USB-IF Confusingly Merges USB 3.0 and USB 3.1 Under New USB 3.2 Branding (macrumors.com)
The USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), this week announced a rebranding of the USB 3.0 and USB 3.1 specifications, under the USB 3.2 specification. USB 3.0 and USB 3.1 will now be considered previous generations of the USB 3.2 specification. From a report: Going forward, USB 3.1 Gen 1 (transfer speeds up to 5Gb/s), which used to be USB 3.0 prior to a separate rebranding, will be called USB 3.2 Gen 1, while USB 3.1 Gen 2 (transfer speeds up to 10Gb/s) will now be known as USB 3.2 Gen 2. What used to be considered USB 3.2 will now be USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 because if offers twice the throughput speeds of USB 3.1 Gen 2, now USB 3.2 Gen 2. If the swap between USB 3.1 Gen 1 and Gen 2 to USB 3.2 wasn't confusing enough, each of these specifications also has a marketing term. The new USB 3.2 Gen 1 with transfer speeds up to 5Gb/s is SuperSpeed USB, while USB 3.2 Gen 2 with transfer speeds up to 10Gb/s is known as SuperSpeed USB 10Gbps. The USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 specification with transfer speeds up to 20Gb/s is known as SuperSpeed USB 20Gbps.
Well it work? Iffy with a chance of putting it in the wrong side up.
The speeds would be through the roof and you don't even need to use glass for short haul, you could do cheap plastic. No charging of batteries but that could be a separate plug.
This is par for the course -
USB 2.0 full speed
USB 2.0 high speed.
Where USB 2.0 "full" speed was USB 1.1 speeds.
Who's thinking this stuff up? XBox 360 to XBox One, please hand in your trophy for most confusing versions.
According to Wikipedia, there are about 22 different connectors for USB (counting male and female). What a mess. I'm in tech and even I have to play games to find the right connector/orientation for devices now and again (made worse with my older eyesight).
This is meant to be a parody of standards bodies, isn;t it? Has Slashdot and The Onion combined forces to make fun of the stupidy of tectnology?
Just plug donee in holes til stuff works
Would be more honest of them to strike the numbers completely and just state that every USB device is a lottery ticket, and the winners earn a working connection, with the rare 1st prize being "connection at some highish speed".
I thought this was what USB-C was intended to accomplish.
Oh, right. It's something else.
Fucktardian rebranding. HAD to be some marketing twit that shit that idea out of their ass.
Why not just USB 5GBS, USB 10GBS?! Would that be so difficult?!
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
Why not add a suffix indicating speed and bandwidth instead of wasting characters with the word Gen?
I can't wait until I need one of these cables and try to figure out which is which on a site full of third party scammer like Amazon or eBay. /s
AT&T's Marketing department is part of the USB standards board.
It's like they have Atlantis Complex.
Makes sense.
The party of the first part shall be known in this contract as the party of the first part....
Oh well, whatever the market will bear...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I mean, seriously, what kind of drugs does it take to think that this idiocy actually clarifies the situation?
Maybe the trouble has always been that "the committee" has the impression USB is a Brand.
It's a Standard. Or at least it was supposed to be.
Then again, it was never even enough of a standard to decide on what kind of connector to use, so...
How about we fire everybody on the Committee (that's right, you ever-so-noble 'Volunteers') and replace the whole concept with what it should have been. Serial Bus version 8, 9, or whatever makes sense.
Followed by Dot.Speed.
ANYthing meaningful, please...
A rebranding, intended to clarify the system, further confuses the already confusing system!
Who are these maroons? What planet are they from?
"Hi, my device doesn't charge."
"Yeah, you don't have the USB."
"But I do, it's USB-C with USB 3.1 Gen 2."
"Well that's your problem, right there! You don't have Update D with the maraschino cherry patch."
"Uh, maraschino cherry?"
"It's a development code name."
I was thinking this is what happens when you get have a conference with nerdy engineers debating these details for hours and trying to pretend to be marketing types.
It is to laugh!!
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
We need something bigger for this cluebat. Where's Thor's Hammer?
Personally, I think is so funny/tragic. Look at what we are doing to ourselves, can't even say "slave/master" any more.
I always thought that was what the F'ing decimal point was for!
God I miss going from a Geforce 2 to a Geforce 3 without having to decipher 6 others that may or may not be in between them.
I assume said committee will be sending me some labels shortly to apply to all of my stuff so I don't get all confused.
Otherwise we just get one thing with 2 names. That is confusing. The goal IS to avoid confusion, right?
While I'm sure there's a lot of nits to pick, I sometimes wonder if the USB standards body is being bribed by somebody to hobble adoption of this standard.
USB 3.2, er, I mean USB 3.2 2x2, is pretty fast and theoretically could be used as an interconnect for devices that want SAS-3 now, at least on a bandwidth basis, and it's not far off SAS-4 in performance.
I can almost buy into a conspiracy where the USB standards people are getting bribed into idiotic branding and naming practices to keep the standard down and stop people from getting the idea that you don't need to spend thousands extra on expensive "enterprise" interfaces.
(OK, I know it's not *really* what some of the expensive enterprise interfaces really are, but it doesn't seem totally unrealistic that you could run a single LTO-7 tape drive connected via USB 3.2 2x2 vs. SAS-3).
Wow, I thought Apple was bad at changing cables.
But USB is just nuts. What is it now, a dozen or so physical shapes, a dozen protocols and formats?
Have they finally made the plugs symmetrical yet? Plugging asymmetric USB cables into chargers in the dark, or around the back of machines, was always a pain.
USB-IF is the same bunch of know-it-all goofballs that determined FAT (FAT32 or exFAT) was to be the default file system for all SD cards. So we've all been left with a long-term curse of cards using an antiquated, proprietary, unsupported file system that was unstable and buggy even back in its day. Step ahead a couple of decades and the situation still sucks -- a typical microSD card in our phones will be a weak point just as much a beneficial one, with issues tied to FAT's weak if any support for current metadata, file permissions, and file/folder attributes.
So this latest stunt on even naming isn't all that surprising really.
It's time to give up on USB 3 and rebrand it as USB 4. They can have different speeds as USB 4, USB 4S, and USB 4+. Oh, and to make everyone happy, they should also redefine the HDMI cable as a USB-D cable.
No, this is what happens when manufacturers and other people with interests want to confuse the market so that they can present their non-top-of-the-line products as top-of-the-line. "New Motherboard with USB 3.2 Gen1!!!" on the packaging.
Situation: There are 14 competing USB standards.
-Ridiculous! We need to develope one "Universal USB" standard that covers everyone's use cases.
-Yeah!
(Soon:) Situation: There are 15 competing USB standards.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
FFS, it's worse than the terminology switch from 1080p to 4k. I bet USB cables will be really fun to shop for, because it is so easy now, oh wait..
Obviously an engineer would have named the releases:
USB
USB2
USB3
USB4
Or possibly:
USB12 ...
USB480
Itâ(TM)s always marketing types who decide to:
* name two completely different (and usually incompatible) things with the exact same name
* give something a name that is the exact opposite to what it actually is
* diverge wildly at random from an existing numbering scheme
The madness is that consumers want to easily know which thing is better than another. Essentially so they can go to their friends and say âoeyouâ(TM)ve got the gruntmaster 7??? Pffft Thatâ(TM)s rubbish Iâ(TM)ve got the gruntmaster 8.â
They could make a USB plug and port specification, make it round, and call it USB 3.14. HAHAHAHAH...
Wtf is this shit?
3.2 gen 3 would had been consistent with previous shit.
Just calling it 3.2 or 5 would had made the most sense but clearly they don't want transparency they want marketing.
people whose sole credential is the diameter of their a*hole.
They clearly cant manage USB properly, in the beginning it was the plethora of connectors what caused confusion, then with 2.0 the full-speed vs high-speed thing with more confusion, then came 3.0 and right after 3.1 again with different connectors.
Its like they cant make up their mind.
Lets hope this 3.2 stays this way for a while with its 1 connector. It only took them.. what, ~20 years to perfect?
Only a total engineering dork with Asperger's could accomplish this "rebranding."
https://xkcd.com/927/
USB 5G? That will make everyone happy, because you know, 5G. Everyone wants 5G.
This whole article has given me cancer.
"In the Nuts (unground), (other than ground nuts) Order, the expression nuts shall have reference to such nuts, other than ground nuts, as would but for this amending Order not qualify as nuts (unground) (other than ground nuts) by reason of their being nuts (unground)".
All the world's an analog stage, and digital circuits play only bit parts.
The USB document clearly suggested that people not conflate version numbers w/ speeds. For instance, in USB 2.0, something like a keyboard would be a low speed, a printer could be full speed and a disk could be high speed. But all of them would be USB 2.0, regardless of the speed. Similarly, a keyboard built today would be a low speed USB 3.2 keyboard, since the slower speeds are still subsets of the latest spec, unless they have been deprecated. Such as the USB mini port.
IMO, the best option would be to have the USB speed specified after the term USB for any device. So a USB camcorder might be USB480, while a phone's USB connection might be a USB10K (maybe not use the term G to avoid confusion w/ wireless specs and frequencies). That way, the relevant number is there on a peripheral or cable that tells one what one needs to know about the capabilities or requirements of that peripheral or cable
No power standard? No standard for cables? All I want to know is that if I plug my HooliPhone into my FacetendoBrick charger for ten minutes, it'll be good for the whole train ride.
You really are a fucking loser retart aren't you? Just fucking kill yourself you worhtless, spinelss, piece of shit! Your mama should've aborted you rather than have the baby after she was gang raped by a group of teenage boys who were huffing paint.
— the pathetic living punchline that calls itself gerald butler
USB is a data bus for peripherials to a computer.
This model is getting old, most USB peripherials, like smart phones are now full fledged computers in fact.
So we should just implement an IPv6 and fast charging over USB-C, and make EVERY PERIPHERIAL use case use IPv6 communication instead of using the outdated peripherial-with-drivers-and-silly-file-exchange-protocols !
In fact, USB-C competes with Ethernet+power on the long run - they should converge to a single connector and protocol !
aaaaaaa