Upcoming USB 3.2 Specification Will Double Data Rates Using Existing Cables (macrumors.com)

A new USB specification has been introduced today by the USB 3.0 Promoter Group, which is comprised of Apple, HP, Intel, Microsoft, and other companies. The new USB 3.2 specification will replace the existing 3.1 specification and will double data rates to 20Gbps using new wires available if your device embraces the newest USB hardware. Mac Rumors reports: An incremental update, USB 3.2 is designed to define multi-lane operation for USB 3.2 hosts and devices. USB Type-C cables already support multi-lane operation, and with USB 3.2, hosts and devices can be created as multi-lane solutions, allowing for either two lanes of 5Gb/s or two lanes of 10Gb/s operation. With support for two lanes of 10Gb/s transfer speeds, performance is essentially doubled over existing USB-C cables. As an example, the USB Promoter Group says a USB 3.2 host connected to a USB 3.2 storage device will be capable of 2GB/sec data transfer performance over a USB-C cable certified for USB SuperSpeed 10Gb/s USB 3.1, while also remaining backwards compatible with earlier USB devices. Along with two-lane operation, USB 3.2 continues to use SuperSpeed USB layer data rates and encoding techniques and will introduce a minor update to hub specifications for seamless transitions between single and two-lane operation.

Comments

Past experience

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell's me to divide these numbers by between 10 and 50 to get an idea of real world performance.

Re:Past experience

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell's me to divide these numbers by between 10 and 50 to get an idea of real world performance.

Maybe because you don't realize the indicated speed is in bits, not bytes?

Re:Past experience

[Anonymous Coward]

Present experience should tell you there's no apostrophe in "tells". tell's means tell is, tell was, or something belongs to the tell.

Re:Past experience

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm fully aware of the difference between bits and bytes.

I'm also fully aware I've never seen a a "480 Mbps" USB 2 device operate faster than ~50 Mbps, and that while USB 3 is better it generally tops out at about 1 Gbps when the planets are aligned and the wind is in a favourable direction.

Re:Past experience

[Khyber]

"I'm also fully aware I've never seen a a "480 Mbps" USB 2 device operate faster than ~50 Mbps"

Any shitty Chinese PC Webcamera can saturate a USB 2.0 port pretty damned easily.

Re:Past experience

[haruchai]

"I'm fully aware of the difference between bits and bytes" ......
"I've never seen a a "480 Mbps" USB 2 device operate faster than ~50 Mbps"

My old OCZ Rally 2 16GB flash drive writes at 10-13 MBps if the files are larger than 1 megabyte.
I used to have a 4GB Turbo version that was twice as quick but it stopped working a couple years ago.

Re:Past experience

[SScorpio]

I've used flash drives on USB 2.0 that would cap around 35MBps, so 280Mbps. Only just over half of the theoretical limit, but much higher than your observation.

Re:Past experience

[KingMotley]

And here you have probably completely confused bits and bytes, because most drives these days (including USB sticks) will transfer around 40-43MB/s over USB 2, which is about 8-9 times faster than you've never seen.

Re: Past experience

[Brockmire]

Confirmed, you don't know the difference between bits and bytes. A common 16GB USB Voyager would be 20+MB/s read speed. If a USB stick was only doing 6MB/s, I'd throw it out.

Re:Past experience

[Khyber]

The output on ONE of my webcams will saturate the USB 2.0 bus and leave no overhead for even a USB keyboard at 1024x768.

Re: Past experience

[KGIII]

Also, am I misreading the summary? The headline states this will work with existing cables. However, according to my reading of the summary, it will actually require new cables - which will be backwards compatible.

Re:Past experience

[SScorpio]

Is this all direct connections to your motherboard's USB ports or is there possibly a USB 1.1 hub in the middle. All ports on a motherboard are not created equal either. Boards will have a mixure of USB 2.0 and 1.1 ports on older hardware, just like a mix of 3.0 and 2.0 ports on current hardware.

There's no way a 1024x768 camera is saturating a USB 2.0 bus, unless it's a high speed camera running at 10,000fps. Something is wrong in your setup.

Re: Past experience

[Anonymous Coward]

Where did that guy say he's got a shitty Chinese PC Webcamera? You're the one with a shitty Chinese PC Webcamera . Just because you have a problem with your shitty Chinese PC Webcamera doesn't mean everyone else does.

Drop the Serial

[Big Hairy Ian]

Surely if they are going to have multiple data channels then this is a Universal Parallel Bus

Re:Drop the Serial

[iggymanz]

next they'll add daisy chaining though it might need a terminator at the end and little DIP switches to set each device to a unique ID. It could be called something like Simultaneous Chained Serial Interfaces

Re:Drop the Serial

[Matt_Bennett]

The difference is that the data on each line is sent serially, with embedded clocking and controlled skew between lanes- meaning that the data on each lane is somewhat independent. In general a parallel bus includes separate clocking. In a serial bus like this, the data is encoded in certain ways to allow the clock to be a part of the data- the most basic encoding is what is used in 10Mb Ethernet- Manchester, where every bit has it's own clock, and it goes up from there.

Re:Drop the Serial

[hord]

So USB just became ethernet... but slower, two fewer channels, and even more confusing. I LOVE IT.

Re:Drop the Serial

[Pravetz-82]

Surely if they are going to have multiple data channels then this is a Universal Parallel Bus

More like Universal Serial Buses

Re:Drop the Serial

[Maven0]

I am not sure when 20 Gb/s speeds were slow, but I guess it is limited in length.

Re:Drop the Serial

[Anonymous Coward]

If sacrificial goats become a requirement for proper operation, I'm going to pivot to a career in landscaping.

Re:Drop the Serial

[squiggleslash]

It's harder than you think: as you increase the data rate, trying to synchronize all 8/16/32/whatever lines becomes close to impossible. Breaking the data into multibit chunks and sending each serially via a different channel is easier because each channel can run independently, without regard to latency.

I believe this type of thing is also why we've moved away from, say, CPUs with direct access to memory (instead CPUs have multiple layers of cache between them and the computer's real memory.) It'd be nice and much more efficient to have the memory in your computer deliver up 64 bit words to the CPU at 4 gigawords a second (ie in sync with the CPU's 4GHz clock), but good luck trying to make a parallel motherboard bus that can deliver that.

Re: Drop the Serial

[Anonymous Coward]

And we could call "PCI-Express x16" something like "EISA v3.2".

Re: Drop the Serial

[bn-7bc]

Whmm last ai checked ethernet outside enrerprise/ data center/ metro ethernet kind of stopped at 1Gbps, 10Gbps is still kind of exspensive and beond 10Gbps is still rather a significan invesrment for a few ports but I might be wrong so corrections a aprecuated

Re: Drop the Serial

[Anonymous Coward]

It's "Busi"

Re: Drop the Serial

[Junta]

Over RJ45, it got to 10Gbps (though there is also 2.5 Gbps and 5 Gbps, which are appealing for range and power requirement reasons, largely done due to the oddity that many wireless access points were constrained by their ethernet uplink, which is embarassing for etherenet...). Over SFP+, it's at 25 Gbps now, and QSFP is at 100 GBps.

Of course, in terms of what's relevant to the sorts of systems that use usb seriously, it pretty much is at 1 Gpbs.

Re:Drop the Serial

[KiloByte]

If sacrificial goats become a requirement for proper operation, I'm going to pivot to a career in landscaping.

It might be a complex science, but it is a science. Once you figure the correct type of dagger (both blade and handle), the number and color of required candles, you should be set.

Re:Drop the Serial

[Anonymous Coward]

So USB just became ethernet... but slower, two fewer channels, and even more confusing. I LOVE IT.

No, it's becoming PCIe. And why is it more confusing? Let the PHYs figure out how many lanes there are and what bitrate to run at. You don't have to do anything.

Re:Drop the Serial

[ctilsie242]

You sacrificed goats? I was lucky enough to just get away with chickens, especially when using differential SCSI.

Re:Drop the Serial

[Anonymous Coward]

So USB just became ethernet... but slower, two fewer channels, and even more confusing.

Let's face it; it's only confusing to you because you're an idiot. You actually seem to think that 20 Gbps is slow for ethernet, to cite the most immediate example.

Re:Drop the Serial

[Anonymous Coward]

So USB just became ethernet...

No.

but slower

Faster.

two fewer channels

Lolwut.

and even more confusing.

Less confusing, actually.

I LOVE IT.

You should, but given that you appear to have no clue what you are talking about, you probably won't.

Re:Drop the Serial

[AmiMoJo]

Just to expand on that a little, the issue with parallel busses became that data on each line would arrive out of sync with other lines and the clock.

For example, PCIe 4.0 is 16 gigabits/second per serial channel. Each bit has a width of 0.0625 nanoseconds, during which time light can travel about 18mm. If you wanted to transfer say 32 bits in parallel like the old PCI bus, you would need 32 connections. Problem is that for practical reasons the PCIe slot needs to be quite wide, so if your 32 pins are spaced over say 18mm then the extra distance that a signal at one end has to travel compared to a signal at the other end will mean its signal arrives one clock cycle later than the other.

Then there is clock jitter. When you have a 16GHz clock, the variation from one cycle to the next is a huge problem and low jitter clocks at that speed are very expensive and tricky to use.

You also need to use very small signals when you get up to those clock rates. There is something called slew rate, the speed at which voltage can change. You can either make the change happen faster, which we did and is now quite hard, or you can lower the voltage so it doesn't have as far to go. But lowering the voltage also makes it more prone to electrical noise.

The solution is to use serial. One one differential signal for both clock and data. Differential signals have much better noise immunity, and as an added bonus you only need an 8GHz data rate on either line to get a combined data rate of 16Gb/sec. It also means your cables are smaller and easier to manage, the electronics are much simpler and cheaper etc.

Re:Drop the Serial

[snakeplissken]

Once you figure the correct type of dagger (both blade and handle), the number and color of required candles, you should be set.

I assume you have to have the proper dribbly wax?

snake

Re:Drop the Serial

[angel'o'sphere]

The data on each bus is still transfered serial ...

Re:Drop the Serial

[willy_me]

You are correct - but your cache analogy is not quite right. Better example would be switching from PCI to PCI express. Replaced parallel with multiple serial connections for a speed boost.

Re: Drop the Serial

[Anonymous Coward]

The singular of which is "Busus".
If you're using a 16x wide bus, the plural is "Bususususususususususususususususi"

Re: Drop the Serial

[Anonymous Coward]

I would be fine with this. I can possibly have access to an MDA card and a Hercules card and I would like to use the wasted memory area somewhere between 640K and 1024K that's reserved for one of them.
Obviously, the new PCIe slot standard should be compatible with those ISA 8-bit cards that don't fit in ISA 16-bit slot.

Re: Drop the Serial

[suutar]

Gary Busi?

Re: Drop the Serial

[KGIII]

Don't trust the above poster! They tell wicked lies.

The declination of the moon is the most significant factor. Waxing gibbous is optimal.

Re: Drop the Serial

[SimonTheSoundMan]

Only thing that has ever held 10Gb/s Ethernet back is price. They need to drop to near 1Gb prices for the enterprise to give a toss. £200 for a 10Gb NIC compared to a 1Gb for £15. 10Gb switches are horrendously expensive.

Re:Drop the Serial

[iggymanz]

How boring, here I thought sacrificing virgins via impaling with meat sword was the correct protocol.

Re: Drop the Serial

[Anonymous Coward]

Not saying price isn't the problem, but don't forget that the installed wires are mostly cat. 5e and thus not 10Gbps-capable over relevant distances. 100Mbps Ethernet has had a long reign during which a lot of twisted pair cabling has been installed that would need to be replaced to use 10Gbps Ethernet. It's going to take a long time and it's not happening without an actual need to go beyond 1Gbps. Interface cards dropping to a negligible price is not going to cut it, and that is one of the reasons it won't happen.

wrong direction

[Build6]

the "one plug for everything" trend that began with USB Type C is a step in the wrong direction.

having "unique" plug types for particular purposes is a *feature*, not a bug - simply by looking at the plug, we know what the cable and the port does.

Replacing all the legacy ports is necessary (if only because the old plugs are simply just too big for modern hardware), but replacing EVERYTHING with one plug, when everything now looks the same, you end up with a situation where you simply do not know if a cable or port can do what you need it to do.

So you see a Type C plug - is it Thunderbolt or not? Is it a DisplayPort? What voltages/amps can it provide? nobody knows (where "nobody" can include the person whose hardware it is, much less someone else who has to work with it). just look at e.g. the many forum posts of people who connected "the wrong type" of USB-C-to-HDMI connectors because they didn't know their USB C wasn't the USB C that they thought USB C was supposed to be.

this is made even worse considering that there's active circuitry involved, where you need to worry about whether the cable itself is built right (see e.g. Benson Leung's long list of cables that can fry your hardware). in the old days, a crap cable just means crap performance or no connection. not any more.

Re:wrong direction

[Viol8]

"the "one plug for everything" trend that began with USB Type C is a step in the wrong direction."

I disagree. I'm utterly fed up with multiple different types of USB plug, some of them very similar making it an utter pain finding a cable with the correct connectors on both ends. There is zero reason to have all these - its not for space reasons like RS232 had its 9 pin plug since even the largest USB connector is pretty small.

"you end up with a situation where you simply do not know if a cable or port can do what you need it to do."

In 99% of cases you simply need to connect 2 devices, its not complex. If there is a max voltage/current issue then colour code the cables, but DONT create yet another sphagetti soup of connectors.

Re:wrong direction

[thegarbz]

No it's the right direction providing they get to the correct end goal. We're in a transition period where the capability of the spec is being built up. The end goal is perfectly in line with what you are saying: one plug, do everything, no confusion.

It's just not there yet.

Re:wrong direction

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole point of universal is for one plug to do all the tasks. That's exactly what the USB people have been screwing up for the past years, adding too many different plug types.

90% of USB connector types aren't even used besides one or two devices from the era they were introduced in. Mini USB isn't used anymore. Type B isn't used anymore and was hardly used even back then. Micro-B is basically only used for external harddrives. It really is a clusterfuck of incompatible plugs, that's the opposite of universal.

They're undoing the mess by making USB-C the be-all-end-all plug and not introducing "specialized" plugs for different use cases which was the cause of the mess. Kind of like what the original USB connector is to this day. Universal.

Re:wrong direction

[Matt_Bennett]

There is a minimum standard for the Type C cable- once you get into the more complex cables there is active circuitry inside the cable that identifies the capabilities of the cable. Cables that are compliant with the standard should prevent dangerous situations (such as trying to put 100W down a cable that is not rated for it). At the super high data rates we're talking about and more than a few feet- we're stuck with active circuitry for redrivers. We're going to have to get away from the idea that it is just a wire- it's part of the system and we have to take it into account.

Re:wrong direction

[Anonymous Coward]

> The end goal is perfectly in line with what you are saying: one plug, do everything, no confusion.

Except that it _never_ will be achieved; too many things in the spec are entirely optional and will never be mandatory.

Re:wrong direction

[AAWood]

having "unique" plug types for particular purposes is a *feature*, not a bug - simply by looking at the plug, we know what the cable and the port does.

Surely that's only important if the plug and cable are limited in what they can do? I mean, if my PC has separate ports for my PS/2 mouse and my PS/2 keyboard, it's important for me to know that the two are different and I shouldn't plug the latter into the socket for the former. It's far less important when they have identical ports and sockets and it doesn't matter which way round they go.

There are absolutely some scenarios where distinguishing them is useful, but they've become small and rare enough (over IT users as a whole, perhaps not for you personally) that, compared to the benefits of just having ports and cables be nigh-interchangeable across most or all or your devices (if it fits, it's good), it's a great trade off; most people don't care how much power their USB cable provides, just that it works. (And, OK, yeah, they probably should care, but that's another issue. And, come to think of it, so is the existence of crappily-made cables that don't fit the standard: that's not a problem with the standard).

I mean, I notice that the big complaint you mention (Displayport/Thunderbolt) is an issue is where there are two physically compatible, but only partially functionally incompatible, cables. That's not "one-plug-for-everything", that's "one plug for some things, and now a second identical plug that does those things but also some more things that the first doesn't"; it's closer to PS/2 than USB. If those two cables had stayed as one that did everything, there'd be no problem... which is exactly where the trend you're arguing against is leading, and has been for the past couple of decades. And damned if life isn't a lot easier than it used to be. For most of us, anyway.

Re:wrong direction

[Anonymous Coward]

If they mandated that cables at least had all the available wires, and the power lines capable of providing the maximum current, at least you'd be able to grab any cable and provided the two end devices are compatible with each other it will work. But that means the end of cheap cables that do USB at 2.0 speeds only, or even charging only, so it isn't going to happen as long as USB consortium isn't mandating that and going after Chinese manufacturers that aren't complying with the spec.

Re:wrong direction

[Megol]

3m = 9'. That's more than a few feet IMHO. Some cable vendors claim >=5m with a passive cable at USB 3+ speeds, that's 16'.

But aside from that I agree.

Re:wrong direction

[jellomizer]

Being that most devices will read binary data and write binary data. It makes sense to have one port for this.
Back in the old days.
We had Serial Ports primarily used for Mice and Modems these came in 9 and 24 pin. Very few devices actually fully utilized the 24 pin. So we needed converters so we can have mode devices plugged into our PC. Then we had to fight for the Ports and IRQ so there was still a limitation on how many devices we can use. I had an early Graphical BBS. And often users will have problems using their mouse and their modem at the same time.

The parallel port normally for printers, and sometimes for zip drives.

Then they were the AT keyboard vs PS2 Keyboard. And the PS2 Mouse port was originally not interchangeable, but the socket fit.

Then we had the Monochome display port and the VGA.

In short all these ports limited on what we can do for expansion.

Re:wrong direction

[Build6]

that's the problem! in the real world (remember - "lowest cost bidding" is the iron law of business, random manufacturers out there who basically have profit margins of a penny per cable etc.) you can't be sure of the quality and provenance of cables that you encounter - of $x used in the manufacture of the cable, the vast majority of it will be spent on making the cable look good, not whether the internal circuitry is good.

I've had situations where people hand me a Type C cable and the emotion I feel is fear. I don't know how good or bad that cable is and I don't know if I should plug it into my machine. What do I do? are we now supposed to travel everywhere with our own cables?

Re:wrong direction

[Build6]

Exactly. There will always be "optional extensions". You can never know visually (let's say there's any rule in colour coding to indicate capability, for example, well, can you trust the manufacturer put in the right colour?)

That means that upon encountering a Type C cable, you can never know what it actually does (except some lower baseline of capability which may or may not be sufficient for you).

This really matters because of the problem of time.

A cable manufactured today cannot be expected to support standards that may crop up somewhere down the line, but that cable - if manufactured well, and we're not going to start proposing time-limited self-destructing cables are we? - is going to be around well past the time when whatever spec it was built to support was "complete".

Even if "damage" is no longer a problem with some future improvements in self-protection in ports, we won't know capability visually, so are we supposed to sit down and plug in cables one by one to find out what they really do (remember - mere labelling cannot be trusted)? as opposed to the old days, when I can immediately know that a cable is a video cable because it won't fit otherwise

Re:wrong direction

[Kjella]

You're wrong, for the simple fact that most times it's better if something works in a degraded mode than not at all. Like if I charge a device or transfer a file it's better that it works and that I get a software warning that things aren't working optimally. Sometimes there's a hard minimum, like I depend on USB power to operate and you can't supply it or that it doesn't support what you want it to do but that's the exception. We could color code all ports and cables with a ring of capabilities, like if your source port, cable and destination port all have a blue or green or yellow segment you're good. That still wouldn't tell you if you're getting the best possible result. And even if we marked that specifically, it still wouldn't tell you that a USB 3.1 5 Gbps port is better than USB 2.0 even though the ideal would be USB 3.2 20 Gbps, for that you need a scale.

And you're trying to convey all this information on phones, tablets and ultra-portables that are a few mm thick and trying to look stylish too. That very often have just the one port, there's no plugging it wrong. The rest of the time the manufacturer has usually given you a hint of what port does what. The only time you have to care is when purchasing, like are these products supposed to work together well or at all? Maybe there ought to be a central compatibility database operated by the USB consortium, where you pick device A, pick device B and it'll tell you if they're compatible. Maybe with a hub in the middle too. But I have the feeling the kind of people you're talking about are those who wouldn't check anyway.

Re:wrong direction

[Build6]

I think I need to point out something here - there's a distinction between "nice to have" and "practically unfeasible".

there is a functional issue I think you're overlooking - you're complaining about things not fitting together with all sorts of different plug types (microUSB, mini-USB etc.) - things "should" be electrically and functionality/feature-compatible, but which you cannot connect together, therefore you're unhappy about it.

You're actually looking at a subset of the entire space, because remember: in the real world, not everything is supposed to plug into everything else.

It's not like if I can plug my handphone into my lawnmower it will automagically allow me to remotely mow my lawn from the office (actually, wait... somebody kickstarter this, quick). Making them plug-compatible achieves... what?

Not everything can work together with everything else. that's the point of having different plug types

having a "universal" plug type is something that would be VERY nice, just as it would be nice for unicorns to show up and make it rain cake (hey, they're my conception of unicorns so their powers are what I want it to be), but as a real world issue, you cannot build in sufficient forwards compatibility to make up for whatever may come up in the future, so even a "do everything" cable today will become "insufficient" in the future, and you're back to square one. Perhaps you can guarantee that every cable ever made now will always be useful in the future for at least plugging in your mouse and keyboard, but I really doubt there will be a shortage of mouse and keyboard cables in the future - the problem with Type C isn't at the "lowest common denominator" side of the market

again, not everything is supposed to plug into everything else, at least not at today's technology level (and arguably this will never be appropriate).

Let's say that in the future all lawnmowers use USB Type C plugs for power (so you could use the same cable to power your lawnmower as you use to charge your laptop). It then becomes physically possible to plug anything with a USB Type C port into your lawnmower.

Does that achieve anything if they simply don't do the same things?

Does plugging in your video projector into your lawnmower mean that you can have video recordings of you mowing the grass projected out onto a screen? Maybe, maybe not - let's say there's a niche demand for this, well, if video output was something your super duper special lawnmower is supposed to do, then having a VGA port, say, on your lawnmower makes sense, and you can tell video output is something it can do. However, your neighbour's lawnmower, which doesn't do video output, won't need that. But if they have a Type C port... is everything in the future to have stencilled/printed on the underside a full list of capabilities? Is that what we're supposed to do? I don't understand why it's such a problem that, if two things aren't supposed to work together, their ports physically don't match.

The problem now with a Type C port is, what it REALLY says, is that it MAY OR MAY NOT work with something else that has a Type C port. That's NOT an improvement.

Re:wrong direction

[Matt_Bennett]

If we want higher speeds and capability, this is the way it must go. Even a badly manufactured USB 2.0 cable could fry (or at least trigger the overcurrent protection) if its V+ and GND were crossed.

Re:wrong direction

[Anonymous Coward]

But here is where it doesn't work.

Let's have a desktop PC with eight USB-C ports. Wiring all abilities requires running 4x PCIe, Displayport, high power to all of them. For the two front ports it might even be impossible or require some sort of buffer chip.

This would be completely cost prohibitive and some or most of the ports will only use USB 1.1 (keyboard, mouse) or 2.0 (cheap and older peripherals). And they lack analog audio, though it might be reasonable to add analog audio to one or both front ports.
Wiring 32x PCIe lanes to the USB ports in addition to PCIe slots, M.2 slots and built-in controllers, just so that you can use any port without looking or caring would be what doesn't work unlike you like wasting a shit ton of money on PCIe bridges, bigger CPU socket with tons of lanes or high end motherboards in general. And that's not counting display routing from dedicated GPUs.

It works on the Apple laptop, but there are only four do-everything ports and it's a $2000 laptop which basically uses up all the CPU and chipset's I/O on those and the glued PCIe SSD, and doesn't allow other forms of expansion (PCIe boards, SATA drives, M.2) unlike a desktop PC.

So, if a desktop PC has six ports on the back and two on the front, or six plus one etc. the ports themselves won't be so much "universal". A couple of them might do Thunderbolt, one might do 60 watts, one might do 100 watts, the rest might be "regular" USB. Add more USB-C on a PCIe board or on a hub? "regular" USB.
A future Mac Pro can go the super wasteful desktop route (yay for $400 external thunderbolt enclosures) and it'll likely fail again on the market.

If you were talking about the unification of USB 1, 2, 3, host, slave, small, big, on-the-go, slow charging and fast charging I'll agree that USB-C does work at achieving that.

Re:wrong direction

[Junta]

So apart from some asshat behavior (like some datacenter equipment that uses a micro-usb form factor, but RS-232 signaling), the point is anything with a usb type c connector *should* begin life by negotiating parameters and deciding if it can do what has been cabled, or if it doesn't make sense and provide some useful info to the user that what they are trying to do is crazy/unsupported.

So in your lawnmower case, if it truly took usb-type c for power only (unlikely, the power requirements require much thicker gauge cable, but anyway)... If you plug a display into it, it should say 'the other device does not support video' or something, and conversely the charge indicator on the mower should stay off or blink error or something.

The point is the universe of distinct things to do over a cable is actually really open ended. It would be highly impractical to have a distinct cable for every little usage scenario. To start with, audio only, video only, both, bidirectional, unidirectional, charging from the peer, charging to the peer, get text data, be block storage, be sequential storage, provide graphics processing capability, control LEDs, bridge to bluetooth, bridge to wifi, bridge to LTE..... To say some of these matter enough and some of them don't matter enough to have distinct cables would be an interesting arbitrary decision.

The world has advanced so that it's affordable to have microcontrollers that can first decide if using the connected device as desired can make sense, and adapt if it's one of a selection of possibilities.

Re:wrong direction

[Matt_Bennett]

Claiming to and actually making a cable that can still meet the spec after the specified number of insertions and removals is 2 different things. If someone is claiming this and doesn't have a traceable USB logo (back to the USB-IF) I wouldn't count on it.

Re: wrong direction

[Anonymous Coward]

But your assessment doesn't hold true of "the old case" either. It's a lot more likely that a cable with a USB-A connector will do everything you'd expect. But you can still bump into cables that lack all the wires required for data transfer, because they were design just to be a cheap charge cable.

Re:wrong direction

[Khyber]

"Type B isn't used anymore and was hardly used even back then"

Pretty much every single printer/scanner combo I've ever owned had Type-B socket. My old 3Com webcamera, same thing.

Re:wrong direction

[Anonymous Coward]

If there is a max voltage/current issue then colour code the cables, but DONT create yet another sphagetti soup of connectors.

Instantly making the cables useless for 10% of the male population, many elderly, people working in low light, and about 1% of females. Using color as the sole means of communicating critical information is stupid, at best.

Re:wrong direction

[Viol8]

Yeah, because lots of elderly people will be working with high voltage USB. As for that 10%, its not even close to that high and electrical cables already so I guess they won't be working as electricians.

"Using color as the sole means of communicating critical information is stupid, at best."

What, you mean like traffic lights and railway signals?

Idiot.

Re:wrong direction

[swillden]

having "unique" plug types for particular purposes is a *feature*, not a bug - simply by looking at the plug, we know what the cable and the port does

You're trying to make a virtue of a problem. The right solution is that the cable and port should do everything. There's no need to figure out what it does or doesn't do, because anything the devices in question are capable of doing can be done via that port and plug.

So you see a Type C plug - is it Thunderbolt or not? Is it a DisplayPort?

Yes, it's all of the above, assuming it makes sense that the device can be a source/sink of the relevant data.

What voltages/amps can it provide?

The cable (unless it's non-compliant crap; don't buy non-compliant crap) can handle the full range of voltages and amperages in the specification.

This is incredibly convenient. My laptop, phone and tablet all have USB-C ports, for both data and power. I now travel with only one power adapter, the one for my laptop, which I can also use for my phone and tablet. I also carry a USB-C to USB-C cable, which enables me to charge any of the devices from any other device. Charging my laptop from my phone would be silly, charging it from the tablet is slightly less so and I have actually had occasion to do exactly that. Charging tablet from phone or phone from tablet both make sense sometimes, and I do both often when traveling.

I also occasionally use my phone charger to power my laptop. It doesn't provide enough power to maintain the battery level while I'm using it, but it does stretch battery life, and will recharge the laptop if left connected overnight. I do this mainly because I have a phone charger plugged in next to my bed. I'm waiting for wall outlets like this one to become better and cheaper, and then I'll replace many of my home outlets with them, mostly eliminating the need for wall warts.

That will be a great day. Actually, I hope that before too long we start building DC power distribution networks in homes, the way data centers have gone. At moderate voltages (e.g. 48V) resistive line losses are easily offset by the power savings provided by larger, more efficient central converters. Then each wall outlet should have a couple of simple step-down transformers to provide 20V and 5V over USB, per the power delivery specification.

While we're at it, we should add network over USB as well. So any device plugged into any wall outlet with a simple USB-C to USB-C cable will have both power and data (with 802.1X authentication for security). 20 Gbps should be enough bandwidth for the next couple of decades.

just look at e.g. the many forum posts of people who connected "the wrong type" of USB-C-to-HDMI connectors because they didn't know their USB C wasn't the USB C that they thought USB C was supposed to be.

Yes, there is crap hardware being sold. The USB implementer's forum needs to start enforcing its trademark and shutting down sales of non-compliant crap. In the absence of that, just make sure that the stuff you're buying has been tested by someone who knows what they're doing (on Amazon, check for Benson Leung's comments). No, this state of affairs is not good, but it's an implementation problem, not a problem with the fundamental concept of one plug that does everything.

That fundamental concept is awesome.

Re:wrong direction

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to a lesson in what really happens in an unregulated free market. The real world violates 2 requirements of a functioning free market:

1. Consumers have access to all information necessary to make an informed choice.
2. No single producer is large enough to influence price.

Contrary to libertarian pipe dreams, in the real world businesses know that they only have to fool people long enough to get them to make that purchase. Quality and durability are the most expensive way to convince consumers to purchase your product.

Re:wrong direction

[squiggleslash]

I'd like to see a situation, and I believe it's achievable, where USB-C forces manufacturers to provide features that currently can be omitted because "It'd mean adding another port". It ought to be possible to plug any phone or tablet into a TV, but right now that's not possible because video output is considered an exotic feature and even though there's a standard for HDMI over microUSB (the TLA is MHL IIRC) it's considered a different standard, not part of USB.

Just moving from PS/2 (where mice and keyboards had similar ports but were not designed to work with the other type of input device) was a huge step in the right direction. A single digital port that does everything, with hardware inside a device automatically configuring to communicate over a single shared bus would be awesome.

Re:wrong direction

[Anonymous Coward]

With PC makers following Apple's model, they will be putting as few plugs on their devices as possible, so might as well have it be something that is as universal. Of course, it would be nice to have PS/2 ports, serial, parallel, HDMI, VGA, Infiniband, 10gigE, IEEE1394, eSATA, and so on, but with PC makers trending to closed cases, having a port that can be used for a breakout box at a reasonably fast speed and supporting either/both Thunderbolt or USB 3.x would be far better than nothing.

If a port is done right, it doesn't matter if it is a Thunderbolt, USB 3.2, USB 3.1, USB 2, power, or mini-DP... the computer should figure it out and handle it.

Re:wrong direction

[Anonymous Coward]

the "one plug for everything" trend that began with USB Type C is a step in the wrong direction.

Yes. It's bad for security. Suppose a friend asks you to copy a file onto a USB stick. Temporarily forget about exploits in filesystem code when reading corrupt filesystems. Since USB can work as either storage or a keyboard, your friend might have caught a USB stick controller firmware virus that emulates a keyboard and types things that exploit you.

Now suppose a port can connect either storage or a video card. Video cards use PCIe. Instead of a keyboard, the malicious stick now has hardware debugger access to physical RAM and can establish persistence on your machine without exploiting the OS, like Thunderstrike 2:

What to do? Avoid plugging untrusted Thunderbolt devices into your Mac, for example if someone you don’t know offers to lend you a network adaptor at a conference.

It's difficult to make use of this kind of speed, like 1/10th of RAM bandwidth, through a hardware interface with small attack surface because it requires offloading intelligence from the CPU which means giving discretion to the hardware. The right way to create a security boundary while preserving speed is with a network interface, ex. Infiniband's "verbs," that explicitly post buffers that will be written into. USB's history is more generic. If they're just jacking the speed without transforming it into basically a network interface, then either it won't deliver the speed for applications other than storage, or it will leave users exposed to Thunderstrike 3. I hope it's the former but am pretty sure it's the latter.

It will be like BadUSB times nine thousand.

Re:wrong direction

[ColdWetDog]

Maybe you're channeling Mr. Ive?

Three plugs for the Mac Mini under the desk,
Seven for the ancient X-serve in their halls of wire,
Nine for MacPros doomed to die,
One for Jony Ive on his dark (but tastefully brushed aluminum) throne
In Cupertino where the Shadows lie.
One Plug to rule them all, One Plug to find them,
One Plug to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In Cupertino where the Shadows lie.

Re:wrong direction

[Ramze]

I'm waiting to see how this all plays out before I make any judgments, and I'm curious how devices are going to identify and select the proper use for the same USB cable. For instance, I'm used to having USB for I/O and HDMI for one-way A/V. If I connect 2 devices that both previously had HDMI out ports AND HDMI in ports (for video capture) as well as USB ports for I/O, how will they know what I want them to do if there's a single port on both and I connect them together? Will they both think I want to open a file from the other device? Will they both try to cast video and audio to the other device or expect A/V back or are we relying on software to negotiate what gets cast to what?

Will there be separate USB C ports for each use, (A/V in, A/V out, Data I/O) and if so, how will I be able to tell them apart on an unfamiliar device?

It seems separate ports would be wise -- one for power, one for A/V import, another for A/V export.... possibly another for data as that can set a device into a different mode when plugged in. I dunno. *shrugs*

I'm glad that I might be able to cut down my cable collection, but I'm not sure yet how we're going to use the same shape port and same type cable for so many things -- especially combining typically one-directional A/V communications with standard bi-directional USB communications between devices.

Re:wrong direction

[thegarbz]

Except that it _never_ will be achieved

Except it was. For a long time. The only problem now is new bandwidth has been opened up and with that more applications.
We don't have a requirement for infinite bandwidth and as such we will get to that point again.

Re:wrong direction

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, because lots of elderly people will be working with high voltage USB. As for that 10%, its not even close to that high and electrical cables already so I guess they won't be working as electricians.

"Using color as the sole means of communicating critical information is stupid, at best."

What, you mean like traffic lights and railway signals?

Idiot.

Traffic lights in Canada and US has a universal order of red (top), yellow (middle) green (bottom), having a bunch of cables that are colour coded won't work for the colour blinded people.

Re:wrong direction

[Anonymous Coward]

That you mention the hub in the middle is interesting. If you plug a hub into a phone (or laptop!), plug your cables like you're supposed to but you lose video output then you'll be eating a sandwich not made of ice cream.

So there could be a special more expensive hub with "hdmi/dp extender, HDCP compatible, blah" or people might go with USB 3.0 to hdmi adapters (but good for 1080p 60Hz maximum with blocky compression, bleh), bypassing the alternate mode feature.

Re:wrong direction

[rahvin112]

Every USB Cable including C has a little microchip in the cable end that negotiates and controls the connection and discovers the capabilities of both ends and reports it back to the connecting computer.

Re:wrong direction

[Build6]

If you plug a display into it, it should say 'the other device does not support video' or something, and conversely the charge indicator on the mower should stay off or blink error or something.

But that's exactly my point!

think about it.

It's not mandated that all lawnmowers be able to produce video output. But if all lawnmowers have the same port type, you can't tell without additional effort that would've been unnecessary if not for every port being the same.

How is finding out it doesn't work AFTER you've plugged the thing in first better - than immediately knowing the two things don't work together because they don't fit together?

in fact, you now have TWO failure modes - either the device you plug the device into does not have the capability, or the cable you plug into it does not have the capability, and there's no way to know until you've gone and plugged it in (that's assuming that the device is set up to tell you that it CAN do it but there's something wrong with the cable). is that really better than just being able to eyeball the port and know it does or does not work?

Re:wrong direction

[Anonymous Coward]

That's exactly NOT your point.

Junta just explained to you a world where you can just grab a cable and plug two things together and they'll work to the best of their ability. At it's a major improvement.

You keep whining for a world where you need a different cable for every single fricken thing. Good luck with that.

I for one do not want to go back to the stone ages of digging through boxes of different cables just to find one with the right connectors to connect device A with device B. That box was packed up and thrown out at a garage sale years ago. Along with an an old lawnmower I no longer needed.

For all it's current faults (which will get sorted in time), USB-C is the bomb! And for once even Apple is on board with it (your move MicroSoft).

Re:wrong direction

[Anonymous Coward]

This.

I have crap tons of cables that have literally one use just because they have a different connector on exactly ONE end. This is the arrangement that doesn't make sense. Everyone with a brain and experience knows that. There is exactly ZERO practical difference between most of these cables and devices, and yet... Sure enough another cable! In the vast majority of cases having a single cable will be much better.

I honestly can not understand the pinning for "the old days" where we'd have rooms and rooms full of just cables and be standing around trying to find an exact match. Or trying to find a dumb converter. It was stupid. And it is stupid now.

I've been literally begging the industry to stop changing these connectors for no apparent reason for years now.

Re: wrong direction

[Brockmire]

UPS' have these in spades.

Re:wrong direction

[Anonymous Coward]

The video "Why Every New Macbook Needs a Different Goddamn Charger" from College Humor describes the problem and how people feel about it very well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyTA33HQZLA

Really... There is no defense of NOT going to something like USB C. The current situation is totally out of control. Nearly any attempt to standardize would be an improvement.

Re: wrong direction

[KGIII]

That'd be why they often color-coded them, green and purple, as I recall. ;-)

On a more serious note, most required you to insert them into the right port. However, a few motherboards didn't much care which PS/2 port you used. There were also laptops that had just a single PS/2 port, and those could be used by either a keyboard or a mouse. Why they only had just the one, remains a mystery. I kinda doubt it was a matter of space, laptops were bigger than some of today's desktops. And, of course, we liked it.

Re:wrong direction

[Junta]

It used to make sense, because things were too dumb to not screw up something if miscabled, sometimes catastrophically, at best without any recourse for helping the user tell why it seemed broken. USB host and USB target were different roles, and providing the ability to be fancy about being dynamic was not an affordable thing, hence the type b connector. So a USB hub particularly necessarily had directionality, and if you had 5 identical ports, but only *one* of them could be plugged to a USB host device and the rest should only go to USB target, so USB type B made sense as a way to enforce that.

I haven't looked at hubs, but other devices at least have gotten good at adapting so that it will 'do the right thing', so you don't have to worry about where the right port is, and things like indicator leds or even screens are affordable enough to guide the user should they do something that really can't easily make sense (plug two computers into the same 'dumb' usb hub)/there's enough experience in the market so people *know* what doesn't make sense now.

Re:wrong direction

[Matt_Bennett]

No. USB C was the first USB cable to have the option of an embedded chip, The embedded part communicates on the "CC" line- configuration channel (which only is on the USB C cable). Some (but not all) USB-C cable configurations *require* the chip- such as a cable that is rated to deliver 100W via USB-PD.

That's easy enough to do

[DrXym]

Just stop transmitting the 0s. The data rate is instantly doubled.

Re: That's easy enough to do

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you serious? Why are they sending them in the first place? I mean, I'm not a computers engineer, but even someone of humanities background like myself knows 0 does not hold any data.

Re: That's easy enough to do

[qbast]

And when we stop sending 0s, then we know exactly what will be sent - only 1s, so stop sending them as well. Instant infinite bandwidth and no cable is required!

Re:That's easy enough to do

[MysteriousPreacher]

It depends. If the cable is angled downwards then the 1s, being heavier, fall more quickly than 0s. If the cable is angled upwards then the 0s are lighter and move more quickly.

So whether you encode your data in to 0s or 1s will depend on how the cable is angled.

I think we're wasted here. We could be working for these guys: http://www.audioquest.com/ethe...

To quote their 'tech blurb' for what is an 8m Ethernet cable, ordinarily retailing for less than $10, being sold for $1,158.75:

DIRECTIONALITY: All audio cables are directional. The correct direction is determined by listening to every batch of metal conductors used in every AudioQuest audio cable. Arrows are clearly marked on the connectors to ensure superior sound quality. For best results have the arrow pointing in the direction of the flow of music. For example, NAS to Router, Router to Network Player.

Re:That's easy enough to do

[Junta]

But you need bigger cables for 0s, because they are wider. Sure the 1s can sometimes go sideways and get stuck in bad cables, but good cables funnel the data so that the 1s can't really do that.

Re:That's easy enough to do

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe we can stop transmitting to signal where the 0 would have been - use the time gap!

Re: That's easy enough to do

[Soleen]

I disagree, you still need to know how many 1s need to be sent. So, not sending 0s saves half of the bandwidth, but we still must know how many 1s we want to send. So, unfortunately, we can't avoid cables yet. However, we can compress: for example, we want to send 64 of 1s: which is 1000000b in binary, thus 64 can be described only by one 1. So, we can send one 1 instead!

Re:That's easy enough to do

[blindseer]

Isn't this why the Manchester code was developed?

Removing the DC bias meant that an equal number of 1s and 0s were sent so that the angle of the cable would not change the speed of data transfer. The ability to keep connections electrically isolated was a nice bonus.

Re:That's easy enough to do

[haruchai]

Sounds like a real bargain compared to their 16m HDMI cable that's retailing for $14,000
http://amzn.to/2uxALeW

AudioQuest Diamond 16m (52.49 feet) Braided HDMI Cable
3.4 out of 5 stars 149 customer reviews | 21 answered questions
Price: $13,499.75 + $3.99 shipping
Only 10 left in stock - order soon.

Ships from and sold by Electronics Expo.
Solid Perfect-Surface Silver (PSS) Conductors
Low Jitter, Low Distortion Audio
Signal Conductors Controlled for Digital Audio Direction
Dielectric-Bias System (DBS US Pat # 7,126,055) Significantly Improves Audio Performance
Bi-Directional Ethernet Communication and Audio Return Channel Enabled
Compare with similar items
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park ave. metrics

[Anonymous Coward]

now we all have millions of viewers & a similar amount of debt... cease fire stand down,, hugs not thugs,, thanks again

Typo?

[sabbede]

" a USB 3.2 host connected to a USB 3.2 storage device will be capable of 2GB/sec data transfer performance over a USB-C cable certified for USB SuperSpeed 10Gb/s USB 3.1"

That's not double the rate of 3.1, it's one fifth the rate.

Re:Typo?

[enriquevagu]

No, 2 GB/sec is 16 Gb/sec, and this typically refers to effective transfer values (discounting overheads) so the speed is roughly double (ermm, sort of).

Re:Typo?

[sabbede]

Or, and I think this is what happened, they meant gigabytes per second in both cases but left off a 0. So, two typos in what should read, "20GB/sec data transfer performance over a USB-C cable certified for USB SuperSpeed 10GB/s USB 3.1"

Re:Typo?

[Junta]

USB-C certainly cannot do 10GB/s, it is definitely 10Gb/s.

Re:Typo?

[rahvin112]

Ever heard of the difference between a bit and byte? Or do you think it's coincidence that the B is capitalized in one measurement but not the other?

Re:Typo?

[sabbede]

No, I think it's a second typo. Because:

2GB/s != 2*10Gb/s

Mixing bits and bytes like that in what's supposed to be a direct "apples to apples" comparison makes no sense.

There was already one typo.

It's an easy typo to make, you just don't take a finger off the shift key fast enough. SOmething I do rather often.

It's a very common mistake.

Re:Typo?

[sabbede]

So it seems clear then that the intent was to say 20Gb/s and 10Gb/s.

Re:Typo?

[sabbede]

Oh, there's also this: "The next version of USB, USB 3.2, will double the speed of existing Type-C cables. Cables currently qualified for USB 3.1 generation 1's 5Gbps will be able to operate at 10Gbps; those qualified for generation 2's 10Gbps will be able to run at 20Gbps." (https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/07/usb-3-2-will-make-your-cables-twice-as-fast-once-youve-bought-new-devices/)

And this: " Put simply: it’s faster than regular USB 3.0, allowing up to two lanes of 5Gbps or two lanes of 10Gbps operation." (https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/7/25/16026724/usb-3-2-usb-c-specification-charging-data-transfer-cables)

Cables vs wires

[enriquevagu]

The post is quite confusing, since the headline says Double Data Rates Using Existing Cables but the summary specifies double data rates to 20Gbps using new wires.

The explanation is that USB-C connectors (type-C connectors) have two different sets of transmission/reception pairs, two pairs for transmission and two pairs for reception. This differs from previous type-A and type-B connectors, which only have one pair of pins for (bidirectional) data transmission.

All type-C connectors implement the pins for the four pairs, but many cables only populate the wires for two pairs, one for transmission and one for reception (as clearly explained in the Wikipedia link provided). Given the simmetry of the connector, I bet this was designed to support the reversible connection, in a manner in which only one of the pairs works at a time. For this reason, the new USB 3.2 might double the speed, but it would require cables that implement the complete set of wires for such speed. So, in the general case, double speed would actually require new cables with the complete set of wires.

Re:Cables vs wires

[msauve]

"All type-C connectors implement the pins for the four pairs, but many cables only populate the wires for two pairs"

Nope. If a cable only implements 2 pairs, it's not a USB cable regardless of what the seller calls it. The spec requires cables to implement all 4 pairs.

More correctly: There are Type-C to other type cables which only have 2 pair, simply because it's not possible to have a 2nd pair on the other end (e.g. Type-C to USB 3.1 Standard-A). There's also an uncommon USB 2.0 Type C cable, which doesn't have any of the high speed pairs. But there is no C to C cable allowed which only has 2 high speed pairs.

Source: Universal Serial Bus Type-C Cable and Connector Specification (the requirement has existed since the original 1.0 spec)

Re:Cables vs wires

[blindseer]

There's also an uncommon USB 2.0 Type C cable, which doesn't have any of the high speed pairs.

These are actually quite common. They are usually sold as "charge only" cables but the USB2 sets of wires are there to provide a data path to let the charging device know something is connected and to negotiate a charging rate.

One thing that I thought was true was that if a cable or device had a USB-C port or connector that it would have the pins for USB 2 data. This seemed true even for all the alternate modes, the USB 2 pins would still be there and could transmit data at USB 2 speeds. That data might only be "I'm here, now charge me" for a lot of devices but the cable would support USB 2 data. I was wrong.

I bought a Griffin "Magsafe" style USB-C charge cable that does not have a USB 2 data pass through. I don't have it here to verify but it seems it has some sort of USB chip on each end to tell the device it's plugged into that it can pass 60 watts of power, but that's it. Not a big deal since I had no intention of ever using this cable for data but I thought it would be nice to know that if I needed to just make something work, even if at only USB 2 speeds, I could use this cable to do it.

The one common feature across all the USB-C alternate modes was the USB 2 pins and 5V/1A/5W power, or so I thought. Seems that I can't even rely on a cable with USB-C connectors on both ends to transfer data at all.

I went to the website for the product and after looking closely I saw no USB emblem.
https://griffintechnology.com/...

They'll claim it meet USB-C specifications but they seem to use enough legalese to avoid getting slapped around by the USB lawyers, or the USB group is okay with a USB cable not actually passing through USB data.

Perhaps I'm picking nits in calling this "common" or even a "USB cable". I'm quite certain that I can find a USB 2 only cable, or power only cable, that is USB-C to USB-C at most any cell phone shop, grocery store, truck stop, hardware store, or fruit vendor.

Re:Cables vs wires

[msauve]

There are only 2 C to C cables defined in USB. Both have the USB 2.0 data connections. So regardless of what Griffin call it, that's not a USB cable.

Re:Cables vs wires

[thegarbz]

All type-C connectors implement the pins for the four pairs, but many cables only populate the wires for two pairs

If the cable is not a Chinese import and it has the USB logo on it, then this is not true.

Don't blame the spec for the people who refuse to implement it as required.

Re:Cables vs wires

[blindseer]

I have little doubt that Griffin is playing games with the USB spec, and the USB people charged with enforcing the spec is letting them get away with it.

I can just imagine what would happen when a blue shirted "geek" that gets paid on commission is faced with a blue haired grandma and a shelf with the $40 Griffin cable, a $30 Thunderbolt cable, and a $20 USB 2 cable. Grandma might say she wants to get photos off her new camera onto her laptop so she can e-mail them off to the girls in her sewing circle, but no one knows if the person in the blue shirt is listening or cares. An honest person in a blue shirt will hand grandma the USB 2 cable, or maybe the Thunderbolt cable to be sure of a quick transfer. A dishonest and/or ignorant person in a blue shirt will hand over the more expensive Griffin cable because that means a higher commission.

My point is that it seems not that long ago that there was a lowest common denominator in USB, that you could be sure that any cable with USB connectors on both ends would talk USB, and that any device with a USB port could talk to any computer with a USB port. It might not be fast but it would talk some version of USB. Now you cannot be sure of that.

The people at USB are, IMHO, committing a slow suicide by allowing things to get so complicated. I expect people will get frustrated with this and the USB group will have to reign things in or USB will again become that "useless shitty bus" that they worked so hard to get rid of.

Existing or new?

[Anonymous Coward]

Existing cables...with new wires.

How exactly is this supposed to work?

Re:Existing or new?

[Megol]

As the blurb says USB C cables* already support the extra data lane. It is however new for the USB specification to use that lane (wires) for _USB_data_.

(* not to be confused with a cable with a USB C connector at one end designed for power delivery only or USB 2/3 data only - if they exist at all, haven't seen one)

Re:Existing or new?

[haruchai]

Existing cables...with new wires.

How exactly is this supposed to work?

Think of it like adding RAM. Just pop open your existing cables & add new conductors.

I look forward too...

[trabby]

I look forward to USB 3.0 and 3.1 becoming "USB 3.2 Gen 1", "USB 3.2 Gen 2" and actual USB 3.2 being "USB 3.2 Gen 3".

Seriously these marketing idiots need to be shot.

Umm..

[steveb3210]

" two lanes of 5Gb/s or two lanes of 10Gb/s operation "

Common connectors are a great thing

[sjbe]

the "one plug for everything" trend that began with USB Type C is a step in the wrong direction.

Could not disagree more. There are HUGE advantages to having common connectors. These advantages vastly outweigh the drawbacks. Connectors should be commonized as much as possible. The fewer number of cables types I have to deal with the better. I basically want to be able to hook up nearly everything with 1 or at most 2 types of cables.

having "unique" plug types for particular purposes is a *feature*, not a bug - simply by looking at the plug, we know what the cable and the port does.

Except you don't and you never did in a great many cases. Having to carry around and deal with 20 different types of cables is wasteful and unnecessary.

So you see a Type C plug - is it Thunderbolt or not? Is it a DisplayPort? What voltages/amps can it provide?

All good quality USB-C cables will work for Thunderbolt. Same with Displayport. As long as you are using good quality cables it is a non-issue. Sourcing good quality cables is not a difficult problem.

this is made even worse considering that there's active circuitry involved, where you need to worry about whether the cable itself is built right (see e.g. Benson Leung's long list of cables that can fry your hardware)

If you buy a crap cable from a crap vendor be prepared to get crap results. This is nothing new and has nothing to do with whether or not common connectors are a good idea or not. While I do generally agree with the principle that cables should be dumb and the smarts should be in the devices it's not something I'm going to make a holy war over if it gets the job done.

Re:Common connectors are a great thing

[Junta]

If you buy a crap cable from a crap vendor be prepared to get crap results.

Of course at the amperage of typical usb connection before, the 'crap results' were 'the damn cable didn't work, what a waste'. With USB power delivery, the 'crap results' are 'my thousand dollar laptop fried'. We have the unfortunate circumstance of 'cheap power cable' vendors, 'high current', and 'small form factor that mfg can screw up'.

Same *could* happen with C13 power cabling in theory, but those are so gigantic it's hard to screw up, or at least screwing up is not a natural consequence of trying to cut costs.

Re: Common connectors are a great thing

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree with you I currently have something like 40 micro usb cables. Trying to find one that support anything other than charging is a cluster f. I need to trying to find one that is brand specific and supports data transfer? Gettouttahere. I can only imagine the nightmare that having a common plug standard would be, but not enforcing it.

Re:Common connectors are a great thing

[CrashNBrn]

It's not that difficult. You pay more for the cable intended to be used as the power line cable, and you buy said cable from a respected vendor. Every USB C to USB C cable is at least USB 3.1.

Google even sells one, it's a little expensive at $20, but they also sell an universal USB-C charger for $60 that can be used for everything from a Mac, PC, or Chromebook all the way down to a phone.

Re:Common connectors are a great thing

[blindseer]

Every USB C to USB C cable is at least USB 3.1.

No, they are not.

Exhibit A:
https://www.apple.com/shop/pro...

Exhibit B:
https://griffintechnology.com/...

Some might argue that these are not "USB" cables because they violate some specification as defined by the people that own the USB logo. These are cables, with USB-C connectors on both ends, and that cannot be argued.

These are not unknown small time manufacturers either. Apple is a huge company and Griffin has been making computer cables for 25 years.

Re:Common connectors are a great thing

[Junta]

My point is while personally I can be confident in my choices, I can easily see not being confident in *other* people's choices, particularly if I find myself having to borrow a cable.

I'd say about 10% of the time when I have to borrow a micro-usb cable, someone hands me something that's a dud that they bought cheap and stuffed in a drawer. If there's a 10% chance of a dud damaging my device, then I would have lost an expensive device by now.

On the face of it, a single cable for things under 100W is a nice thing, but the fact that there are significant volumes of bad enough to damage in the wild is a worrying thing. Keeping the high current things to more simplistic cable/connector design is one area where it may have made more sense to be cautious.

Too confusing

[blindseer]

I have to wonder what the USB people are thinking. They have a good idea going here, why are they trying to ruin it?

It used to be that USB-C was USB but faster. It made the "On-The-Go" bi-directional features from USB2 required so people didn't have to worry about the host/device relationship too much. The Micro-AB connector was switched to a "flippable" version, they called "Type C", which is great. The new connector is just as small but handles more power, and I don't have to worry if I got the "right" end or which way is "up".

Where they are starting to mess this up is with four, FOUR, different video modes. You have Thunderbolt (which is just DisplayPort mixed with PCIe data), DisplayPort (which may or may not be backward compatible with the Thunderbolt mode), HDMI, and MHL (which may or may not be backward compatible with HDMI). They should have told the HDMI people to piss off and stopped at three. Maybe even tell the MHL people to piss off too but they already had an agreement with MHL on the micro-USB connector.

Now you have four video modes, two data modes (ThunderBolt and "SuperSpeed" USB), and with this new "Ludicrous Speed" mode they added a third data mode. It's already confusing on what video adapter or cable a person might need. Even buying a simple data cable is confusing. There's the USB2 cable, the USB3 cable, and the ThunderBolt cable, they all look identical at a glance with USB-C connectors on both ends. Will my expensive Thunderbolt cable support this new USB 3.2 data rate? Will it fall back to USB 3.1 speed nicely? Or will it crap out and support only USB2 speed?

They created this "SuperSpeed" naming to differentiate the USB2 speed devices from the faster USB3 ones. Then when USB-C came along with two "SuperSpeed" lanes they had to figure out how to make that clear to the user. They came up with "SuperSpeed+". (Notice the addition of the plus sign? It's easy to miss.) What is this new one going to be called?

I have to wonder if this is going to die before it even gets started. The people that want a faster USB got ThunderBolt already.

Re:Too confusing

[Anonymous Coward]

fucking names. USB 3.0, 3.1, opps, I mean SuperSpeed, I mean 3.1 gen 1 then gen 2 or is it SuperSpeed USB 10 Gbps, now 3.2. Who the fuck knows what is going on. This naming is more retarded than "ice cream sandwich" why not full retard and call is "USB 3.2.0-RC.1 Mid 2017 Cupcake"

Re:Too confusing

[bill_mcgonigle]

Maybe you don't remember the audio format wars, in which the BIOS vendors just decided to support everything and you could tell the BIOS which standard to make the hardware do.

Give it a few years and all the device firmwares will support everything and auto-switch based on detected traffic. In nicer devices you might even get automatic device bus isolation with programmable switches for things like main monitor connections, to give fixed gear its own dedicated bus bandwidth.

Re:Too confusing

[Anonymous Coward]

If you read the article you would have seen that it is called "Ludicrous Speed".

Re:Too confusing

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a FIFTH display mode, since you can use (and might need) an actual USB to display out adapter which consists in a chip made by a vendor called Displaylink.

Of course you'll have to know what USB speed it runs, and know not to expect smooth video if you use that with a USB 2.0 USB-C phone.

btw I was making passive-aggressive (or whatever) replies on the motorola phone story which might have been mildly inflammatory. I'll try to use my time for a few pressing or useful things to do. I think I've invented a new spirituality, it consists in barking at the design-by-committee gods when there's a row of USB-C stories on /.

Re:Too confusing

[Anonymous Coward]

So I have to pay for hardware that decodes 19 different types of video/data combinations even though I only use one. That's essentially a tax.

Re:Too confusing

[Kjella]

Where they are starting to mess this up is with four, FOUR, different video modes.

Not really. Thunderbolt is external PCIe with DisplayPort as an alternate video mode, it's an alternative to USB data signaling not video. MHL is essentially HDMI squished to use fewer connectors + power supply, if you got USB-C out you have enough connectors for full HDMI and all MHL receptors are also HDMI ports. The problem is that if you use HDMI mode you don't get the power supply, the only way to get that from a USB-C device connected to a MHL-enabled TV is to fake MHL. That problem goes away if you got a USB-C receptor that can talk USBs power delivery standard.

So really you have:
USB data - suitable for "devices" like printers, scanners, headsets, keyboard, mouse etc.
PCIe data - suitable for "extensions" like external GPUs, storage arrays etc. that could have been on the inside.
DisplayPort video
HDMI video
Bi-directional power delivery with negotiation of capabilities

Thunderbolt = PCIe data + DisplayPort
MHL = HDMI(-ish) + power

The only real redundancy there that is not there for compatibility reasons is DisplayPort and HDMI. As long as TVs mainly come with HDMI and monitors mainly with DisplayPort with no clear winner in sight that's probably not too stupid. In fact PCIe, DP and HDMI are now bundled in TB3 so in practice you have only two ports:

TB3: All of the above
USB3: USB data + power

using one connector, USB-C. You still have five support levels though, USB speed level, PCIe speed level, DP level, HDMI level, power level. It's hard to be everything for everyone...

Re:Too confusing

[Anonymous Coward]

You have Thunderbolt (which is just DisplayPort mixed with PCIe data)

There's no mandatory Thunderbolt on my Chromebook, I hope? I don't want to get pwnt by a virus-infected monitor.

Re:Too confusing

[thegarbz]

It's already confusing on what video adapter or cable a person might need.

Calm down. This specifically is compatible with the existing cables.

Will my expensive Thunderbolt cable support this new USB 3.2 data rate? Will it fall back to USB 3.1 speed nicely?

Well the answer there is yes and yes, but only if the devices can't negotiate 3.2.

You're over complicating things. Use the cable that came with the device and you'll be fine.

Re:Too confusing

[blindseer]

There's a FIFTH display mode, since you can use (and might need) an actual USB to display out adapter which consists in a chip made by a vendor called Displaylink.

USB is not a display protocol. That would be like saying I have a PCIe monitor because the video card I'm using is in a PCIe slot.

You do bring up a good point though. While many devices with a USB-C port will support one or more alternate video modes one might still need an actual graphics controller to connect to their display. LG and Dell will sell displays with USB-C and HDMI ports, and you can find phones that will have a USB-C port, and there are cables with USB-C on one end and USB-C or HDMI on the other but that does not mean the three together will mean video will display. The phone might even say in the documentation that it supports video from the USB-C port, and that they offer a USB-C to HDMI and USB-C to USB-C cables for this purpose. What you might miss though is that this is using the MHL protocol, which not all displays with an HDMI or USB-C port support. In that case you need the more expensive DisplayLink adapters, or whatever, that can convert the MHL signal to DisplayPort or HDMI.

This is something that I've been watching because I'm looking to get a new computer and display in the near future. I have a collection of computers with VGA, HDMI, DVI, and mini-DisplayPort outputs. I've been using VGA as the lowest common denominator for a long time now but this cannot go on for much longer. I'll have to pick something soon and this array of ports with multiple protocols, and protocols supporting different ports, is frustrating for someone that's been around computers for a long time. I just have to wonder what kind of frustrations this can bring to those less experienced than I.

Re:Too confusing

[rahvin112]

They could have infinite video modes as all the video modes do it dictate which pairs of wires are dedicated to that task and it's a signaling and driver issue on the computer at that point, in other words what the cable supports doesn't at all change the physical nature of the cable, the connector or anything else.

It's almost like you don't even know how USB works and you're posting a comment on it like an expert, what is this slashdot?

Re:Too confusing

[blindseer]

In fact PCIe, DP and HDMI are now bundled in TB3 so in practice you have only two ports:

TB3: All of the above
USB3: USB data + power

Oh, how I wish it were that simple.

There are still lots of cell phones and tablets, even high priced ones, that have USB-C ports but only support USB 2 features. They might support MHL output like their older micro-USB versions but usually not. If they support some charge rate greater than the USB 2 10 watts this does not mean they are following the USB spec, but instead doing some vendor specific voltage and current that can mean setting something on fire if that charger is used with anything other than the device it came with. This also means getting a replacement charger would mean not getting anything better than 10 watts.

If you see a laptop with USB-C it's a coin toss on if that port supports 10GBps or just 5Gbps. Flip the coin again on if this USB-C port can be used to charge the laptop. Another coin toss and you will find if it supports DisplayPort output. This is improving as newer laptops seem to support charging, Thunderbolt, DisplayPort, and 10Gbpc USB on the USB-C port, so perhaps this is encouraging.

If you see a USB-C port on a desktop system then all bets are off. You will have no idea what that port supports until you dig into the spec sheet. You'll quite likely get 5Gbps and 10 watts of power from it, but other than that you cannot be sure if it supports power delivery or any higher data rate.

A quick Google search gave plenty of articles written in the last year on the sad state of the USB-C port. Go surf for a bit, you will be enlightened and appalled.

Re:Too confusing

[Anonymous Coward]

You do seem to care about the issue. So I'll talk about how Asus has been selling portable monitors, 15.6" for use along a laptop. This is clever since it's basically a standalone laptop panel on a Surface-like stand and doesn't need mains power ; it uses USB 3.0 (so Displaylink) for data and power on a single cable (works on USB 2.0 hardware too which is still good enough for a spreadsheet etc.)
Some are 1366x768, some are 1920x1080.

The latest model or models are USB-C and perhaps supports alternate mode HDMI of some kind but I can't confirm that at all and it will certainly default to Displaylink. HDMI/MHL/Whatever would be technically better but might be a hardware/firmware/driver headache, sure.

There is a mark up i.e. a bit expensive due to novelty and the feature and you could get a much bigger desktop monitor instead. But I think it's quite a clever product and if you somehow want to have (or are forced to use) a 15.6" 1080p laptop with the weird ppi and non-integer scaling you can have a matching monitor of the same size with the exact same ppi/scaling.
I make a diversion to say that Gnome 3 developers are working on non-integer scaling, no idea when it's done nor about the details of how and what works.

If you get "a computer" well virtually everything that doesn't take VGA or DVI in takes HDMI or Displayport. So bunch of Displayport and HDMI on desktop, laptop with Displayport and HDMI, tiny laptop-like (e.g. Surface) with just one Displayport or with Thunderbolt it's not a big deal I think. Displayport does it all.

This is a solved problem

[Black.Shuck]

Cable-markers my good fellow.

If you have enough cables to worry about what goes where, then cable-markers will very likely be part of your inventory.

Or at the very least you'll have cables of different colours.

The new keyboards

[Provocateur]

The new keyboards that will have USB can now be equipped with cigarette lighters.

Re:The new keyboards

[Khyber]

My case already has a cigarette lighter built-in.

Those tiny shitty connector contacts of USB-C couldn't even handle 5A, let alone the 10A the cig lighter needs.

Re:The new keyboards

[Anonymous Coward]

My case already has a cigarette lighter built-in.

Those tiny shitty connector contacts of USB-C couldn't even handle 5A, let alone the 10A the cig lighter needs.

It makes more sense to have cribs with cigarette lighters than computers. Cigarettes kill computer hardware quite faster than kids since the latters' built-in filters are quite more sophisticated.

By the way, it felt disproportionally weird to click "Quote Parent" for this posting.

Re:The new keyboards

[thegarbz]

Actually the connectors are capable of supporting 5A, though not all cables can. Not only that with USB-PD they can support 5A @20V meaning after connecting to a device with a small DC-DC converter you most definitely could power a cigarette lighter.

Re:The new keyboards

[Khyber]

The cables themselves cannot if they're longer than 2 meters and that's AT ROOM TEMPERATURE (Remember ampacity drops as the cable gets warmer.) That's utter crap and a physical limitation EXPLICITLY due to the connector design. The pinout contacts aren't even equivalent to 20AWG.

You're going to hear a LOT of stories about equipment and cables frying soon. Someone utterly forgot to do their basic wire gauge/ampacity calculations (I just had to redo 400 calculations because the idiot someone hired to re-wire their business failed to do these calculations and failed inspection when the inspector came along to check.)

And can you imagine 5 amps in a worn out socket? Wiggle *POP*

Re:The new keyboards

[thegarbz]

Make up your mind, cables or connectors. You talk of cables and list cable dimensions and length then you say the connectors are the limit despite the connectors specifically being designed for 5A at 20V. If they don't, they breach the USB spec, it's as easy as that.

The pinout contacts aren't even equivalent to 20AWG

They don't need to be. Kirchhoff's current law to the rescue.

You're going to hear a LOT of stories about equipment and cables frying soon.

We already are. Stuff that doesn't meet the USB spec, doesn't meet the USB spec. Stuff that does, doesn't fry. The spec won't let the cable fry as the cable needs to signal the host actively that it is capable of carrying 5A or the host won't deliver. Quite simple really.

Someone utterly forgot to do their basic wire gauge/ampacity calculations

Nope, someone* didn't read the specification.

*You.

Re:The new keyboards

[Khyber]

"Make up your mind, cables or connectors."

Both are pretty much one and the same. It's like you've never done any basic electronics work in your life, son. Given your high UID, you've probably never touched an iron in your life let alone have to do basic fucking goddamned calculations for appropriate wire or connector size on a daily basis wiring things to STRICT CALIFORNIA CODE.

Please come back when you are a licensed electrician. Or even a two-year journeyman with at least one year of working experience.

You've obviously never done any real electrical work in your life.

And I DID read the spec, that's how I determined that the fucking pins on the USB-C connector alone can't handle fucking 5 amps safely over a distance greater than two meters and aren't even equivalent to 20AWG wire. USB-PRE-C had larger pins that COULD handle that up to 30 fucking feet. USB-C can not unless both the cables AND connector pins are made of gold or silver.

If they wanted to deliver high power, the world's shittiest wire can take 600V and an easy 250mA - there's fucking 150 watts and you can send that HUNDREDS of feet down a USB-C cable (assuming they'd ever make one that long) thanks to the very low losses incurred in HVDC.

You're sorely equipped for this fight. Go back to school, child.

Re:The new keyboards

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't need to be. Kirchhoff's current law to the rescue.

Kirschoff current law doesn't have anything to do with this. This is basic conductor capacity safety and the principle works as such:

its insulation temperature rating;
the electrical resistance of the conductor material;
frequency of the current, in the case of alternating current;
ability to dissipate heat, which depends on conductor geometry and its surroundings;
ambient temperature.

Not one bit of that is covered by Kirchhoffs current law. You need to learn when a specific law is applicable (or did you just Wikipedia that law and see that it existed and ran with it to see if nobody would notice?)

Re:The new keyboards

[thegarbz]

Both are pretty much one and the same.

Wow. just wow. And you accuse me of not knowing cables (licensed electrician turned engineer here)

that's how I determined that the fucking pins on the USB-C connector alone can't handle fucking 5 amps safely over a distance greater than two meters

Good, thanks for your input. Fortunately the pins are only 1mm long so there's a good factor of 2000x in there.
But your idiocy about not knowing the difference between the current carrying capacity of pins vs a cable aside, the IEC disagrees with you when they published 62680-3-1. Which incidentally has all the required numbers in it.

You didn't need to do your own calculations. You didn't need to show everyone just how little you know. All you had to do was read a standard and save yourself the embarrassment.

You're sorely equipped for this fight. Go back to school, child.

hahahahah. It is funny watching what people come up with when they crumble.
Claim they are intellectually superior while demonstrating how little they know.
Insulting as a first line of defence when called out on their bullshit.
And my personal favourite calling someone a "child". That statement said amongst adults is truly ironic. But you just managed to show everyone who the "child" actually is.

+5 funny would read again.

I'd insult you back in kind, but really. It doesn't seem right picking on someone mentally retarded so you get a day off today.

Re:The new keyboards

[Khyber]

" Fortunately the pins are only 1mm long so there's a good factor of 2000x in there."

Unless those are pure gold or silver, and NOT PLATED, they won't carry a goddamned thing over 1 amp. You just literally ignored basic physics and NESC regulations. You aren't licensed for shit - reveal your state license number or be considered a lying fuck.

Re:The new keyboards

[Anonymous Coward]

But your idiocy about not knowing the difference between the current carrying capacity of pins vs a cable aside,

Conductors are conductors no matter pin or cable and are as such governed by NESC/NEC/IEC standards and basic physics. You're a liar.

AMD baby upto 128 pci-e but no server will go usb

[Joe_Dragon]

AMD baby upto 128 pci-e but no server will go usb only.

10G E-net on board. Some systems even have SFP+ on board now.

also a storage system can have lots of pci-e storage 24 bays at 4 each is 96. So you have some left over for network / boot ssd / and other io.

Too many chnages in too short of a time...

[QuietLagoon]

USB is becoming a big mess of different versions, far too many versions. USB is starting to lose its usefulness. USB 3.2? Most of my devices don't even use USB 3.0 yet. The USB spec is starting to look like changes are being made for the purpose of making changes, but to no real end.

Re:Too many chnages in too short of a time...

[thegarbz]

Why is it starting to lose it's usefulness? If it makes you feel any better just call it "USB" and ignore the number. After all the article specifically mentions complete compatibility with existing systems and existing cables, so why would the version number matter.

Just use it and let the devices themselves figure out the best connection speed. This is the opposite of losing it's usefulness, quite literally it is becoming even more useful with no downsides.

Re:Too many chnages in too short of a time...

[vlueboy]

USB is becoming a big mess of different versions, far too many versions. USB is starting to lose its usefulness. USB 3.2? Most of my devices don't even use USB 3.0 yet. The USB spec is starting to look like changes are being made for the purpose of making changes, but to no real end.

The situation is similar with Unicode "versions" :) and I didn't know they were a thing tilll windows 8 or so... codepages and UTF encodings were already painful enough!
"Legacy" devices that for one reason or another don't have the latest browser or OS (and sometimes even having them) are already annoyingly finicky when you send out Unicode emoji.
iPhone users are annoyingly up-to-date compared to crappy carrier-locked Android users like me, and often trigger a few square glyph placeholders on emoji texts. If you use your phone or Windows 7 PC to browse Twitter and Instagram posts that are emoji-heavy, you'll notice the effect.

Back to the topic of the USB problems, even having current "standards" is a pain. Courtesy outlets (cable boxes, older gaming consoles, monitors) tend to be unpowered and even cables often lag behind on today's 5-inch phone world. As you go beyond 3-feet cables, 2 amp support required by hungry screens seems to have its work cut out with .2 Amps that is all the rage with PC USB ports and travel adapters.

New Definition for USB

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it will be:

USB = U Should Be an Electrical Engineer to understand all the USB variants, modes and capabilities.

A user complains that their USB device doesn't work? Just tell them random shit in an authoritative tone of voice; the content doesn't matter at all.

"You aren't using oxygen-free cables! Of course it doesn't work!"
"The Grapple Grommit doesn't connect to the Frimmen Flange! Everyone knows that!"
"Are you using Certified Monster Cables? I think not..."
"Well here's your problem. Your USB device was manufactured on Sept. 17, 2008. It needed to be manufactured on Sept. 18 or 16. There was a fire in the factory and they didn't clean the place properly; it's community lore that all devices manufactured on Sept. 17 are crap. Buy another one and get it right this time!"

Re:AMD baby upto 128 pci-e but no server will go u

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes but I'd rather buy a $60 motherboard not a $500 motherboard. Perhaps even a $80 or $100 CPU not a $800 CPU.
As is, I have more use for keyb, mouse, flash drive, plug a phone to write to its SD, game controllers, scanner etc. than 20 SSDs and multiple Infiniband etc. controllers.

Hence the rant that eight thunderbolt USB-C ports ("even more universal") would cost me like $1000 without showing anything for it as it requires wiring tons of bandwith to low bandwith peripherals. Even USB 3.0/3.1/3.2 has this little problem, if this great plan of USB-C and only USB-C goes through I'll find myself connecting USB 1 peripherals to 10Gb and 20Gb ports.

Will we see Linux networking with this?

[rMortyH]

Going all the way back to USB 2.0, there is a host-to-host mode in the specification, but it's not implemented in any operating system. The best we can get now is USB3.0 to gigabit dongles, which don't take full advantage of the available speed at all.

USB 3.0 is great for storage, the speed is really nice. Then you find that your bottleneck is gigabit ethernet.
Thunderbolt supports network bridging on the mac, but it's not really useable on linux.
What are the roadblocks to IP over full-speed USB 3.0 or 3.1 data link? Is it pushback from the network vendors?

We already have the cheap, fast hardware, but we can't take full advantage of it.

Will there be any effort to use this for networking? It's really about time.

=rmortyh

Re:Will we see Linux networking with this?

[swb]

IMHO, USB 3.1 @ 10 Gbit/sec is already fast enough to do a lot of useful work that now "requires" more expensive interfaces. I honestly don't see why even LTO-6 tape drives or array shelves couldn't be connected via USB, at least from a pure performance perspective provided that you were willing to live with 10 Gbit/second as your throughput limit, which, honestly, shouldn't be that big of a limitation considering that it bests low-end SAS and gigabit Ethernet connectivity in many cases.

I think the biggest roadblocks to adoption of USB3 for higher performance applications is threefold:

One is simply the ingrained notion that USB is for mice and keyboards and syncing your phone, it's not for "high performance data", regardless of how much throughput it actually can deliver. So device makers continue to dedicate their products to more traditional and expensive interfaces like SAS or proprietary ports.

The other is shit software support. My guess is that many OSs really haven't audited their code to support very high data rate USB devices, which results in performance problems (slowdowns, random disconnects, etc). This feeds back into the first problem, that it's not a big boy interconnect.

The third is probably profit margin. Making the device more expensive probably results in a higher amount of profit.

Meh

[JohnFen]

I still have yet to see any Type C connectors in person, so using "existing cables" isn't much of a selling point, personally.

Re:Meh

[TeknoHog]

I still have yet to see any Type C connectors in person, so using "existing cables" isn't much of a selling point, personally.

This. There's nothing universal about USB the way it is evolving. http://iki.fi/teknohog/rants/u...

Ethernet?

[hoggoth]

And still I can't get more than 1 Gbps from my network without spending tens of thousands of dollars...

USB 3.2 & Cheep Amazon USB Cables

[Anonymous Coward]

Catch fire twice as fast!!