. No power from the hub until the data pins connect. Thus, no arcing. Any connector designed to be hot-swappable has this type of design.

Re:i predict a 10x surge in replacent parts

[Anonymous Coward]

Some Chinese usb hubs are bleeding upstream. For mine I had to yank out the power pin from the cable... Can't wait to see 100W of this :D

Re: i predict a 10x surge in replacent parts

[dgatwood]

I actually took advantage of that design to work around a hardware bug once. The driver set up the device correctly, but then was unable to actually talk to the device. By pulling the USB plug halfway out and putting it back in, the OS reenumerated the bus, discovered the device (now correctly configured), and everything worked. (I later added a reenumeration call upon detecting this bad behavior, which fixed the problem completely, but it was useful as a quick workaround.)

Crappy idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Now all the cables on your desk will be like power cords or risk not being 'Super Speed' compatible.

voltage?

[goombah99]

What voltage is being proposed. At 5 v that's 20 amps!!

Re:voltage?

[rjr162]

I know.. which depending on the run, using DC.. you're talking around 16 gauge to 18 gauge wire I'd have to guess. They aren't going to be your thin USB cables anymore.. going back more to the size of the original USB cables before they thinned down

Re:voltage?

[synapse7]

And require 16 or 14 gauge wire, that will be nice and convenient to carry around. I can't see this adoption being too widespread, only special use cases.

Re:voltage?

[Dahamma]

From TFA:

"So with this new specification, you can go from very small devices with 5 volts, 2 amps or 10 watts -- where USB starts -- up to 20 volts 5 amps and 100 watts,"

It's no worse than a current laptop charger (bit better, actually, MB chargers are only 16.5v).

Re:voltage?

[rjr162]

I guess I missed that part.. I figured they HAD to be used higher voltages but I just based off of a worst case 5v deal

Re:voltage?

[Dahamma]

Given most household breakers are 15-20A, before I read that bit in the article I was thinking "am I going to have to upgrade my electrical just to charge my phone!?" ;)

Re:voltage?

[Anonymous Coward]

15-20A at 120VAC. So no, even if it ran at 1V you would not have to change your breaker.

Re:voltage?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not apples-to-apples. The house electrical breaker is 22 times higher power than the Amps at 5v. The rough equivalent current there is 330 A.

Re:voltage?

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realise that your CPU draws well over 50A?

Re:voltage?

[lightknight]

Well...it appears time to thin the herds again...those who understand and respect electricity will survive, those who do not will not.

I expect heavy losses among the 'All you need is swagger' generation.

Is it just me or is USB getting suspiciously close

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the main problems with FireWire was that it required expensive cables due to the high quality cables needed to carry the bulk power. With this spec change and the data model for SS USB, have we now got a high tech FireWire-- with all of the disadvantages and none of the advantages (I.e. daisy chaining. Guarantees about latency etc).

Vaporware, for now

[Zinho]

FTFA:

"I think we'll see products in the market by the Christmas season in 2014," Ravencraft said. "The companies have to build silicon - device, host, bridge and hub silicon."

So it looks to be quite a ways out. Still, I'd love to see a video output spec that doesn't have mandatory DRM. I didn't see any mention of HDMI in the article, so there's a slim chance of this new interface not being broken by design...

oblig

[Anonymous Coward]

"almost, but not quite, entirely unlike usb".

Re: Is it just me or is USB getting suspiciously c

[king_nebuchadnezzar]

Repost here as I accidentally posted as AC. One of the main problems with FireWire was that it required expensive cables due to the high quality cables needed to carry the bulk power. With this spec change and the data model for SS USB, have we now got a high tech FireWire-- with all of the disadvantages and none of the advantages (I.e. daisy chaining. Guarantees about latency etc).

or firewire?

[goombah99]

Firewire goes to 30GB/s and 45 watts (30v @ 1.5 amps) and you can daisy chain it. Seems like a better idea than inventing a non-backward compatible serial port and pretending it is somehow related to USBs of yore.

Re:or firewire?

[Baloroth]

Firewire goes to 30GB/s and 45 watts (30v @ 1.5 amps) and you can daisy chain it. Seems like a better idea than inventing a non-backward compatible serial port and pretending it is somehow related to USBs of yore.

Do you have a source on the non-backwards compatibility thing? Because the USB spec release[PDF warning] for the new USB SuperSpeed states it will be.

I should add that the newest FireWire specs only go up to 800mb/s, so also a source on that would be nice.

Re:or firewire?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

While I'm not impressed by USB's mutations over the years, Firewire had the major drawback that(at least in practice, not sure if the paper demanded otherwise) there was a very, very heavy emphasis on 'up to' when it came to how much power could be delivered.

A small minority of actually-well-built workstations and the like wouldn't shrug at providing full specced power. More or less ordinary PCs usually had a floppy or molex connector to supplement PCI bus power; but didn't spring for a DC-DC converter, so (since 30v isn't readily available anywhere on the DC side of an ATX PSU) you generally got 12v, albeit at a decent amperage. Laptops? In practice, "firewire" pretty much meant 'whatever Apple did on the last couple of models of ibook and powerbook; because all the PCs omitted the power pins entirely for "i.link" or similar, which usually boiled down to ~19v, if on adapter, 12-ish if on battery.

The nominal maximum was certainly fairly spacious; but a powered firewire peripheral was essentially always on the hook for a DC-DC converter, and had to deal gracefully with(or simply refuse to work with, ideally in a documented way) substantially inferior power supplies from many devices.

5v 500ma was always pitiful; but (by virtue of being so pathetic) most devices actually did as well or better than they claimed to, and lots of peripherals could get away with only the cheapest of designs for handling bus power.

That's my bet for why "100watt USB" will suck. Sure, it'll be cute and all that POS hardware vendors can now have USB printers and things that are 'standards compliant' and will actually work if purchased 100% from approved vendors and plugged in just right; but everyone else will have wildly unpredictable actual power levels.

Re:or firewire?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Didn't firewire have a more-or-less-vapor 1600mb/s flavor that worked over fiber runs and existed pretty much nowhere at all?

Re:or firewire?

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

My USB connector on my Samsung Droid Charge is on the wiggly-loose fritz. If I plug in a 100 watt cord and wiggle it to get the connection to work, it's not gonna burst into flames is it?

Re:or firewire?

[cbhacking]

Even if it did, and even if we assume you meant megabytes (MB) not milibits (mb) per second, 1.6GB/s is hardly anywhere near the 30GB/s that goombah99 claimed. I call BS.

Re:or firewire?

[Anonymous Coward]

3.2Gbit/s - but it was in spec only and I am not aware of any silicon that implemented it.

Re:or firewire?

[neokushan]

The SuperSpeed spec requires that devices specifically request the increase in power, in order to remain backwards compatible with older USB specs. In other words, you'd have to wiggle that cable pretty damn particularly in order for it to happen.

Re:or firewire?

[neokushan]

I'm curious about how much of that 100w the spec mandates is required. I can see people going out and buying USB3 addin cards and wondering why they need to plug in 2 or 3 molex connectors into it.

Re:or firewire?

[serviscope_minor]

because all the PCs omitted the power pins entirely for "i.link" or similar, which usually boiled down to ~19v, if on adapter, 12-ish if on battery.

Which was really fricking annoying because powered firewire is great in that it provided lots of power, was really fast and reliable compared to USB and the cables were double ended. Then Sony ruined the entire thing. For some reason all other vendors except for Apple jumped on the crap firewire bandwagon.

but a powered firewire peripheral was essentially always on the hook for a DC-DC converter,

In fairness, few things run of 5v these days, so almose all USB peripherals were also on the hook for a DC-DC converter, to 3.3v. Given how cheap they are these days, I doubt anyone goes for a linear one.

Re:or firewire?

[steelfood]

The difference between Firewire speeds and USB speeds is that Firewire speeds are sustained, while USB speeds are burst.

That having been said, I believe you're correct, the latest popular version of Firewire goes up to 800Mbps. There are newer versions in development that go up to 3.2Gbps, matching USB 3.0, but to my knowledge, there's no ubiquitous hardware support for that standard yet.

GP may be thinking of Thunderbolt, which goes up to 10Gbps. Whether that's sustained or bust, I'm not sure. I suspect it's sustained though.

Re:or firewire?

[hairyfeet]

Apple fucked Firewire which is why its dead now. For anybody that wondered why Firewire never went anywhere, even at a time when it could just curbstomp USB, the reason why was simple in that Apple charged a buck a port to the OEMs and peripheral manufacturers while Intel practically gave away USB. When you are talking about razor thin margins every dime counts so they went with the "good enough and cheap" over the "fast and expensive" solution.

So I'm sorry but Firewire is as dead as floppies, USB won ages ago and isn't going anywhere.

Re:or firewire?

[sirsnork]

The better question to ask, is how are manufacturers ever going to be able to offer 100w from a USB port. Do we really want our computer PSU's to have to be able to handle another 20A on the 5v rail just to be able to offer a single 100w capable port?

What about your TV or anything else that ghas a USB port? One of the reasons USB is so popular is because you didn't need to re-engineer your entire power supply and all it's rails.

Ever tried putting 5v @ 20A though a PCB trace?

Re:or firewire?

[noh8rz10]

firewire is dead. long live thunderbolt! srsly tho, i think the thunderbolt breakout boxes are pretty cool. like on the apple monitor, there's one cable to the thunderbolt, but you get like a half dozen ports on the monitor including usb and firewire, also, sound and webcam! that's pretty sweet no?

Re:or firewire?

[hairyfeet]

Thunderbolt will be just as dead as Firewire, sorry. I mean do you see the mainstream OEMs slapping TB ports into everything? Hell do you see any other than Apple using them in any significant amounts?

Like it or not Apple simply doesn't have the numbers to force through a change simply because they use it, you can argue whether this is by design and Steve Jobs wanted Apple to be an elite brand like Prada or if they just like the really high margins for even old hardware more than they want customers but honestly it don't matter, what matters is that every laptop and desktop under the sun comes with USB ports and you'd be hard pressed to walk into any retailer and find a non Mac that uses TB. Thanks to Jobs overcharging on FW ports USB has become a billion dollar business so you REALLY need to have a mega popular port just to overcome inertia and we just aren't seeing it down here on the retail level, sorry.

I predict that just as we saw with FW other than a couple of vendors who'll make you pay out the nose for a device that works with TB only Apple will use it in any amount and even then only until USB catches up and then like FW they will quietly let it die.

Re:or firewire?

[ozmanjusri]

Ever tried putting 5v @ 20A though a PCB trace?

Yes, but I still pretend I didn't.

Never speak of it again.

Re:or firewire?

[noh8rz10]

Thanks to Jobs overcharging on FW ports USB has become a billion dollar business

dude, Jobs MADE usb into the standard it is. before the iMac (the bondi blue one) usb was a buggy joke, and everybody was using floppy disks and serial ports. the imac was the first time that usb worked well and was required, and the market went boom. you're welcome.

Re:or firewire?

[sbryant]

So I'm sorry but Firewire is as dead as floppies, USB won ages ago and isn't going anywhere.

It's not as dead as you think it is. It's not of any use to most consumers, that's for sure - but I have yet to see a version of USB that has the timing issues fixed. Firewire still gets used where precise real-time operation is required, such as audio and video work.

Firewire could have easily killed USB if they had priced it the same. I assume Thunderbolt has even more precise timing capabilities than Firewire, but at the current prices I'm not close to being interested!

-- Steve

Re:or firewire?

[AmiMoJo]

TFA mentions that it will switch up to 20V, which is similar to what most laptop chargers use to reduce the amps required down to 5. Still fairly hefty but workable.

The device will have to request 100W of power, and the host is then free to refuse if it can't handle it. I expect hosts will come with a sticker that says something like "50W USB power" so you know that your 35W laptop will be fine with it, but your 100W... er... pipe soldering iron won't.

As an aside it's a shame USB didn't start out using 3.3V for power instead of 5V. The signaling is all 3.3V so it pretty much mandates some kind of voltage regulator or level shifting hardware in the device. Particularly in the early days that added cost. I guess there was still a lot of 5V stuff they wanted to be compatible with back then.

Re: or firewire?

[iamhassi]

Just don't wiggly hard and specifically request MOR POWAR! at the same time and you'll be find

Re: or firewire?

[iamhassi]

Yes.... I think, I'm not sure still a bit fuzzy but the doctor says that's what happened

Re:or firewire?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apples and Oranges

TB is meant to replace everything from internal connections to external connection and will scale to at least 100Gb/s, plus teaming. Can FW claim the same?

Remember, what seems like a useless feature today could be the next big thing tomorrow. Having a single connections for everything except your analog audio in/out, sounds really really awesome.

Re:or firewire?

[Anonymous Coward]

They mention 20v @ 5a, and it disables the data traces so those can also be used for power.

Re:or firewire?

[default luser]

USB 3.0 has much higher sustained speeds due to adding full-duplex communication (USB 2.0 was single-duplex).

Also, they updated the signaling system to replace the outdated BOT protocol (USB 1-2) with UASP (USB Attached SCSI), giving it a similar feature-set and sustained throughput potential as Firewire.

This new standard for USB 3 is already supported on all Intel Ivy Bridge chipsets, and most new high-end devices. This 10 Gbps revision will almost certainly make it a mandatory feature (can't find confirmation, but it would be incredibly stupid to move that much data around with BOT). These moves make USB much more competitive and a better fit for high-end users.

Re:or firewire?

[hairyfeet]

Wow, you REALLY don't know squat, do you? What made USB explode was NOT Jobs or that funky iMac, which FYI nobody but MacHeads bought or gave a crap about which is why Apple is a consumer electronics company and not a major PC company, it was the fact that it made a butt simple replacement for gameports and serial ports which meant there was two less (VERY expensive to wire BTW) ports that the OEMs had to include and thus let them undercut the competition. By as early as 97 I was seeing Gateway and eMachine systems with neither a gameport nor a serial port and by 99 parallel ports were gone for most of the systems that weren't targeted at enterprise like Optiplex.

So sorry, St. Steve of Cupertino didn't have jack diddle shit to do with USB, if he did he would have pushed FW as he was making a buck a port and Apple was seriously hurting at the time, nope what made USB explode was it was a hell of a lot cheaper to just slap a couple of USB ports on than it was to put on a gameport AND a serial AND a parallel. In fact the only change that one can even kinda sorta give credit to the iMac was ending floppies but even then I think it had more to do with the fact that all the OEMs outsourced floppies to China which turned them into shit than anything else. Hell in 03 I paid like $300 for a 64Mb flash stick just to get the fuck away from floppies because thanks to outsourcing we were throwing away 6 out of a 10 pack of floppies on first use, they were THAT shitty.

Re:or firewire?

[noh8rz10]

whatevs, the usb port was starting to make it into computers in 97/98, but did you notice that few perhiperals were available, and there was all sort of buggy compatibility problems? did you also notice that the usb keyboards, mouse, and printers used by people on any computer were that bondi blue color, because they were designed for imac? without the imac nobody would have gotten rid of the floppy disk or those huge ass ports.

soon the same will be true for cd drive, ethernet. when was the last time i used a cd/dvd in my computer? not in the past year at least.

Re:or firewire?

[hairyfeet]

Nope, didn't see a single bondi blue buttplug or anything else for that matter because as I already said nobody gave a shit about the iMac but the macheads because at the time Apple was half dead and all but the most faithful to St. Steve had left the building, hence why they had to bring St Steve back.

And the ONLY reason why it hadn't taken over by 97/98 was the simple fact that Windows 98 couldn't do plug and play as the famous video of Win98 BSODing on Bill Gates demonstrated all too well. Now those of us who did business as well as consumer sales? We had a ton of USB devices because WinNT did do plug and play because the drivers were isolated from the kernel so if the driver crapped it didn't take out the whole OS. Considering the iMac was running 8.1 they weren't much better off anyway.

But when the USB ports exploded was around 2001 when...drumroll...WinXP came along and made plug and play a reality. They had gained in the business sector before that thanks to NT/2K but XP is what really made it explode. But just FYI Apple wasn't even the only one doing the whole "all in one USB only" bit as Gateway had the Astro line targeted at SMBs and SOHOs which only had a CD-ROM and USB ports, early 98 IIRC as I'm pretty sure it wasn't 98SE. One of our big sellers at the time was a USB burner and USB hubs to add to the Astro as the way it was built one couldn't change out the drive without taking a dremel to the front and it didn't have enough ports for the keyboard AND mouse AND a burner.

At the time I was working at the state capital and got to play with all the latest gear and frankly the iMac? It wasn't even on the radar NOBODY had it, in fact I never even got to see one until several years later when I spotted one at a yard sale in a college town. I did end up being given the B&W G3 tower which I have in the closet at the shop, I really need to get off my ass and either throw it away or do as I originally planned and gut it to build a nice dual or triple core in the case, as it is a pretty case.

But seriously dude nobody but the faithful gave a rat's ass about Apple until the iPod exploded, before that any Apple systems were as rare as hen's teeth in the flyover states. maybe you are on the coast, i heard they were big there, but in the heartland they didn't sell for shit, and they sure as hell wasn't driving USB adoption, that was the shitty floppies and the OEMs killing expensive ports for dirt cheap USB ports. Ironically now even the PS/2 port is starting to become endangered as these companies try to wring every last penny they can from the margins,I have to keep a USB setup at the shop just to deal with the cheap Dells and HPs because they don't come with anything but USB now and they won't take a USB to PS2 adapter, neither will the G3 BTW which is why its sitting in the closet instead of being played with at the shop.

Re:or firewire?

[noh8rz10]

listen viejo, i forget what we were even arguing about, but fact is that apple has always driven innovation in the hardware and software space because they're not afraid to invest R&D (4bil in this quarter alone) while all other computer makers slap a nameplate on commodity products. this will always be the case regardless of what's in your closet.

Standard Practice with electronics

[RobertLTux]

actually the power supply would need to have an extra 450 watts since you NEVER design to full rating you at the least design for the loads to be at most 90% of Full (prevents a fire hazard).

The point is if the spec says XXX watts are available then XXX+Y watts had better be available (nasal demons are allowed for drawing under spec).

How Earth Day of you

[Anonymous Coward]

Increase Power Consumption.

It's Earth Day.

That's not a Good Thing.

It's a Bad Thing.

Re:How Earth Day of you

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking as a resident of Minnesota, where we are projected to get another 6-9 inches of snow today, in April:

Global warming is a GOOD thing. Remind me to buy another 0.36 mpg SUV tonight to spread that CO2 around.

Re:How Earth Day of you

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking as someone who actually pays attention to science, I think you might just be making your problem worse.

ugh!

[markhahn]

the current micro-USB connector kinda sucks. if we're going O(100x) more watts, maybe we should take the opportunity to do a better connector, too.

symmetric would be nice, and less prone to jamming, misalignment and torquing.

Re:ugh!

[Anonymous Coward]

We could go back to PS/2 or S-Video style, where you accidentally bend all the pins every time you attempt to plug it in...

Re:ugh!

[Colonel Korn]

We could go back to PS/2 or S-Video style, where you accidentally bend all the pins every time you attempt to plug it in...

I really like the new expensive Apple connector I received with my iPhone 5. It's going to be the thing I miss most when I sell it to go back to Android.

Re:ugh!

[Anonymous Coward]

>maybe we should take the opportunity to do a better connector, too.

USB 3.0 and related specs here:
http://www.usb.org/developers/docs/

5.3.4 Shows the micro connecor family. USB 3.0 requires the extra pins, but unfortunately, they have elected to make a siamese twins version of the micro connector.

There is no symmetrical connectors for the USB ones (so far and probably later). You want a lightning connector.

Re:ugh!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, well, we're going to have to, right? I don't think the microUSB connector can handle all that power.

Re:ugh!

[steveha]

I agree 100%: if we are going to mutate the USB standard this much, let's take the opportunity to make a symmetric connector. I don't want to buy Apple products, but I do think that they did a great job on the physical design of the Lightning connector, and I wish I could have something like that on all my devices.

Re:ugh!

[Cid Highwind]

There is no symmetrical connectors for the USB ones

No, but USB-A are just close enough to symmetrical that you can try to plug them in upside-down.

Re:ugh!

[jandrese]

That's how you're supposed to do it. You try to plug it in and discover that it is upside down, so you turn it over and discover that it is still upside down, so you turn it over again and it actually goes in.

A USB toaster might be a possibility

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally A USB toaster might be a possibility.

Re:A USB toaster might be a possibility

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh boy. I can just imagine what kind of extended market this provides to all those silly gadgets which do not use the actual USB bus but only draw power from it.

Re:A USB toaster might be a possibility

[RussR42]

Just put a display on the side of your USB toaster. Then you can watch TV while you toast. A sort of Video Toaster.

Re:A USB toaster might be a possibility

[LordLimecat]

Your power draw is off by about an order of magnitude.

Im not sure what toaster youre using that draws 100W, but I imagine you have to wait a really long time for your toast.

Re:A USB toaster might be a possibility

[Hamsterdan]

You're aware that's only a little higher than an Easy-Bake Oven? I hope you don't like your toast too dark...

New Power Spec Released Last Year

[Anonymous Coward]

Released last year.

http://www.usb.org/press/USB_Power_Delivery_Spec_Completion_FINAL_072712.pdf

You don't need the new 10 Gbps spec to get 100 W charging. Also, the spec says up to 100 watts. See links below.

http://www.usb.org/developers/powerdelivery/
http://www.usb.org/developers/powerdelivery/PD_1.0_Introduction.pdf

power my vacuum

[Anonymous Coward]

I want to vacuum my house using a usb connected to my computer...

I'll believe this will be used by OEM's..

[Anonymous Coward]

..as soon as they all standardize on a single power input plug. Not gonna happen.

reprap, make me breakfast!

[Thud457]

I eagerly await our USB toasters, arc welders and cutting lasers.

Re:reprap, make me breakfast!

[ericloewe]

100W toaster/arc welder/cutting laser? Sure, if you enjoy slightly warm bread, non-soldered metals and only cut fabric.

Re:reprap, make me breakfast!

[cbhacking]

Actually, even at the efficiencies (typically around 25%) of the typical laser, 100W of power will make a very powerful beam. A 5W (emitted) laser will quite happily cut wood or flesh. A 25W laser should be capable of cutting a great many materials.

Re:reprap, make me breakfast!

[Rob Riggs]

People have no appreciation for the amount of power it takes to run a fully armed and operational battle station.

Re:reprap, make me breakfast!

[noh8rz10]

lasers are inherently safe... you can only go blind one eye at a time!

Heck yeah!

[rickb928]

I'm looking forward to charging my monitor!

Re:Heck yeah!

[Anonymous Coward]

Cool! Then I can use your monitor to charge my television!

Dynamic power draw?

[Anonymous Coward]

That makes me wonder, has anyone created a PSU that dynamically draws power as its needs rise?

What's that Mr.Motherboard, you need more juice? Switching on another rail.

Is this at all possible without absolutely wrecking the simplicity of designs, or is it already being done now?
I've never actually directly measured how much my PC uses when inactive and when heavily active. (sans GPU)
I'd assume they do draw as much as is needed, but something says I am wrong. But it also doesn't explain where all that power goes to if it isn't being used.
Other parts of the PC don't suddenly get warmer when most cycles are the idle process, so that is my reasoning.

I dunno, not an electronics expert. Although it was one avenue I was going to go down in life at one point.
These days it is amateur-ish at best. Lesser even.

Re:Dynamic power draw?

[localman57]

That makes me wonder, has anyone created a PSU that dynamically draws power as its needs rise?

Yes, all of them do this already, unless I misunderstand you. A switching power supply only pulls what it needs from the wall (plus a bit of inefficiency) to supply what the computer demands. Check out the 80-Plus standards for an idea of different efficiencies at different percentages of total load.

Re:Dynamic power draw?

[Ost99]

It draws what it needs.
The efficiency of the psu differs at different loads, but any bronze / silver / gold 80+ psu will have a decent efficiency from around 10% load and up.

Re:Dynamic power draw?

[Anonymous Coward]

"has anyone created a PSU that dynamically draws power as its needs rise?"

They sure have: that is exactly what a power supply does. A correctly designed one can do it completely in analog simply by incorporating feedback and a voltage reference. Modern ones use some tricks to do it with great efficiency.

Re:Dynamic power draw?

[sim2lew]

As I stated further up, this already happens and is actually inherent in electronics as a subject. The PSU will only supply the current that the motherboard is attempting to draw, up to its rated maximum.

Re:Dynamic power draw?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd assume they do draw as much as is needed, but something says I am wrong.

Two seconds thinking about what the "law of conservation of energy" actually means would have showed you that you were right.

Re:Dynamic power draw?

[cbhacking]

Naw man, when my gaming PC (850W PSU) is in sleep mode (1W draw), the power supply just dissipates those other 849W by MAGIC! I mean, the fans aren't running, and there's no fucking way the PSU fan alone could move that much heat before it melted something anyhow.

Anyhow, the only reason to put the PC in Sleep mode is to enable the "magic" of the PSU and lose the fan noise, it's not like it actually saves any power while that 850W PSU is still connected!

</sarcasm> for those who don't get it...

There's a terrible idea...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

This "100watt USB!!!" nonsense has been floating around for a while, and it just never seems to get any better.

Uncertainty is Bad. 100watts is a lot of power. Your laptop's brick is almost certainly specced for less than that. Even a desktop PSU will likely be 250-350, outside of gamers and workstations(and often the upper end of the range is...optimistic... at best). Now, if we have this '100watt USB', what are devices going to do? is your next laptop going to ship with a 265 watt brick, so that it has the same 65 watts for itself as your current one does, and can handle both its ports being used? Is it going to ship with exactly the same brick and simply brown out the USB port at some unpredictable power level?(extra credit awarded if that unpredictable level depends on whether the battery is charging or not, and the current CPU load...) If "100watts" is actually "anywhere between ~15 watts and 100watts, largely unpredictable to the consumer", what are peripheral manufacturers going to target? What good is theoretical capacity that you can't actually use because a nontrival-but-hard-to-predict percentage of your customers can't actually deliver it?

Bus power is nice because it reduces cabling and complexity. However, if it isn't dependable, you can't rely on it, so you have to fall back on designs that pretend it isn't available. Now you have more expensive USB ports(in some devices) and wall warts or PSUs for your higher power peripherals! What a win!

This isn't to say that any increase in bus power is bad(given USB's use cases, 'enough power to spin up a 2.5 inch HDD' or 'enough power to charge a smartphone' are pretty useful things. However, you can't just keep pushing the ceiling without limit: the wider the uncertainty, the greater the costs(for devices that actually engineer to spec and include the capability to support the top of the range) and the greater the limits and confusion(for devices that target more realistic real-world output values, and for the poor bastards who think that 'USB' means 'works when plugged into my USB port').

Re:There's a terrible idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

is your next laptop going to ship with a 265 watt brick

If we had USB SS power specs, we would have never had laptop power bricks to begin with...

Re:There's a terrible idea...

[localman57]

That's brilliant. The idea that I can buy a 100W usb wall wart to plug my laptop into instead of a proprietary dell adapter. That could do for laptops what USB charging did for cell phones...

Re:There's a terrible idea...

[Solandri]

Now, if we have this '100watt USB', what are devices going to do? is your next laptop going to ship with a 265 watt brick, so that it has the same 65 watts for itself as your current one does, and can handle both its ports being used?

On top of that, power supply efficiency starts to drop off steeply when power draw is only a small fraction of the power supply's capacity.

Re:There's a terrible idea...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

is your next laptop going to ship with a 265 watt brick

If we had USB SS power specs, we would have never had laptop power bricks to begin with...

But how will my USB-powered laptop power its USB-powered peripherals? Are we going to have USB-power injectors, that pass the data lines through to the laptop and the power rails to a second wall wart?

(We already had a mini taste of this with the rPI, which ran from USB power, and so tended to have issues with brownouts on its own USB host ports).

Re:There's a terrible idea...

[MintyKiwi]

It will simply provide sub-SS power... doubt your mouse and keyboard are going to need 100W... ;)

Re:There's a terrible idea...

[rjr162]

"100watts is a lot of power."

Only in context. Take 120 volts.. that's less than 1 Amp. That's less than the LED replacement bulbs for Halogens use. 220 Volts (for the Euro guys). That's less than half an amp. Current USB Voltage (5 volts)... that's 20 Amps. Now that is a bit much for DC like that.. you'll need around 16-18 gauge wire ideally. But this spec is (after I was informed of this) using 20 volts, so that's 5 amps. That's not that much. You have some fairly small wires in your car fused at 10 to 15 amps now powering the radio etc, and that's only at 12 to 14.4 volts

Re:There's a terrible idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

Your laptop's brick is almost certainly specced for less than that.

Thinkpad W5xx series with a Core i7 has a 170W brick standard these days. And yes it is the size of a brick and about as heavy.

For the remainder of your post, that's why there needs to be a specification to take away the uncertainty. If the specification needs improvement in its current implementation, you should write in with some of your ideas. Now, whether USB manufacturers decide to conform to the final specification is another discussion altogether.

Re:There's a terrible idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

100 Watts at 5 Amps is exactly the same amount of power as 100W at 50 Amps.

Amperage is not a measure of power. Watts are.

Re:There's a terrible idea...

[Kjella]

This isn't to say that any increase in bus power is bad(given USB's use cases, 'enough power to spin up a 2.5 inch HDD' or 'enough power to charge a smartphone' are pretty useful things.

Charging is at least an operation where you can optimistically use whatever power is available, but that's generally not the norm. At the very least there should be some kind of power notches on the connectors - a device that requires 20W minimum shouldn't physically fit in a regular USB port using the supplied cable.

Re:There's a terrible idea...

[enwewn]

I picked yours, but many are making this mistake. Power supply wattage is measured on the AC side not the DC side. So this 100watts at 5v comes out as a few watts or less on the rating. Even if its 100w at 20v we are still talking small add to the rating on the power supplies. This is why finding a 2kw power supply is going to be hard as most home wiring maxes out at 15amps 110volts (US) for the circuit.

This is news?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/07/24/028230/usb-30-100w-power-standard-seeks-to-end-proprietary-chargers

How is this any different? (other than the mention of lightning connector which im sure nobody gives a frak about...)

fiber is fragile

[SuperBanana]

Fiber optic is pretty fragile - far more so than a copper cable. Can't bend it past a certain radius, much less kink it. Optical's main benefit is distance, not speed...

TOSlink and all that jazz worked because you connect stuff and that's it- the cable rarely gets disturbed. Think of your average business traveler - they'd go through optical cables like candy.

Sure, you could make them heavier-duty since they don't have to stretch that far, but that grade of optical plastic or glass is $$$, and volume goes up (Pi)*r*r...

This 100w power standard is pretty stupid, though. We're talking power levels where fires will definitely be possible from damaged USB cables.

Re:fiber is fragile

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

TOSlink is sort of a weird one because it was optical; but usually over very short plastic runs, and at a data rate so low that even fairly pitiful copper has no trouble with it(which is why it is now commonly replaced by, or lives along side with, an RCA connector providing the same output in a copper flavor). I'm sure that there is some reason why optical was dragged in in the first place; but it's always a bit jarring to see.

Re:fiber is fragile

[Dahamma]

This 100w power standard is pretty stupid, though. We're talking power levels where fires will definitely be possible from damaged USB cables.

As opposed to all of the current laptop chargers, AC power cords, DC converter bricks, etc out there now?

Re:fiber is fragile

[robot256]

The main benefit of TOSlink is avoiding ground loops in audio systems. This is especially important if you have a long run between ends of the building with a significant resistance in the building ground system between them.

Re:fiber is fragile

[lordbeejee]

This 100w power standard is pretty stupid, though. We're talking power levels where fires will definitely be possible from damaged USB cables.

As opposed to all of the current laptop chargers, AC power cords, DC converter bricks, etc out there now?

Those cables are built for that power, do you want to carry around usb cables that thick for every device that uses usb? Unless there is a way for the chipset to identify the cable (no high power if the cable is a type that's thinner than a certain size) it could be a risk.
You can't trust users to decide sensibly if the thin cable would be safe to charge your laptop if the connector is the same as the thick cable that came with the laptop. Lots of people reason that if it fits, it should work.

Re:fiber is fragile

[Drishmung]

Fiber optic is pretty fragile - far more so than a copper cable. Can't bend it past a certain radius, much less kink it.

Most copper data cables, including UTP, STP and co-ax react very poorly to sharp bends or kinking. If you take a Cat5 cable and kink it or stretch it, it's not going to work any more, at least not at Gbps rates.

Optical's main benefit is distance, not speed...

TOSlink and all that jazz worked because you connect stuff and that's it- the cable rarely gets disturbed. Think of your average business traveler - they'd go through optical cables like candy.

Good point, though I think the problem would more likely be the connector than the cable. Optical does not cope well with dust, grime etc.

This 100w power standard is pretty stupid, though. We're talking power levels where fires will definitely be possible from damaged USB cables.

Unless (and I have no idea if such is being implemented) a smart, bidirectional power protocol is in place that monitors the power sent vs the power received and shuts it down if there is a discrepancy---sort of like a super RCD.

Re:fiber is fragile

[Anonymous Coward]

We're talking power levels where fires will definitely be possible from damaged USB cables.

It doesn't take much power to start an electrical fire, just abuse of a cable.

I've seen a USB extension cable (without a device plugged in) get badly crushed while attached to a powered up computer. One loud bang, visible flash from under the desk, puff of magic smoke and the computer was fried. CPU, motherboard and PSU all toast. If that happened to a computer in a more enclosed space, or that hadn't been cleaned of dust recently, we could have had a fire on our hands. Yet the same office also had power cables capable of delivering over 6kW, but we never had a fire from those.

100W will require thicker wire anyway to reduce transmission losses, and most countries already have fire-safety regulations that will demand thicker insulation than current USB cables have due to the power levels involved. I don't see this as being a problem, as long as you stay clear of dodgy chinese import cables that aren't built to spec.

Re:fiber is fragile

[Hamsterdan]

AC-3 (RCA) is digital too, so no ground loop problem either. My guess is people will think it's better because it's optical.

Re:fiber is fragile

[ArsenneLupin]

... and these do indeed cause fires (or even explosions) on occasion.

Re:fiber is fragile

[robot256]

Is this something you know for a fact? Because copper digital cables have grounds in them too, and it's not just the signal on the cable that gets affected once you set up a resonating network.

Re:fiber is fragile

[Hamsterdan]

AC-3 is digital, so ground loops won't matter much. In fact, I made an AC-3 connector from my HTPC's onboard connector using an old CD-ROM wire and some solder and heatshrink.

If your devices are setting up a resonating network, they are *not* grounded properly. I have to ground my turntable on my Marantz Receiver, I use 16 gauge wire.

Re: Is it just me or is USB getting suspiciously c

[localman57]

USB has always had the idea of different grades of cable. The 1.5MBps interface for keyboards and mice was specifically created in part so that you could use a really thin, crappy cable leading to the mouse. That way you didn't have to use the better cable required for 10MBps. Power will be the same way, although I'll be interested to see how they keep you from trying to pull 20A through a crappy 26 gauge cable ebay unbranded cable.

Smokin hot wires

[WaffleMonster]

USB 2.0 section 7.2.1.2.1 says 5 A max as in when you hit it the protection circuit kicks in and limits or shuts down current.

To actually pull 5A means the required protection circuit would need to trip above 5A to be useful which violates this section.

The more reality based problem is 28 gauge wire over 10-16 FT of cable carrying 5 amps is really stretching it...the voltage losses in that scenario will significantly pull down the actual watts being delivered into heating the wire.

At 10 ft the voltage drop when pulling 5 amps is ~6 volts. At 16 ft the drop is a staggering ~10 volts.

Unless there is a whole lot of intelligence to probe wire losses as part of the power specification and take the wire itself into consideration when calculating maximum current availability 100 watts over only 20 volts is really stretching it.

Re:Smokin hot wires

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, 100W at 20 volts is fine. The wires will as you said be thick. But the real problem is the connection. I sincerely doubt the USB connector is specified for that kind of ampereage.

Re:Smokin hot wires

[WaffleMonster]

Well, 100W at 20 volts is fine. The wires will as you said be thick. But the real problem is the connection. I sincerely doubt the USB connector is specified for that kind of ampereage.

Checking USB power delivery information on the USB web site... unless superspeed means something different from power delivery TFA is full of it when they say existing cables can be reused.

From USB PD presentation cables actually need to be power aware and the mini A/B connectors are limited to 60 watts which all makes a lot of sense to me.

I also very much appreciate the power profile categories so people are not left wondering whether source a will be enough to power gadget b.

Already done

[SuperKendall]

That's already been done in some Thunderbolt cables I think, though most of them right now are all copper... but the original idea was a fiber cable plus copper for power.

Re:Already done

[SuricouRaven]

Thunderbolt cables have part of the interface electronics physically in the connector body - that's why they cost so much. It also means you can swap a thunderbolt copper cable for a thunderbolt fiber cable without having to worry about the equipment at the ends having an exotic fiber interface.

I don't know if you can even get a thunderbolt fiber cable yet. They don't go any faster than copper, but they do go longer, which could be handy in a few niche applications. I'm thinking supercomputer and cluster interconnects. Could be cheaper than infiniband, and lower latency than ten-gig ethernet.

Re:Already done

[Hylandr]

I have an image in my head of monster cables as big as my arm...

Re:Already done

[SuperKendall]

I don't know if you can even get a thunderbolt fiber cable yet.

I was not totally sure about that either, I thought perhaps some of the first cables were but I don't know specifically. It could be that's just the intent but it may never happen due to cost. Or perhaps the newer faster thunderbolt standard will make dual cables more useful to get the maximum bandwidth.

Re:Already done

[davydagger]

correct, it was originally called "light peak" before apple bought exclusive rights to it.

Re:Already done

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't go any faster than copper

As a matter of fact, they would go slower. Light travels though fiber at about 70-80% of the speed of electrons through copper. It would be capable of carrying much more bandwidth, but with higher latency.

Re:Already done

[SuperKendall]

I know it used to be called Light Peak, but I'm pretty sure Thunderbolt is an Intel standard, and not exclusive - there are PC's that support this as well.

Re:Already done

[sirsnork]

Intel was using fibre cables for pre-release demos/trade shows etc, but I don't think they were ever released to retail. I'm not even sure they were using the same connector as those that were released

Re:Already done

[sirsnork]

Apple had a 12 month exclusive on it, it's available on anything now but as is common with Apple, nothing they touch ends up as "the standard"

Re:Already done

[noh8rz10]

I have an image in my head of monster cables as big as my arm...

that's what she said!

Re:Already done

[Anubis350]

Thunderbolt cables have part of the interface electronics physically in the connector body - that's why they cost so much. It also means you can swap a thunderbolt copper cable for a thunderbolt fiber cable without having to worry about the equipment at the ends having an exotic fiber interface.

I don't know if you can even get a thunderbolt fiber cable yet. They don't go any faster than copper, but they do go longer, which could be handy in a few niche applications. I'm thinking supercomputer and cluster interconnects. Could be cheaper than infiniband, and lower latency than ten-gig ethernet.

Forgetting about the myriad factors why thunderbolt is not a replacement for infiniband (like fact that QDR inifinaband on a 12X link is already an order of magnitude faster than thunderbolt, or that it's switched, which thunderbolt isn't) intel would definitely have to drop the graphics tie in to see even a remote viability of thunderbolt for *any* reason on my completely headless servers.

Re:Already done

[SuricouRaven]

Infiniband costs a fortune. That's fine if you've big money behind you. Otherwise, you go with ethernet. Thunderbolt could fill the space between: Faster than ethernet (and lower latency), yet still cheaper than infiniband. It could be just the thing for medium-scale computing clusters, the things used by smallish universities and companies that can't afford to spend millions of dollars on a top-of-the-range supercomputer. It'll easily match ten-gig ethernet for performance - all you need is a switch, and if demand is there someone will manufacture one. The protocol is basically just an external PCIe lane, there's nothing to stop you from sending frames over it with an address. Or you could just use an unswitched topology - loop, hypercube, torus. Something that runs entirely on point-to-point links.

Re:Already done

[TheRaven64]

The latency difference from the signal propagation speed is negligible compared to the latency of turning the electronic signal into light and back, except on really, really long cable runs.

Re:Already done

[TheRaven64]

nothing they touch ends up as "the standard"

Yup, that USB thing that they tried to push with the iMac as the new standard way of connecting peripherals died horribly. Nothing Apple pushes ever ends up as 'the standard', especially not Intel-originated technologies...

Re:Already done

[MrNiCeGUi]

When will this myth ever die? The USB standard appeared in 1996, the USB iMac appeared in 1998 and it wasn't even the first with USB 1.1. Not to mention that the Mac marketshare was below 5%, how exactly did they manage to "push" USB. You want to talk about a standard that Apple really pushed and the PC largely ignored, talk about Firewire. How well did that go, exactly?

Re:Already done

[TheRaven64]

Do you remember the computing landscape then? I had a PC back in 1996 (possibly 1997) with two USB ports. Windows NT 4 and Windows 95 didn't support them, there were no peripherals available for them, and they were unused. Windows 95 OEM Service Release 2.1 was released in August 1997 and added support for USB. Every PC came with a PS/2 keyboard and mouse (occasionally an RS-232 mouse, but they were mostly phased out by then, 5-pin DIN keyboards were still common though). Every Mac came with ADB input devices. PC printers were all parallel. USB mice were rare and expensive. Ditto keyboards. I didn't even see a USB printer

Then, in 1998, Apple introduced the iMac with no ADB ports. In fact, no legacy interfaces at all. Any peripheral maker that wanted to sell to Apple customers (and ride on the back of the massive ad campaign for the iMac) sold USB versions of their products. If you walked around a computer store around 1999 / 2000, then every USB peripheral was using translucent plastic to go with the iMac. When I bought a new computer in 2000, it still came with PS/2 ports, and it still came with a PS/2 keyboard and mouse, but when I bought a replacement it came with both PS/2 and USB support.

Without the critical mass of people who could only use USB devices, there would have been far less incentive for manufacturers to start shipping USB peripherals. Why add USB circuitry when everyone has PS/2 anyway? Because that gives you access to the 5% of the market that's buying a Mac for a relatively small extra cost.

Re:Already done

[Plumpaquatsch]

When will this myth ever die? The USB standard appeared in 1996, the USB iMac appeared in 1998 and it wasn't even the first with USB 1.1. Not to mention that the Mac marketshare was below 5%, how exactly did they manage to "push" USB. You want to talk about a standard that Apple really pushed and the PC largely ignored, talk about Firewire. How well did that go, exactly?

Exactly, and the fact that a huge number of USB peripherals came out just in time for the release of the iMac was pure coincidence. And most of them were translucent blue, because that matched with the BSOD that Windows often showed when using USB.

Re:Already done

[Githaron]

What about bandwidth?

Re:Already done

[Anonymous Coward]

And the latency of signal processing trumps both. Much faster to just convert light into electric signals than advanced math on electric signals.

Re:Already done

[Bengie]

Infinaband cables are way too large. Won't work for your average consumer.

Re:Already done

[wagnerrp]

Single-mode fiber has practically infinite bandwidth. If you need more, you just multiplex another LASER at a slightly different frequency. Some high density WDM systems run as many as 160 independent signals down a single fiber pair.

Re:Already done

[MrNiCeGUi]

The incentive for manufacturers to ship USB peripherals was the existence of a critical mass of devices supporting said standard, which the iMac most certainly was not, and the appearance of better use cases for said interface. Yes, the iMac was trendy at the time, no surprise there, and manufacturers tried to capitalize on the style, but also USB was better, technically, and enabled for example scanners that did not need their own expensive interface card, or cheaper Winprinters because USB had the bandwidth to push rendering in the driver instead of the device.

What I was getting at is that USB was an established standard that Apple adopted and promoted but did not create it and wasn't either the first or the largest manufacturer to use it. To put all the merit on Apple's shoulders for USB's success is disingenuous. If we want to see what happens when Apple creates and is the first and largest adopter of a new technology, Firewire is a better example. Was it better then alternative technologies? Hell yes. Did it ever get mass market penetration? Sadly, no, because it never got to a critical mass of available devices. 5% is not enough.

Re:Already done

[TheRaven64]

The incentive for manufacturers to ship USB peripherals was the existence of a critical mass of devices supporting said standard, which the iMac most certainly was not, and the appearance of better use cases for said interface

No, it was a critical mass of users who wanted those peripherals. USB interfaces are more complex than PS/2 and so mice and keyboards were more expensive when they had USB interfaces. It took economies of scale to get the prices down to similar levels, and these wouldn't have happened without something like the iMac selling in large quantities, because PC users (including myself) in 1998-2000 looked at buying a new mouse or keyboard, saw the USB version was more expensive than the PS/2 version, and went with the cheap one.

also USB was better, technically, and enabled for example scanners that did not need their own expensive interface card, or cheaper Winprinters because USB had the bandwidth to push rendering in the driver instead of the device

I'll give you scanners, because I owned a parallel port scanner and it took ages to wait for the images. For decent scanners the alternative was SCSI, and that was a lot more expensive. On the other hand, scanners were (and still are) a relatively small subset of the peripherals market. For printers, there was little advantage of USB. A parallel port could push data at the rate of the print head of a decent inkjet printer. We had a number of Inkjets that did all of the rasterisation on the host computer and pushed the data. Laser winprinters never really caught on to any great degree, and at the higher end ethernet interfaces let you avoid the bandwidth limitations.

What I was getting at is that USB was an established standard that Apple adopted and promoted but did not create it

And Thunderbolt, which was the topic of the original post, is also an Intel standard that Apple adopted and promoted but did not create.

and wasn't either the first or the largest manufacturer to use it

It was the first manufacturer to force users to use it. As I said, I bought a PC in 1996 with USB ports, but there were no USB peripherals for it. When they were introduced, they were more expensive than the alternative, and driver support sucked. I had absolutely no incentive to use USB. iMac users at the same time had no other alternative (the iMac also shipped with the least useable mouse ever, so almost everyone who bought one went out to look for a less-crap USB mouse after a few weeks of using it).

If we want to see what happens when Apple creates and is the first and largest adopter of a new technology, Firewire is a better example. Was it better then alternative technologies?

FireWire was only better than USB for devices that needed isochronous transfer or really high bandwidth. That basically meant video cameras and external hard drives, neither of which was a big enough market to drive a new standard. Video cameras were almost exclusively FireWire until USB 2.0, which was almost as good (supported isochronous transfer, ran almost as fast) and cheaper to implement. FireWire replaced SCSI on external hard drives, but most also added USB because it was cheap.

5% is not enough

5% of the market for mice and keyboards is a huge market. 5% of the market for printers is still pretty big. 5% of the market for external disk drives and video cameras is a tiny market and not worth focussing on, unless it's the ultra-high end where every sale rakes in a huge profit (and FireWire still has a reasonable presence there).

100 Watt Lightbulbs

[Zamphatta]

...perhaps in 10 years, USB lightbulbs will be the norm and young teenagers will be telling their little siblings about when we used to screw in light bulbs. Oh man, that would mean all those "how many ___ does it take to screw in a lightbulb" jokes will be outdated.

Re:100 Watt Lightbulbs

[newcastlejon]

Oh man, that would mean all those "how many ___ does it take to screw in a lightbulb" jokes will be outdated.

Times change. The jokes will just mutate into something like "how many times does a gene sculptor have to turn a USB plug around before shle can get it in?"

Re:100 Watt Lightbulbs

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't wait for a USB to medium base socket adapter so I can use my stash of 100 watt incandescents to wow the grandkids and warm the house.

Not enough

[istartedi]

I want my USB controlled and powered Easy Bake oven.

Desktop only, and higher voltage is possible

[GioMac]

5 Amps is too much for the standard cable and will require safety considerations such as additional pins, available only on compatible thick cables.
I don't think it's a good idea having 5 amp connection. It's like a gently 1 KW barbecue grill and desperate housewife's desperate iron connected to the standard power outlet - it's unsafe: think about all the problems with overheating, contact problems and sparks.

Also, this standard can be implemented only on new desktops - none of the mobile computers will provide quality ports capable of such current and none of them will have additional 100 watts of power in reserve in case of use of battery and even for power supplies - their size will double.

How many devices, requiring such power have you ever seen? Monitor? Is 16-24 volts a good idea and enough?
I think better idea is to introduce 48V power in modern power supplies:
-> It will provide 100 watts of power using 2 Amp cables - smaller footprint and more safety
-> 48 Volts is a good option: this voltage is "standard" and used in many devices and you can easily get 24 from it, much easier than 48 from 24, it's efficient :)

Dunno, I think this USB guys are bringing new ideas and are not ready to finalize standard, yet...

So monitors will

[John.Banister]

all become port powered USB devices, then?

How do you describe this?

[caywen]

This sounds shockingly fast.

Little nervous

[EmperorOfCanada]

I'm not sure I want 100W always flying out of my laptop's USB ports. That seems like A) a good way to drain my battery dead in 8 seconds and B) cheap USB devices will explode like a Star Trek bridge panel.

What I would like would be that only one my ports is 100W or some other distinction so that I can tape over that one or turn off until needed. In theory it will be nice to not have so many cords running to printers and whatnot but the early days will be fraught with peril (And explosions)

Re: Is it just me or is USB getting suspiciously c

[Anonymous Coward]

So how is software supposed to be able to gauge (ha) what gauge of wire is actually connected to each device so that it knows how much power is allowed on each segment?

But unfortunately it doesn't

[Anonymous Coward]

You try it one way - it doesn't fit.
You try it the other way - it doesn't fit
Then you try it the first way again - and it goes in! I hate the USB plug.

hmm

[ILongForDarkness]

Would be cool. I have just bought an iPad and have a iMac but use windows since I develop for the evil empire. Anyways: the iMac apparently doesn't support > 500mW of draw (late 2009 model so no USB 3) in BootCamp you have to use OSX if you want to charge the iPad with a Mac. Nice. I wonder if the same crap will happen with it being part of the USB standard. Hopefully not. I'd really like to know what made it technically difficult to implement this feature in BootCamp. Apparently in OSX it gets requests for more power draw and keeps track of sharing the up to 1.1W across devices on the bus.

A related thing: why doesn't it at least charge a bit? Voltage is the same I get that 500mW might not be enough to make up for the power draw of the device when it is on but it should at least extend the battery length (and since you can connect it when powered off to iTunes I'd think you could charge it when powered off too.Argh. Anyways on cable to rule them all will make life a lot easier and can't come too soon.

Ethernet?

[hoggoth]

... and still I can't get more than 1GB/s LAN for any reasonable cost. Why is 10GB Ethernet so expensive? Why can't I use any of these new technologies for my LAN?

Inb4 'you don't need it'. I do. In my home business I regularly transfer terabytes of data around.

USB-power injectors already exist

[tepples]

Are we going to have USB-power injectors

Yes. They're called hubs.

Nice, but

[Trogre]

Good to see USB continuing to evolve, but its one major drawback has still not been addressed:

The USB 'Type A' connector (the end that plugs into your computer) is utterly retarded. It looks symmetric from the outside, but internally has a big key block preventing you from plugging it in 'upside' down. This means that when reaching around the back of a piece of equipment to plug something in, there is a 75% chance [2] you have it the wrong way around. Also, given the apparently random distribution of orientations of USB connectors on computers and LEDs on devices, there is a good probability your device will be forced to operate upside-down.

For heaven's sake, USB committee, just ratify the 'Type C' connector standard [1] which moves the block to the centre of the connector and puts pins on both sides so it doesn't matter which bloody way you plug in a device.

[1] You probably haven't yet heard of the USB Type C connector yet, because I just made it up.
[2] Some might calculate this probability to be 50%, but that doesn't take into account Murphy's Law. Furthermore, if you do try to plug in the device the other way around, chances are you had it right the first time.

20A USB Cable?

[hicksw]

100 watts at 5 Volts is 20 Amps. That requires a lot of copper. Well, not near a car engine, but it sure bulks up your laptop shoulder bag.
--
You don't need fancy theories to explain why every other object in the universe is fleeing from us.