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USB-IF Confusingly Merges USB 3.0 and USB 3.1 Under New USB 3.2 Branding (macrumors.com)

Posted by msmash on from the what's-in-a-name dept.

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.

19 of 131 comments (clear)

  1. And for those of us old enough to remember by the_skywise · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:And for those of us old enough to remember by knarfling · · Score: 4, Funny
      But I want "Ludicrous Speed."

      Which USB spec will give me Ludicrous Speed?

      --
      Great civilizations have lived and died on false theories. Don't mess up mine with a few facts.
    2. Re:And for those of us old enough to remember by v1 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      It's all that much worse when you closelycompare the names:

      usb 1.1 renamed to "usb 2.0 full speed"
      usb 2.0 renamed to "usb 2.0 high speed"

      And of course the names and logos were very similar and easily confused unless you read the fine print.

      Rumor was at the time that there were hardware manufacturers with warehouses full of PC motherboards they couldn't sell "because everyone wanted usb 2.0", so they muscled/bribed the standards committee to rename usb 1.1 off the books so they could empty their warehouses by hustling the public. So many people were posting at the time they couldn't understand how their computer they just built with a "good new usb 2 board" was running slow, where to find drivers to "fix" it, etc. It's easy to see what usb 2.0 was "full of".

      This probably is falling along similar lines. More bribes to help manufacturers not pay for their bad planning/overstock by robbing the public.

      What kills me is the irony. It's a standard, the purpose is to prevent confusion, and they're leveraging it to create confusion, that they can take advantage of.

      --
      I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
    3. Re:And for those of us old enough to remember by thegarbz · · Score: 2

      This probably is falling along similar lines.

      Devils advocate. I highly doubt it. Unlike a short period after USB2.0 was released currently there's little to no devices on the market that actually make use of USB 3.2 gen whatever the fuck the fastest USB3.1 thing was called. There's very little demand for it and if you drop top dollar on a motherboard right now you'd be lucky to get 1 or 2 USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports and many current cases still don't offer them.

      I highly doubt there's any pressure here beyond: Well we did it the last few times so people expect us to do it now.

    4. Re:And for those of us old enough to remember by Artem+S.+Tashkinov · · Score: 2

      According to the rumor mill it was Intel who persuaded the USB committee to rename USB 3.0 to USB 3.1 gen 1 since Intel added support for USB 3.0 SuperSpeed+ (10Gbps) relatively late, just a year ago, and Intel partners and Intel itself needed to flog their old technologically inferior products (chipsets, motherboards, PCs, laptops, etc).

  2. Huh by TimMD909 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Who's thinking this stuff up? XBox 360 to XBox One, please hand in your trophy for most confusing versions.

    1. Re:Huh by tsqr · · Score: 3, Informative

      Linux does alliterative animal names. You couldn't come up with something more senseless than that.

      No, Linux doesn't do that. Ubuntu does that.

  3. Re:USB - iffy by Megol · · Score: 5, Funny

    We'll C about that.

  4. I thought this was USB-C by DalM · · Score: 3, Funny

    I thought this was what USB-C was intended to accomplish.

    Oh, right. It's something else.

  5. WTF? by hoggoth · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why not just USB 5GBS, USB 10GBS?! Would that be so difficult?!

    --
    - For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat /dev/random (may take some time)
  6. Re:USB - iffy by DickBreath · · Score: 2

    Rebranding: why don't they call it 5G?

    Try new USB 5G!

    --

    I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
  7. Are these people on drugs? by ilsaloving · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I mean, seriously, what kind of drugs does it take to think that this idiocy actually clarifies the situation?

  8. Re:Why are we not doing optical data transfer? by viperidaenz · · Score: 2

    It's called Fibre Channel and its very expensive.

  9. Re:Not Surprising by thegarbz · · Score: 3, Informative

    How are you struggling to find the right cable? Saying there's 22 is stupid. The reality is far simpler:

    The host side has 1 general style that always works, broken up into 3 if you need to pick your exact speed. Type A, Type A SS, and Type C. Other than iGarbage devices there's nothing being shipped that has Type C which also doesn't have Type A SS. All Type A connectors are compatible with each other.

    That leaves us with the other side:
    Type B hasn't been in common use for years and is only found on devices you won't typically plug and unplug very often (reads fixed devices)
    Type B SS is rarer than hens teeth, I've only ever seen it on a single device. A HDD docking station.
    Ultimately it leaves you with Type B mini, Type B micro, and Type C. The Type B micro SS is completely compatible with Type B micro.

    The A side is virtually non existent out there in mini and micro variants, and so is TypeA-B.

    If you buy a device right now it will come with one of only 3 different cables, all of which will connect to a modern computer and are device dependent. If you're juggling more than 3 cables for the "22" (purposeful use of quotes since there's not 22 different connectors) connectors then you're doing something horribly wrong.

  10. Re:Really? by darkain · · Score: 2

    oh, like the GeForce 3 Ti200, GeForce 3 Ti500? Or how about a GeForce 2 MX? Or a GeForce 2 Go? Or Pro? Or Ultra? or GTS?

  11. Stop letting marketers into the design comity! by Fly+Swatter · · Score: 2

    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..

  12. Re:Is the number "4" unlucky to them? by kbrannen · · Score: 2

    China (and countries influenced by it) and Japan consider 4 unlucky.

  13. Re:Not Surprising by blindseer · · Score: 2

    I have not seen any actual implementations of USB 3.0 with a Mini-B connector, so I'm somewhat curious as to why these even exist.

    The mini-USB connectors are not part of the USB 3.x spec, they don't have the number of pins to support the "super speed" data lines. Too bad for anything with a mini-USB connector, they were left behind at USB 2.0.

    USB 3 only supports the standard A and B, micro A and B, and USB-C. The A ports and connectors are interchangeable between 1.1, 2.0, and 3.x but the B connectors come in 3.x "wide" and 1.1/2.0 "narrow" variants where the wide connectors will not fit in narrow ports, but narrow connectors will fit in wide ports.

    --
    I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
  14. Re:Not Surprising by thegarbz · · Score: 2

    You have repeated exactly what I said.
    You've listed 12 devices which plug into your PC using the same connector (compatibility) or 2 different connectors (speed).
    On the device side you have 3 different plugs (compatibility), or 4 (speed), + 1 for a device you don't own which if you had a modern motherboard would just work with a C connector.

    You say you have 7/8 different cables on your desk, I count 3 which would work for all your devices, 4 if you need SS on the top one.

    So where does that leave us? Some of your devices use an obsolete connection technology and yet work just fine even if you had a Macbook with only USB-C connectors. Why do I mention this? Well...

    Seems to me that with USB, one now needs far more different types of cables than back in the days of RS232, parallel port, etc.

    USB has been around for 25 years. It has seen more upgrades than any interface ever. The fact that you have 4 (7?) different cables yet all your devices including your friend's latest and greatest seem to work on your one computer is (excuse my french) fucking amazing. But as to how many cables you have on your device back in the day.

    - Keyboard PS/2
    - Mouse PS/2
    - Printer Centronix
    - RS232 (what did you use this for, was it a "standard" cable with TX/RX/DTR/RTS? Was it a null modem cable? Did it have a DB9 / DB25 adapter? Did you have a serial printer since those were wired differently? Did you use one of the cables with a clock signal? Or the high speed 2 channel cable only available in DB25/DB25?) I mean with this standard alone we have more cable variants than are on your desk right now, and the best part was it was trial an error. Unlike USB just having the ability to plug it in did not at all mean it worked.
    - Gaming port because why not make something completely unique for a joystick.

    I think that covers standard devices but we do so much more these days including external HDDs, and you mentioned evaluation boards so I'll keep going with some nerdier stuff:
    - External SCSI (about the only way to attach external storage to a computer, I can only remember about 6 different connectors but I'm sure there were more which were used for this stuff. including a Centronix connector which I think was one of the most common for PC and a DB25 which was most common for Macs. Along with all these connectors came some 10 different SCSI standards using at least 3 different (electrically) cables with the mixed salad of connectors on the end)
    - Before you had evaluation boards and test equipment on USB, we also had GPIB which was a extensible bus with a stacking connector widely used for evaluation boards and test equipment in labs (much of my gear still has GPIB connectors on the end, though these days I use a USB adapter for them.

    In summary, if you have more cables now with USB than you did back in the good ol' days then you have done something very VERY wrong.