USB 4 Will Support Thunderbolt and Double the Speed of USB 3.2 (engadget.com)

At a Taipei event earlier today, Intel revealed that USB 4 will once again utilize dual channels to achieve 40Gbps speeds, even on existing 40Gbps-certified USB-C cables. A report adds: Better yet, thanks to Intel finally offering Thunderbolt 3 to manufacturers with open licensing, USB 4 will be integrating this tech and thus effectively becoming the "new" Thunderbolt 3. In other words, USB 4 will pretty much be the mother of all wired connectivity options, and will be ready for more powerful PCIe plus DisplayPort devices. It is expected to take 18 months between the final spec of USB 4 being published in the second half of this year, and the first devices hitting the market, so don't expect to see USB 4-powered commercial devices until sometime in 2021.
Further reading, from last week: USB-IF Confusingly Merges USB 3.0 and USB 3.1 Under New USB 3.2 Branding.

Comments

Will the wires catch on fire?

[jellomizer]

I Know, I know faster transmission, of data doesn't necessarily require more power. Just a higher frequency signals of the data. Which gets increasingly harder to read, and more prone to interference. But 40Gbs in a cable that most people will coil up to keep the wires organized just seems like something prone to problems. Unless USB4 cables will have a ton of insulation, to prevent the outside world from interfering with it. Or will it have more error checking thus this 40Gbs is just a theoretical speed, and it is actually much slower in real life, because it keeps on on having data loss.

Re:Will the wires catch on fire?

[Anonymous Coward]

AC because Slashdot is not worth logging into these days.

But isn't HDMI 40GB/s? It doesn't get warm or catch on fire and that data stream is typically constant.

But throw power in the mix, especially 100w for charging laptops, you may have a point there.

Re:Will the wires catch on fire?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing an $80 4ft cable with gold plated connectors couldnt fix!

Re:Will the wires catch on fire?

[Anonymous Coward]

cables by Monster. IPv6 compatible too.

Re:Will the wires catch on fire?

[jfdavis668]

If they do, you can rename it Firewire.

Re:Will the wires catch on fire?

[Crash Dummy Redux]

I once pointed out to a manager that a 1,000-feet serial cable coiled up underneath the desk was unnecessary when a 20-feet cable could have connected the PC to the modem. He said it still work and that was that.

Re:Will the wires catch on fire?

[DigiShaman]

Don't worry. I'm sure there's be a Denon multi-grand USB4 cable in the near future. All gold plated and shit.

Re: Will the wires catch on fire?

[Anonymous Coward]

And the more you transfer the faster it gets. Like a double course of raw cheese

Re:Will the wires catch on fire?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or will it have more error checking thus this 40Gbs is just a theoretical speed, and it is actually much slower in real life, because it keeps on on having data loss.

I don't know specifically about USB 4, but in data communications the published speed, and the actual speed differ not because of data loss, but because of protocol overhead. The overhead can vary drastically, so WiFi (I think until recently?) had 50% overhead, so a 50 megabit connection might give you 25 megabits of throughput.

Re:Will the wires catch on fire?

[Morgon]

Oldschool HDMI was 4.2 Gbit. The newer 2.0 spec is 18 GBit, which are almost certainly the most common now.

But you are correct (in spirit - we're talking Gbit, not GB) that the next gen, 2.1, claims to be 48Gbit, but a) they're not in wide enough use to test this argument (I don't know that any consumer gear has 2.1 yet), and b) you'd need to actually use that bandwidth (e.g. 4K/120, 8K), which again is not going to be common for some time.

It does look like HDMI 2.1 cables are thick enough to have decent shielding.

Re:Will the wires catch on fire?

[Anubis IV]

Though a bit of an oversimplification, USB4 is basically just a rebranding of Thunderbolt 3. Thunderbolt 3 already does 40Gbps and has been out now for a few years. I have yet to hear reports of cables spontaneously erupting in flame or whatnot, and though USB 3.x and TB3 cables are stiffer than USB 2 cables, I don't think they're swaddled in insulation to a crazy degree. If you're curious how this will work, look back over the documentation for TB3.

Re:Will the wires catch on fire?

[bluefoxlucid]

Unless USB4 cables will have a ton of insulation, to prevent the outside world from interfering with it. Or will it have more error checking thus this 40Gbs is just a theoretical speed, and it is actually much slower in real life, because it keeps on on having data loss.

You have to overcome miller capacitance in the cables, so the voltages are extremely-low.

What you do, you twist pairs of signal-carrying cables around each other, and you raise a signal cable by a few millivolts to signal. The signal pair will be e.g. 5mV apart. If you get EMI, then each cable will raise its voltage state equally, so you go from 0mV/5mV to 27mV/32mV. That's still 5mV, it's still signal, it's still clear.

Self-shielding.

Re:Will the wires catch on fire?

[tlhIngan]

Oldschool HDMI was 4.2 Gbit. The newer 2.0 spec is 18 GBit, which are almost certainly the most common now.

But you are correct (in spirit - we're talking Gbit, not GB) that the next gen, 2.1, claims to be 48Gbit, but a) they're not in wide enough use to test this argument (I don't know that any consumer gear has 2.1 yet), and b) you'd need to actually use that bandwidth (e.g. 4K/120, 8K), which again is not going to be common for some time.

It does look like HDMI 2.1 cables are thick enough to have decent shielding.

A few problems though. First, no one makes 48Gbps HDMI stuff. No transmitters, no receivers, heck, the certification tests don't exist yet. (And most of HDMI2.1 tests don't exist). The only tests that do exist are those that can be implemented right now - eARC, VRR (Variable Refresh Rate), etc. (And HDMI org doesn't want people referring to HDMI by revision number, but by feature support, because 48Gbps isn't needed yet while certain features of 2.1 already are (like the aforementioned eARC and VRR).

Second problem is that cable isn't certified - HDMI 2.0 cables are hard enough to make that the HDMI org now puts them under certification tests, and every passing cable puts on a special logo and sticker that shows it with a QR code to verify the results. (This is a good way to see who OEMs cables from whom, because the big players don't re-test, they just slap on the sticker from the company that makes the cables).

More info and example - https://www.hdmi.org/manufactu...

Though the label has changed - they added a manufacturer name to the text part of the sticker.

And it's on every cable, not on every shelf of cables or on the peg - every certified cable carries it so you can't cheat by mis-hanging cables or other things.

Re:Will the wires catch on fire?

[smprather]

Behold the magic of differential twisted-pair signaling. It's not 100% immune to the outside world, but damn close. Add some shielding, and a robust receiver circuit (like the world-beating(?) Cypress FX2LP USB2.0 receiver I designed), and you're good to go. Faster transmission can trigger a 2cd-order higher power effect in that send/receive circuits are typically lower noise when biased at higher currents. So the tighter eye diagram requirements of the higher speeds may trigger higher power in the transceivers to cope. Or not. I haven't done IC analog circuit design in a while, so I'm not sure how FinFETs compare to planar FETs WRT noise.

Re:Will the wires catch on fire?

[tlhIngan]

Though a bit of an oversimplification, USB4 is basically just a rebranding of Thunderbolt 3. Thunderbolt 3 already does 40Gbps and has been out now for a few years. I have yet to hear reports of cables spontaneously erupting in flame or whatnot, and though USB 3.x and TB3 cables are stiffer than USB 2 cables, I don't think they're swaddled in insulation to a crazy degree. If you're curious how this will work, look back over the documentation for TB3.

Except Thunderbolt requires active cabling, and always has from the first revisions. The cable ends contain little pre-emphasis and measurement chips to test out the cabling and compensate for various effects. And you can't get longer than about 6 feet or so before you must move to optical cabling (where the signal is converted to optical. Power is still carried by wires alongside the fiber)

Re:Will the wires catch on fire?

[Anonymous Coward]

nice anecdote, chris
where would you get a 1000 foot serial cable and where would you store it
"it still work"
your manager had the same odd crammar issues as you
that's odd
was this the same manager that wanted to crack you over your soft skull with a keyboard while you were taking all afternoon to troubleshoot a 15$ keyboard

Re:Will the wires catch on fire?

[Crash Dummy Redux]

I'm not creimer. If I was, so what?

Re:Will the wires catch on fire?

[Anonymous Coward]

>I Know, I know faster transmission, of data doesn't necessarily require more power. Just a higher frequency signals of the data.
It does actually. With everything else equal, higher frequencies do in fact require more power due to reactive components and parasitics.
Even ignoring reactive components, there's Landauer's principle (but it's a long time to get there)

Re:Will the wires catch on fire?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean creimer who is taking on Wreck It Ralph AND Casey Neistat this week?

Re: Will the wires catch on fire?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you were, than you are a fat fucking retard who needs to fuck off.

Re:Will the wires catch on fire?

[Anonymous Coward]

you'd have the same boring made-up anecdotes to share
you'd finally find someone as big a loser as you

Re:Will the wires catch on fire?

[Anonymous Coward]

"taking on"
ROFL
what a delusional loon with 71 viewers

Re:Will the wires catch on fire?

[Crash Dummy Redux]

Repeating the same answer every time I deny that I'm creimer doesn't make it true.

Re:Will the wires catch on fire?

[Anonymous Coward]

Really chris?
What year was this?
Because RS-232 serial isn't supposed to go beyond 50 feet. Beyond that you can send data farther by changing the composition (I believe capacitance is the primary limiter for most cable) of your cable and settling for lower speeds. Anyhow I can't say precisely what speeds you'll get but they would have been screwey enough that you couldn't dependably deploy SLIP and several stream transfer protocols would likely have repeated failures with this set up.
Just about any attempt to get fancy would probably end in random problems.

I find it unlikely that such a system would build suck a track record of dependability that anyone pointing out it's obvious problems would be told it's not broken.

Re:Will the wires catch on fire?

[rogoshen1]

yes, but what if your electrons aren't flowing in the right direction? how does monster get around that technical limitation/hurdle????

Re:Will the wires catch on fire?

[Crash Dummy Redux]

Really chris?

I'm not Chris.

What year was this?

Late 1980s.

Because RS-232 serial isn't supposed to go beyond 50 feet.

If you want the max speed at 19,200 baud. A 1,000 feet cable can run at 4,800 baud. For a 2,400 baud modem located 20 feet away, it worked just fine. That type of cable was for 500 feet or less runs for 9,600 baud between serial consoles and mainframe.

Re:Will the wires catch on fire?

[TaleWeaver]

I once pointed out to a manager that a 1,000-feet serial cable coiled up underneath the desk was unnecessary when a 20-feet cable could have connected the PC to the modem. He said it still work and that was that.

That is 20 times the maximum cable length of an RS232 cable! "Cable length is one of the most discussed items in RS232 world. The standard has a clear answer, the maximum cable length is 50 feet, or the cable length equal to a capacitance of 2500 pF." https://www.lammertbies.nl/com...

Re: Will the wires catch on fire?

[Anonymous Coward]

RS485 anybody

Re:Will the wires catch on fire?

[Anonymous Coward]

denying you're chris every time doesn't make it true, chris

Re:Will the wires catch on fire?

[Anonymous Coward]

amazing recall of detail for a 35 year old anecdote gris
i think gris is a nice new name for you
it sounds like grease don't you think

Re:Will the wires catch on fire?

[Crash Dummy Redux]

If you have read the rest of that link, you can increase cable distance with a low capacitance cable or decrease data speed. Not every cable in the real world is going to be at spec.

Re:Will the wires catch on fire?

[Anonymous Coward]

oh just give up
no one believes your made-up nonsense anecdotes gris
hey when I was in school in the 1980s I knew a guy with an Apple II with an external floppy with a 1000ft extender
I told him he just needed a foot long cable since the drive was a half foot away
i don't know why he spent so much money on buying a spool of twisted pair shielded ribbon cable from anixter
but he kept it under his desk

Re:Will the wires catch on fire?

[Anonymous Coward]

yes i designed a gigabit link 20 years ago with the hotlink chipset with 4 coax cables
this was around the time hippi was popular

Re:Will the wires catch on fire?

[Anonymous Coward]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Cryptofeces Lepidoptera Creimerus infestation is a serious problem. Not only are they capable of reproducing asexually like amoebas, they can also lay eggs hermaphroditically in unexpected places. They can disguise eggs as something useful to fool the unaware, sometimes pretending to be a haiku author, blogger, vlogger, or IT closet cleaner.

Very dangerous. They can seemingly reproduce out of the cosmic background radiation, even if you step on twelve of them, there's always one you miss.

Don't be fooled by the C. Lepidoptera Creimerus's innocuous, rolly-polly, and almost friendly appearance; despite its great size, stupid demeanor, and bedraggled toothless appearance, they have the hardiness of a tardigrade.

Only a concerted, targeted downmodding campaign has been shown effective in controlling this dangerous pest.

Experience shows that stopping such a campaign leads to C. Lepidoptera Creimerus returning within days.

Don't let it happen again!
--
the biggest looser on Slashdot

Re:Will the wires catch on fire?

[Anonymous Coward]

Chris' case is getting worse, he spends all day replying to himself as AC or using so called "sock puppet accounts" on Slashdot and now, on YouTube and other forums in order to grab attention!

Chris had an agenda to post anything he felt like on Slashdot which did not work well because it was based on his false beliefs that he had an infinite number of karma points as he wrote here several times.

Several people here explained to Chris that karma maxed out at some level like 50 or so but Chris kept on insisting that his python script had confirmed that he had millions of karma points!

Oh well, as I wrote before: "It isn't Chris' fault if he is the way he is. We do the best we can do with him and he is partially integrated into society. We try to cure his abnormal need for attention but he is kind of stubborn and won't listen to anybody."

For the valuable /. users that might already have read the following, please note that there is an important update.

IMPORTANT UPDATE:
Special Education for the Santa Clara County Office of Education has invested money to buy Chris a new chair:
http://www.keynamics.com/image...

Information about Christopher Dale Reimer and his type of autistic people:

Chris' type autistic people have obsessions about things normal people don't care. For example, Chris went haywire when he realized that there was a penny missing in his pocket change.

To calm him down, one of our educator pretended to have found it on the floor and gave a penny to him.

Chris' condition went even worse because he realized it wasn't the same penny!

Chris has an obsession with budgeting every penny. He doesn't understand that most people do not budget to the penny and have a flexible amount they allow for miscellaneous items.

I am Nancy Guerrero and I am Director of Special Education for the Santa Clara County Office of Education. We use Chris' (a.k.a. creimer,cdreimer) picture in our document because he is the hardest case we have ever had to handle:
http://www.sccoe.org/depts/stu...

Our artists were inspired by the low carb diet that Christopher follows scrupulously for the small lunch box and by the picture linked below for the rest. I am sure that you will notice the similarities such as the bump on the side of his chest and more:
https://ibb.co/gVad65

Please be easy on Christopher although, I am aware that some of our staff handling Chris post joke comments here and obvoiusly, the Santa Clara County Office of Education disapprove that behavior vehemently:
http://ibb.co/mRVSaG

But it isn't Chris' fault if he is the way he is. We do the best we can do with him and he is partially integrated into society. We try to cure his abnormal need for attention but he is kind of stubborn and won't listen to anybody.

Thank You dear users,
---
Nancy Guerrero
Director
Special Education
Santa Clara County Office of Education

Re:Will the wires catch on fire?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks Nancy!

But it seems like Chris is a victim here. He keeps on reading those SEO, youtube algorithm, basically get rich quick sites. He doesn't realize that he is the fish for them since they make money off him with their own schemes. Then, he wastes his time trying to implement what those sites suggest and he ends up disturbing people.

I mean, those crooks tell Chris that he has to build personal brands and he goes on the Internet and makes everything about himself public!

I believe we should bring this up at our next meeting. He might not be our only patient victim of such on-line abuse.

https://www.researchgate.net/p...

--
Silvia Bunge
Psychology Department
University of California, Berkeley

Re:Will the wires catch on fire?

[Anonymous Coward]

CROFLOL! This could explain why creimer loves to impersonate 30 year old women so much.

Re:Will the wires catch on fire?

[Anonymous Coward]

no i mean the creimer who was on american idol 11 years ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
he was there with his separated at birth parasitic twin
after the loss creimer ate his twin out of frustration
to this day creimer will deny ever having a parasitic twin

Re:Will the wires catch on fire?

[Anonymous Coward]

there is no miller capacitance in cables
it's just plain old capacitance
miller capacitance happens in active devices only
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
you are either misinformed or enjoy using jargon incorrectly probably to impress
you don't"overcome" capacitance any more than you "overcome" gravity
it's
always
there

Re:Will the wires catch on fire?

[kqs]

I've seen many out-of-spec cables work. But also, RS232 is hardly the only serial protocol out there; I've installed RS422 cables to connect equipment on opposite sides of a football stadium, all well within spec.

Re:Will the wires catch on fire?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who knew that Chris worked on serial consoles and mainframes as a teenager 35 years ago? Unless, of course, this person isn't Chris.

Re:Will the wires catch on fire?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except Thunderbolt requires active cabling

So does High speed usb.

Re:Will the wires catch on fire?

[Anonymous Coward]

I recently bought a 4k 43 inch monitor for something like 600 USD to be able to have a large Emacs window.

I think I now reached the limit I would want for physical screen size, but I'd like to have double the resolution ("retina") for crisper text in my next monitor. So personally I'm glad they're working on the standards to reach that. I don't want to pay 6000 USD for niche gear.

Re: Will the wires catch on fire?

[Anonymous Coward]

You laugh, but usb-c / 3.1 can throughput 3 Amps. Given the size of the cables and connectors, it seems a bit much...

Re:Will the wires catch on fire?

[thegarbz]

Oversimplification, but yes this is one of several tricks that engineers uses to improve signal quality. Another commonly used one is ... shielding. In many cases you would use both. A good example of a cable that uses both is ... a USB 3.0 cable.

Re:Will the wires catch on fire?

[Crash Dummy Redux]

The problem wasn't an out of spec cable. It was some idiot dropping 1,000 feet on the floor and adding connectors for a 20 feet run. I can't tell you how many times I pulled out a 100 foot cable when I expected a 10 foot cable because someone didn't have any 10 foot cables.

Re:Will the wires catch on fire?

[Anonymous Coward]

type of cable was for 500 feet or less runs for 9,600 baud between serial consoles and mainframe.

No you said it was a PC that was attached to a modem at a desk. You could have said computer but you didn't.
See:

1,000-feet serial cable coiled up underneath the desk was unnecessary when a 20-feet cable could have connected the PC to the modem.

For a 2,400 baud modem located 20 feet away, it worked just fine.

So one day it's a pc under a desk another day it's connecting to a mainframe
Just admit; once you saw a cable that was longer than it needed to and so you made up a good ole days story, hoping to get nostalgia points.
Why do you karma whore still? Do you have plans to get like 20 high karma sockpuppets so you can finally get the word out about your redtube channel and great amazon deals?

Re:Will the wires catch on fire?

[Anonymous Coward]

One minute it's a cable connecting a PC to a modem

I once pointed out to a manager that a 1,000-feet serial cable coiled up underneath the desk was unnecessary when a 20-feet cable could have connected the PC to the modem. He said it still work and that was that.

Really chris?

I'm not Chris.

What year was this?

Late 1980s.

Because RS-232 serial isn't supposed to go beyond 50 feet.

If you want the max speed at 19,200 baud. A 1,000 feet cable can run at 4,800 baud [db9-pinout.com]. For a 2,400 baud modem located 20 feet away, it worked just fine. That type of cable was for 500 feet or less runs for 9,600 baud between serial consoles and mainframe.

Then it's a modem 20 feet away in the late 80s

Who knew that Chris worked on serial consoles and mainframes as a teenager 35 years ago? Unless, of course, this person isn't Chris.

Yes you would have been 18 or 19 which is old enough to do that sort of work. We know that at the time, your dad had convinced you to do dirty gray collar work so that he wouldn't have to look his blue collar friends in the eyes and tell them his kid is doing pussy work in an office like a secretary. Same dad that let them put you in special ed where a mutated gorilla bashed your teeth in and then he didn't bother replacing them. That was the last day that creimer was treated like a normal person for the next 40-some years. Dad never seeing fit to sue the shit out of everyone and get you a set of implants. Those had to have been brand new adult teeth.

So that doesn't make sense... unless you once saw a cable that was too long, and then you made up a story about it when you didn't have anything good to post!!
Why is it you still karma whore? Do you plan on unleashing an army of high karma sockpuppets one day to "promote your brand" all the way to long tail retirement?

Re:Will the wires catch on fire?

[Crash Dummy Redux]

Chris must have hurt you really bad for you to be this obessive with him. Please get help and stop harassing me.

Re:Will the wires catch on fire?

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah right and your obsession with casey neistat is very healthy

Re:Will the wires catch on fire?

[Anonymous Coward]

You know chris I had a thought. You said you're not chris and you're intentionally baiting us. That pretty much shuts down any claims of "harassment" especially since we don't follow you offsite. You willingly come here to "troll" us.
If you are indeed a troll then you're impersonating chris! IANAL but I believe that impersonating chris while he has left slashdot to reinvent himself on youtube qualifies as harassment!. IANAL but I'm pretty sure impersonation is a form of harassment.
  So please mr not chris stop trolling us and dirtying chris's good name!
Stop harassing creimer! Impersonating him so that every man with a troll bone in his body runs him off slashdot!
Oh you master troll, it must come so easy that you don't know how bad it must be for chris.. being told to leave, or go away, not getting to partake in slashdot's lively community of nearly 1000 posts a day. Come on man think what you've done to chris!

Re:Will the wires catch on fire?

[bluefoxlucid]

SATA and eSATA are the same interface, but not the same cable. SATA is inside a high-EMI envelope within a computer casing; eSATA is exposed to less electromagnetic interference.

SATA doesn't have shielding; eSATA requires shielding.

eSATA will work without shielding; so will USB 3.0. Both will also emit large amounts of EMI outside the shielded envelope, interfering with other electronic devices and violating FCC regulations.

USB 3.0 cables aren't shielded from outside electronics; outside electronics are shielded from USB 3.0 cables.

Re:Will the wires catch on fire?

[thegarbz]

SATA and eSATA are the same interface, but not the same cable. SATA is inside a high-EMI envelope within a computer casing; eSATA is exposed to less electromagnetic interference.
SATA doesn't have shielding; eSATA requires shielding.

You description of the cables is right but the motivation behind them is quite different. Let's address them:

Firstly the EMI envelope within a PC is controlled and far lower than what you compare it to. Short lengths of very low current very low voltage signals at high frequencies radiate but do so poorly. On the flipside you have eSATA, a standard which will be routed directly next to unshielded LV power cables of multiple devices using a standard that allows double the length of cable, and will typically use 3-4x the cable length as well. Running a long cable out the back of your computer is far worse for interference on a differential signal than running a short one inside your computer and hence eSATA requires additional shielding.

Of course there are situations where SATA devices are exposed to excessive EMI which is precisely why shielded SATA cables are actually available, but inside a standard computer isn't such a nasty environment.

USB 3.0 cables aren't shielded from outside electronics; outside electronics are shielded from USB 3.0 cables.

And that is not remotely true. The data lines are twisted to prevent radiation and have been for a long time. The signaling frequency hasn't changed appreciably between standards (as in appreciably to the ability for a 1m long cable to radiate as an antenna, which it barely is capable of doing at the frequencies being talked about) either between the standards where shielding was required and where they were not, and in fact USB 3.0 all things being equal would be less likely to cause external interference than USB 2.0 based on signalling alone.

Mind you this is academic since the shielding requirements of a USB cable are very low to ensure they remain flexible.

Re:Will the wires catch on fire?

[bluefoxlucid]

Firstly the EMI envelope within a PC is controlled and far lower than what you compare it to. Short lengths of very low current very low voltage signals at high frequencies radiate but do so poorly.

The PC envelope is specifically designed to be an EMI shield due to EMI generated by the PC. It's an FCC compliance point.

And that is not remotely true. The data lines are twisted to prevent radiation and have been for a long time.

Twisting the data lines causes them to self-shield against near-end cross-talk (for round-trip pairs e.g. Ethernet, they'll have opposing magnetic fields which self-cancel), and also causes LVDS pairs to remain at the same base voltage when acting as antenna (these pairs don't self-shield against NEXT). It doesn't prevent them from radiating outward in an LVDS setup.

and in fact USB 3.0 all things being equal would be less likely to cause external interference than USB 2.0 based on signalling alone.

Oh really?

With the HDD connected, the noise floor in the 2.4 GHz band is raised by nearly 20 dB. This could impact wireless device sensitivity significantly.

With a wireless mouse, performance is fine at 2, 3, and 5 feet. Attach a USB 3.0 hard drive (no writing to it) and the mouse is fine at 2 feet, but lags at 3 feet and 5 feet. Modifying the USB 3.0 connector at the host device itself improves performance of the wireless mouse.

Here's the thing: wifi signals don't cause autism; they just cause other wifi signals to fail. That's true when the signal isn't even a wifi signal, but is in the same band. USB 3.0 emits EMI in that band.

"...the mother of all wired connectivity options"

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like USB 3 was supposed to be, and 2, and even the first as that's why it was called Universal

DMA

[Anonymous Coward]

What about DMA attacks?

Re:DMA

[DontBeAMoran]

Never mind that, what about IRQ attacks?

Re:DMA

[Anonymous Coward]

Never mind that, what about exclamation point attacks?

#TPformyBunghole

Re: DMA

[Anonymous Coward]

Mostly 95% of the World Wide Web is not under attack for the most part. If the promised land of USB is under attack it is just a honey pot test probably. Ask any IT Pro how exactly the standards work and you might be boringly surprised. Posting as AC for no good reason at all. Or maybe I can milk anonymity for the entire day

Re:DMA

[bill_mcgonigle]

What about DMA attacks?

That's exactly the right question. Possibly they've got this worked out with TB authorization - supposedly the Windows from last April and boltd on linux do the right thing.

We've heard that Macintosh still allows stealing network traffic with DMA attacks, but maybe they can fix their IOMMU implementation. I do think Apple has the capability to fix it, but it's also possible that some of the early Thunderbolt machines don't get updates anymore.

I will be surprised if neither of the current implementations that we think are doing the right thing never have a vulnerability found. The boltd guy is on here sometimes - I hope he can talk about how he has isolated the security surface to the smallest piece of code and has, maybe formally, had that code proven for correctness.

It's worth doing if we're ever going to get high performance peripherals. I don't know if computer science is advanced enough now to do it right, but we should see if it's possible. With XPoint RAM this is going to be even more important. Heck, you might be able to bring your state with you from desktop to desktop using your phone as a storage backend before long (BTW, @USPTO take notice).

Re:DMA

[Anonymous Coward]

Possibly this story is a bit lame and doesn't clarify the difference between USB 4 and Thunderbolt, because Intel didn't want to elaborate.
So, it may be that USB 4 is just 40 Gbps USB 3.x. If so it doesn't support PCIe like real Thunderbolt does, unless you have a port that's both Thunderbolt and USB 4.

Sup dawg I herd you like interfaces ...

[Anonymous Coward]

So we put Thunderbolt inside USB inside Thunderbolt, so you can be compatible while being compatible!

Next week: How to route it all over Displayport Ethernet! Tune in!

Re: Sup dawg I herd you like interfaces ...

[Anonymous Coward]

You have that backwards. The hardware is thunderbolt. USB 4 is just a protocol running on top of it.

Naming

[Kokuyo]

So double the speed of 3.2... But which 3.2? Will it be equal to 3.2 2x2 or twice that?

Re:Naming

[Anonymous Coward]

It's USB 3.2 2x2x2.

Re:Naming

[Seq]

It will be marketed as "Ludicrous Speed USB"

Re:Naming

[Kokuyo]

At this point, I find that to be the only acceptable move forward to be honest.

Re:Naming

[LostIt1278]

I see what you did there. Great SB reference.

Re:Naming

[Anonymous Coward]

the next version of that is going to be marketed as "faster speed usb"

Re:Naming

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you mean 3.2 High speed or 3.2 Full speed?

Re:Naming

[DontBeAMoran]

And the next one after that is going to be named "Plaid USB", obviously.

Re:Naming

[Hognoxious]

They should have said "fuck everything!" and gone straight to 5.

Re:Naming

[Anonymous Coward]

6.4

Re:Naming

[mandark1967]

Did you mean 3.2 High speed or 3.2 Full speed?

It's USB 3.2 Electric Bugaloo you insensitive clod

Re:Naming

[Anonymous Coward]

There's precedent for that:
https://www.theonion.com/fuck-everything-were-doing-five-blades-1819584036
https://boingboing.net/2005/09/14/gillettes-5blade-raz.html

Re:Naming

[fbobraga]

4x4 MPFI Turbo automatic

Re:Naming

[fintux]

They should just call it USB 4.2 gen 1 for future-proofness so they don't need to rename it first from USB 4.0 to USB 4.1 gen 1 and then to USB 4.2 gen 1.

Latency?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bandwidth is all very good but past a certain point, latency is of more interest. John Carmack's Tech Talk went into quite some detail. So, wow us with the headline figure but it's not the whole story.

Re:Latency?

[bluefoxlucid]

The latency for USB 3 is something like 30 microseconds. Some people are asking how anyone achieves that because they're only able to get as low as 60-70 microseconds.

That's like 250-550 signals per 60fps frame. Your input lag is 1/500th of an NTSC frame.

Highway to Hell!

[Anonymous Coward]

And a complementary highway straight to your bus!

Re:Highway to Hell!

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that there's a Highway to Hell but only a Stairway to Heaven says a lot about anticipated traffic volume.

I'm tired of buying new shit

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have to change the port type...if it isn't backwards compatible...I don't want it.

What the fuck happened to "just works"?

[Anonymous Coward]

USB-C and presumably USB 4.0 are clusterfucks of compatibility.

I no longer know if a cable supports "everything", despite having the same fucking connectors. Some cables even have active electronics in them *and provisions for updating the cable's firmware*. Yeah. Cables with firmware. What a great idea.

Then there's things like the USB PD spec. Just give this a read:

https://twitter.com/whitequark/status/1035658186127237123

What the fuck. What in the flying fuck is that? Is that what technological progress looks like these days? Because I remember a point in time where things were getting better and even more simpler, but not so utterly fucking obfuscated that the power delivery protocols required 600 pages of documentation to define.

I grew up with USB 1.1 and USB 2.0. That stuff was so brain dead even my Grandma could figure it out (and she did). The whole cable-only-fits-one-way thing didn't really matter- I've never actually encountered anyone stupid enough to physically ram the cable into the socket until it fit the wrong way. Sure, it's annoying if you're trying to blindly plug something in, but at least we were still dealing with dumb copper cables that had no smarts built into them.

I honestly don't know what USB has become, but it is literally insane. I've never seen anything like it- just so you can plug whatever you want into a magical socket and maybe it'll do things like HDMI output (or maybe not, depends on the cable/dongle/device). What happened to having dedicated HDMI plugs instead? When did people become so adverse to fucking ports that they said "let's cram all this shit that has no fucking business being in a single connector... into a single connector"?

Some days I wonder if technology has become so utterly complicated and obfuscated that there's no way it'll ever work properly. There will always be some edge case that bites you in the ass and the only solution will be "don't do that", because so-and-so couldn't get their shit together and their controller firmware is buggy, or there's a bizarre interaction between the host OS and that particular revision of USB controller, etc, etc.

Re:What the fuck happened to "just works"?

[mccalli]

It's just cashing in on the retro craze. If you were nostalgic for SCSI, wide SCSI, ultrawide SCSI, I-can't-believe-it's-not-SCSI and my-god-why-can't-I-connect-this-SCSI-to-that-SCSI et al., then USB is the standard for you.

Re: What the fuck happened to "just works"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bunch of flakes think they can just use scsi anywhere even while walking

Re:What the fuck happened to "just works"?

[Anonymous Coward]

So you pronounce those SeCSI or SCuSi?

Re:"...the mother of all wired connectivity option

[ledow]

I don't think the "universal" is undeserved.

You used to have to have parallel and serial and PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports on your computer.

Now you can run almost anything - even direct hard drives, network adaptors, displays, telephones, modem, Wifi, 4G, etc. all of the same USB bus. To the point that machines can easily be supplied with nothing more than power and USB and still be fully functional. That's pretty "universal" to me.

The problem comes when people come up with competing standards - like Thunderbolt - which aren't part of the spec where your only option is to fold it into USB and basically have it be "Thunderbolt over USB". Fact is... it's universal enough that they can do that.

USB is pretty amazing. USB2 was just - to the amateur eye - faster versions of USB.

I can still plug in a mouse from the 1990's into a modern laptop and it "just works". It's only the oddball devices (which a universal specification allows - someone can easily make all kinds of nutty things that rely on OS-specific drivers, etc.) that don't and usually only because of issues unrelated to the USB transport itself.

USB is pretty damn good for what it is, and underappreciated nowadays.

USB 4 will once again ...

[Errol backfiring]

And USB 4 will once again be obsolete by tomorrow, when TSB 27 will be announced. TSB is not a typo, but Temporary Serial Bus fits the name so much better.

Re:USB 4 will once again ...

[Wookie Monster]

Isn't each new USB standard backwards compatible with the old one? If my next computer only has USB4 ports, I'm pretty sure my keyboard and mouse will still work with it. USB improvements aren't like switching from Betamax to VHS.

Re:USB 4 will once again ...

[guruevi]

The cables and controllers sure aren't compatible, you need a converter from USB-x to USB-2 which typically includes a full controller on-chip. Even USB-3 to USB-2, the controllers aren't backwards compatible and thus older software that talks to OHCI/EHCI won't talk to xHCI or beyond.

Re:USB 4 will once again ...

[mlyle]

???

> The cables and controllers sure aren't compatible, you need a converter from USB-x to USB-2 which typically includes a full controller on-chip.

USB3 type A has a few extra contacts, but you can plug USB1.0 type A cables into it and use USB1.0 devices, or anything inbetween...

> Even USB-3 to USB-2, the controllers aren't backwards compatible and thus older software that talks to OHCI/EHCI won't talk to xHCI or beyond.

Yah, you need an appropriate driver and OS that knows how to talk to xHCI, but actual end-user software that just wants to do USB2 things it looks identical.

That was my point.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you though, Captain Obvious! :D

Re: That was my point.

[Anonymous Coward]

You are most welcome Mayor Ass sir!

Should I inform General Failure or get Private Opinion to do it?

Correction

[Anonymous Coward]

USB 4 can support Thunderbolt, but it doesn't have to. I know this is slightly pedantic but what does it mean? If you walk up to a USB-C port, you still don't know what the thing is capable of. Maybe Thunderbolt, maybe not Thunderbolt. Maybe 100 watts of charging, maybe not. Same with DP.

Re:Correction

[Anonymous Coward]

They have a little "lightning bolt" logo to help you figure this out. Of course you have to figure out whether this means USB, or Apple Lightning, or "charging port" or USB-PD or Thunderbolt.

Complexity is awesome!

[ebonum]

One cord to rule them all!

What I really need to know is if it will support 3 phase 480V to run my HAAS CNC?

Re:Complexity is awesome!

[Anonymous Coward]

One cord to rule them all!

What's interesting is that one cord doesn't rule them all. Play with USB-C enough and you'll find that there are active cables and passive cables and USB only cables (not electronically marked cable) and some work for some things and not others and it's not intuitive. So you decide to just get the best cable out there and be done with it, but then you'll find that Thunderbolt and DP work fine, but USB does not connect at the highest possible speeds. That's by design. You just can't just pick up a cable and use it.

Re:Complexity is awesome!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but only very briefly.

Network and storage over USB4

[mnmn]

At these speed, USB4 stands to be way faster than most ethernet out there. 10gbit ethernet has been taking forever due to SPF power issues and manufacturing costs. USB4 with dedicated chip/channels would be twice the speed of full duplex ethernet 10gbit.

However it is not quite being designed for true network and storage connectivity. The need is there but the buffers/latency might hurt it a bit.

I wonder if we'll see dedicated PCIE cards with dedicated USB4 chips so we can have nonblocking shorter-distance network connectivity better than gigabit ethernet

Or even USB-over-fiber next. Now that's a thought.

Re:Network and storage over USB4

[Anonymous Coward]

Thunderbolt supports networking natively since 2014.

Thunderbolt was also originally supposed to use optical cables but apparently it's too hard.

Re:Network and storage over USB4

[Freischutz]

At these speed, USB4 stands to be way faster than most ethernet out there. 10gbit ethernet has been taking forever due to SPF power issues and manufacturing costs. USB4 with dedicated chip/channels would be twice the speed of full duplex ethernet 10gbit. However it is not quite being designed for true network and storage connectivity. The need is there but the buffers/latency might hurt it a bit. I wonder if we'll see dedicated PCIE cards with dedicated USB4 chips so we can have nonblocking shorter-distance network connectivity better than gigabit ethernet Or even USB-over-fiber next. Now that's a thought.

At these speed, USB4 stands to be way faster than most ethernet out there. 10gbit ethernet has been taking forever due to SPF power issues and manufacturing costs. USB4 with dedicated chip/channels would be twice the speed of full duplex ethernet 10gbit. However it is not quite being designed for true network and storage connectivity. The need is there but the buffers/latency might hurt it a bit. I wonder if we'll see dedicated PCIE cards with dedicated USB4 chips so we can have nonblocking shorter-distance network connectivity better than gigabit ethernet Or even USB-over-fiber next. Now that's a thought.

<sarcasm> Yeah, thanks to Tnunderbolt, one of those crap-ass ideas Apple came up with and never amounted to anything because they never became 'mainstream PC tech'. </sarcasm>

Presumably all those Apple haters out there will maintain full self-consistency by boycotting any hardware incorporating USB4 since it now integrates EEEEEVIL Apple tech!

Re:Network and storage over USB4

[Anonymous Coward]

Or even USB-over-fiber next. Now that's a thought.

Already done: https://www.corning.com/optical-cables-by-corning/worldwide/en/products/usb-optical-cables.html

Re:Network and storage over USB4

[Anonymous Coward]

Thunderbolt was also originally supposed to use optical cables but apparently it's too hard.

Corning sells them on Amazon for Thunderbolt 2 so it looks like optical is supported. They are pretty pricey so I'm guessing the price point wasn't justified and that's why it didn't take off.

Re:Network and storage over USB4

[PPH]

At these speed, USB4 stands to be way faster than most ethernet out there.

Until someone plugs a slow device into the USB bus. And your 40 Gbps network has to wait for those mouse data packets. This may be why vendors aren't in a rush to adopt USB for every application. Lots of pissed off customers because they don't understand that it's the old generation junk that they keep plugged in that slows down their fanc external hard drive.

Re:Network and storage over USB4

[Mordaximus]

Presumably all those Apple haters out there will maintain full self-consistency by boycotting any hardware incorporating USB4 since it now integrates EEEEEVIL Apple tech!

Hopefully they know Thunderbolt (Light Peak) is an Intel thing.

Re:Network and storage over USB4

[The-Ixian]

Looks like Thunderbolt was developed by Intel with collaboration from Apple. Not the other way around....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Network and storage over USB4

[thereddaikon]

Using USB for networking sounds like a horrible idea. The cables will be short and expensive, the infrastructure a mess and 40G ethernet (yes it is a thing) can go up to 30 meters for copper whereas copper Thunderbolt (USB 4) is limited to 3. So its inferior and pointless. Cat8 is $40 for 20m while TB3 rated USB-C is $20 for 0.5 meters. Ethernet is considerably cheaper at $2 a meter versus $40 a meter. Unless you mean making USB 4 to ethernet adapters so you can ditch the ethernet port on your machine. I definitely see that happening. Apple already has done that. I don't like it, because it quickly leads to a world of dongles but I don't see why it wouldn't carry over to PC's as well.

Re:Network and storage over USB4

[Anonymous Coward]

I can see desktop PCs moving to 2.5Gbps or 5Gbps Ethernet eventually. Does just require 1x lane of PCIe 2.0 or 3.0, same can't be said for USB 40 Gbps! At this point even USB 3.1 10 Gbps is something of a market failure (might get common on the next Intel generation if built into lower end chipsets)

Re:Network and storage over USB4

[_merlin]

I've been using 10Gbps Ethernet for a decade, and 40Gbps Ethernet (effectively four bonded lanes of 10Gbps) for half a decade. 10Gbps NICs are cheap now. You can run far longer distances than USB, and switches, routers, etc. are readily available. USB3 isn't going to replace Ethernet in the datacentre any time soon.

Re:"...the mother of all wired connectivity option

[thereddaikon]

USB bus

Universal Serial Bus bus?

Re:"...the mother of all wired connectivity option

[Anonymous Coward]

You have this backwards. This is USB over thunderbolt. Thunderbolt is the hardware. USB is a protocol that runs on top of thunderbolt.

Be stuck with shit on board video? so no amd high

[Joe_Dragon]

Be stuck with shit on board video? so no amd high end cpu's?? Need an video loop back cable?

the usb to e-net box will need an Chip and usb max

[Joe_Dragon]

the usb to e-net box will need an Chip and 40 will max out the usb bus.

Also in servers needs to be cpu pci-e bus not stacked off of the PCH.

40 Gbps on a 40 Gbps cable?

[scourfish]

Well this is some seriously impressive backwards compatibility.

It's not technology.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the same thing as those pictures of how spider webs look if you give the spider various drugs.

Everyone is knowingly and unknowingly ingesting so many hard personality-altering drugs, it's not even funny anymore. Even the dams fish are high on several drugs at once.
Half the kids take drugs to "enhance" their ability to ram data into their brains for school, and the other half take them too but official and prescribed.
The entire tech and media industry snort cocaine, take LSD and throw everything into their top hatches that makes them more like the "perfect" corporate robots / psychopaths.

I'm not surprised at all, that everythig is going insane and then down the shitter.
IMHO it's a good thing, if it means it will be over sooner.

Re:"...the mother of all wired connectivity option

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes yes, 50 different connectors, 50 different wiring, 50 different except same versions. And it does not even work like serial or paraller ports did, timing is not guaranteed.

too bad the usb c female connectors last ~ 1yr

[Anonymous Coward]

I have had 2 phones with usb c now (nexus 6p and xaomi mi max 2), the usb c port has lasted about 1 year before getting loose and having to be propped in a certain way to connect, It is not a good port in that respect. I wish they would make a better solution.

Re:too bad the usb c female connectors last ~ 1yr

[DontBeAMoran]

And yet here we are with two decades old hardware that still have perfectly functional USB type A ports.

Re:too bad the usb c female connectors last ~ 1yr

[Anonymous Coward]

I have had 2 phones with usb c now (nexus 6p and xaomi mi max 2), the usb c port has lasted about 1 year before getting loose and having to be propped in a certain way to connect, It is not a good port in that respect. I wish they would make a better solution.

Clean the lint out of it.

Seriously.

Re: too bad the usb c female connectors last ~ 1yr

[Anonymous Coward]

the young designers look at me strange when I say that I'm happier with my laptop with 3 usb-a connections instead of a newer laptop with just one or two usb-c connections - they prefer non-stop annual change - even the reviewers on Ars bitch about "heavy" laptops (but like the long battery life -- the non-stop, no-QA change for the sake of change is stupid -- I still buy the same brand of underwear that I did 40 years ago -- I'd be perfectly content buying Dell 5570 and iPhone 6se every 10 years for the rest of my life if that were possible

Re: too bad the usb c female connectors last ~ 1yr

[Anonymous Coward]

and there it is... why design a laptop with many reliable usb-A ports when you can build a non-upgradable laptop with only one or two usb-C ports with a short life-span -- so much agile junk

Re: too bad the usb c female connectors last ~ 1yr

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd be perfectly content buying Dell 5570 and iPhone 6se every 10 years for the rest of my life if that were possible

Just buy a stack of refurbished ones now. If you don't get through the stack by the time you die, your heirs can sell the rest to other masochists for a nice profit.

Re: "...the mother of all wired connectivity optio

[Anonymous Coward]

A tour of the factory should clear up any confusion about numbers

Re:"...the mother of all wired connectivity option

[Anonymous Coward]

USB is pretty damn good for what it is, and underappreciated nowadays.

Still not real time, and connection is way too fragile, the littlest bump, and !@#$... lost carrier

Re: "...the mother of all wired connectivity optio

[houghi]

Delivering power over USB is a thing for pprtables, so you could have USB 4.0 on each and every device. Perhaps only external power on desktops, servers snd monitors.

Universal Security Bugs

[squiggleslash]

Pretty early on we saw problems with USB being a little too universal, as it became obvious that it's a bad idea to allow someone to plug something in that can be both a storage device and a keyboard (it doesn't take much imagination to see how that can be a security problem.)

Now we're upping the ante a little and allowing USB devices direct access to memory (yeah, really, that's PCI's whole dealio, it's literally the only reason PCI exists. And the big deal with this is it's PCI over USB.)

This is good... why?

Re:Universal Security Bugs

[bluefoxlucid]

as it became obvious that it's a bad idea to allow someone to plug something in that can be both a storage device and a keyboard (it doesn't take much imagination to see how that can be a security problem.)

We used to have key-capture devices like that to slip between an AT keyboard and the port.

There's a reason I described voting machine standards in which no physical electrical port may be accessible between polling begin and end of polling day after generating proof of ballot set. We're going to have to go into glorious battle to force vendors to accept these standards, but I'm ready for that.

Just great.

[bjwest]

So now I need to buy another fucking cable.

Re:Just great.

[Chelloveck]

So now I need to buy another fucking cable.

Correct. And it will have USB-C connectors so it will look identical to a USB 3.2 cable next to it in your parts drawer. And since the 3.2 cable will probably work, albeit at a lower speed, good luck ever figuring out which is which. Yay standards?

Re:Just great.

[thegarbz]

So now I need to buy another fucking cable.

No you don't. The first device you buy which needs this will come with the cable.

Seriously who has ever bought a USB cable. Weird.

Re:Just great.

[thegarbz]

Yes yay standards. I can't find my USB 3.2 cable so I can just use my thunderbolt cable. That's what standards allow.

If you have a problem with the confusion why would you suffer by leaving obsolete crap lying around. You can just thunderbolt the world :)

Re:Just great.

[Chelloveck]

Ha! I still have DB25 RS232 cables lying around, and I'm pretty sure I could dig up a null modem to go with them. Like I'm not going to eventually end up with every generation USB cable ever made...

How many flavours?

[ilsaloving]

To empower consumers, USB4 will come in a variety of new flavours:
-USB4
-USB4 gen 1.5
-USB gen pi
-USB4 2x2
-USB4 4x4
-USB4 4x4 /w ABS
-USB4 /w cheese
-USB4 ultra graphics pro turbo
-USB4 with kung-fu action grip

Of course, you have no idea what particular flavour your cable will be and if it will be compatible with the devices you are connecting, but hey, it's progress!

Re:How many flavours?

[bluefoxlucid]

I'm hoping they move entirely to Type-C and establish HDMI-over-type-C, audio accessory mode, Ethernet alternative mode, and high-speed charging in the base standard.

Re:How many flavours?

[heson]

They will probably include some cost saving variants.
usb4-swift = usb 1.0
usb4-quick = usb 1.1
usb4-brisk = usb 2.0
usb4-express = usb 3.0
usb4-hasty = 3.1
usb-4-dashing = 3.2

Re:How many flavours?

[Anonymous Coward]

x2

Re:How many flavours?

[Anonymous Coward]

And if you got a big ATX tower shit will hang out of the 0.5 foot cables with weight supported on the C connectors.

Re:How many flavours?

[fbobraga]

you missed USB4 Electric Boogaloo

Oh Boy.

[Anonymous Coward]

More to learn for the A+ exam. Oh Wait, it will probably be five years before anything comes out.

Re:"...the mother of all wired connectivity option

[Miamicanes]

My main complaint with folding Thunderbolt into USB is the fact that it opens the door for asshole manufacturers like Apple to turn around and make laptops with a single fucking USB port, then expect consumers to go out and buy an ungodly expensive hub to unwrap everything.

In the beginning, there was DisplayPort. Using it with multiple displays required an expensive hub, but you could also use it with a cheap passive adapter cable to connect a single HDMI display. And it was good.

Then came Thunderbolt. Thunderbolt was multiplexed into DisplayPort. In theory, using the port for BOTH Thunderbolt AND DisplayPort required a UNGODLY expensive hub, but in reality, the only thing anyone cared about connecting via Thunderbolt was an external video card that had a DisplayPort or multiple HDMI ports of its own, so you could skip the expensive hub since you were still only connecting a single device to the computer itself using the computer's single DisplayPort port. And it was still good.

Then someone got the idea of multiplexing DisplayPort into USB. At first, it seemed like an OK idea... you could still use a cheap adapter cable to connect a single Thunderbolt eGPU to one of the ports, and use a $15 USB hub to connect things to the remaining USB port(s). After some nervous concern, it was still good.

Then Apple decided to Boldly Innovate, and sell laptops with a single USB port that needs a $500 hub if you want to use BOTH Thunderbolt (or DisplayPort) AND USB peripherals, and other manufacturers quickly followed just because they all blindly follow every stupid trend Apple comes up with. And it really, totally, fucking SUCKED.

Condensing everything -- PCIe, video, and USB -- into a single port that needs an expensive hub is OK when you're talking about a device like a phone that has extremely limited space for external expansion ports AND where using external peripherals is itself an extreme, rare edge case... but doing it with something like a LAPTOP where there's MORE than enough room for a half dozen ports, and would add only a few cents to the manufacturing cost, is just plan mean and user-hostile.

Yeah, combo hubs will probably be cheap SOMEDAY... but in the meantime, we're looking at 3-5 years of needing hubs that cost more than the peripherals connected to them. DisplayPort got away with needing an expensive hub, because most people didn't actually NEED that expensive hub to use it for the most common use case (connecting a single monitor). That's absolutely NOT the case with USB... especially if the manufacturer decides to pull an 'Apple' and ALSO use that single USB port for power delivery as well.

Re:"...the mother of all wired connectivity option

[Kjella]

The biggest standardization effort was actually not on the hardware side. While USB has some nice features like hot-plugging and auto-negotiation it's basically readPacket() and writePacket(). The huge difference was that they started defining device classes like keyboards, mice, game pads, memory sticks, headphones/speakers etc. so you didn't need special drivers for each device. Some things took longer than other, like for example webcams took a while. You could watch the raw USB packets but the protocol had to reverse engineered. Today you just comply with the webcam device class (I think it's called video/audio device or something) and it just works.

Charge the car?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can I charge a Tesla on it?

Re:"...the mother of all wired connectivity option

[TeknoHog]

The problem comes when people come up with competing standards - like Thunderbolt - which aren't part of the spec where your only option is to fold it into USB and basically have it be "Thunderbolt over USB".

USB3 is a competing standard to USB1/2. It looks "universal" from a distance because the USB3 pins are hidden next to the old 1/2 pins. It's not even "USB3 over USB1/2", it's a bag on the side. The result is as universal as a lump of serial, parallel and PS2 connectors glued together -- sure, one of them will probably fit, but it's not really a solution to the multitude of different connectors if you just hide them all inside the same ground shell.

USB was supposed to replace "legacy ports" but now it has become a legacy port itself. I.e. even when more and more devices are USB3 compatible, we have to drag along the old 1/2 pins to keep it "universal". Yes, I've complained about this for years.

My solution? Call different technologies by different names. Make a different connector for different electrical protocols.

Re: too bad the usb c female connectors last ~ 1y

[Anonymous Coward]

enjoy giving all of your extra money to Apple every year and arguing why you think it's a great idea -- change, change, change!

Re:"...the mother of all wired connectivity option

[Anonymous Coward]

I like the idea of keeping a "legacy" USB 2.0 connector, if only because there might be a driver etc. issue and that happened in the past with people left without a keyboard when installing an OS on an Intel NUC.

You can see this on the Asrock Deskmini A300 which is a bundle of a motherboard, case and external PSU. It's remarkable in other ways : takes a regular desktop CPU, along with laptop-sized RAM and storage drives, stands upright, has room for the desktop CPU and its desktop cooler (as long as it's short enough..)
https://www.anandtech.com/show/13830/asrock-at-ces-2019-deskmini-a300-worlds-first-amd-ryzen-mini-stx-pc-launched

It does get the USB-C but as you can see it just provides one USB-C, as long with two USB-A 3.0 and one USB-A 2.0.

It also acknowledges that a computer with few audio jacks has two of them! not one or zero. Excellent vid outputs. Lacks SD or Micro SD but the unbroken cutouts on the behind are for wireless antennas and freaking RS232. So there's nice legacy enough there. Someone has also just made a thin-ITX motherboard, a different form factor, that still has RS232 and LPT1 headers.
I accidentally clicked a link to this, with two interesting variations on port mix :
https://www.anandtech.com/show/13390/asrock-jupiter-1-liter-ucff-pcs-with-sixcore-coffeelake-cpus

This might be great in a couple of decades

[Anonymous Coward]

Once manufacturers have migrated away from usb 1.1 and 2...

Re:"...the mother of all wired connectivity option

[mlyle]

> My solution? Call different technologies by different names. Make a different connector for different electrical protocols.

How do I benefit from this? I have a limited footprint for connectors in my laptop. Better to have electrical/pinout magic to make ports work with "slow" (but still pretty capable) devices, and multiplexer magic to allow multiple kinds of high speed signalling over the remaining pins.

These ports with multiple functions aren't too expensive, and I am usually better off with 4 "USB" ports than 3 ports good for keyboard, mice, and slow thumb drives; 2 ports good for fast SSD or PCIe expansion, 2 ports good for external monitors, etc-- both in cost, physical footprint, and ease of use.

Re:Be stuck with shit on board video? so no amd hi

[Anonymous Coward]

What??

By the way, some high end vid cards have a USB-C port already (not found on midrange such as GTX 1660 Ti, because it's a bit pointless, meant for VR gear and also has a power budget of its own to power the VR helmet)

To answer your question otherwise : what issue are you pointing out exactly? On most systems, you will use the motherboard outputs for on-board video and the graphics card's outputs for graphics card video. But there is a way out of this problem already. It is possible for video output data to be transmitted on the PCIe bus, between GPUs (this wastes PCIe bandwidth of course but if it goes over 16x or 8x 3.0 or 4.0 I guess it's fair). This is a byproduct of laptops all doing this : video from dedicated GPU is routed to the integrated GPU. So using the integrated GPU is mandatory and displays internal and external are connected to it. Maybe this is stupid but it went that way. There are no real difference between laptop and desktop GPUs so desktop GPUs inherited this capacity. Possibly an AMD dedicated board can display for an Nvidia dedicated board I think.

Thunderbolt 3 does this too so you can use an external GPU and the laptop's display. This is over only PCIe 4x 3.0 and your application e.g. vid game needs bandwidth of its own, so playing a vid game this way results in slower framerate. This sucks if you're playing something demanding but it'll work. Using outputs on the external GPU means full PCIe 4x 3.0 can be used by your game (still slower than if you had 8x or 16x 3.0)

If you have a next generation desktop with PCIe 16x 4.0 for the big GPU, and "USB 4" or whatever on the motherboard and actually use an "USB 4" display (like, a small monitor meant for laptops?) I think it's okay regarding the bandwidth (I don't know what latency this adds, might be mostly okay.. have to think about the display itself and even mouse/keyboard if this is important to you)

Re: "...the mother of all wired connectivity optio

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with that is, what if you have eight ports on your desktop? Providing 30 watts to each means 8x30 = 240 watts worth of power circuitry. Providing 40 Gbps each means 320 Gbps in total so about 32x PCIe 3.0 lanes or 16x 4.0 lanes - of course you might multiplex that bandwidth. But "multiplexing" the power? Not sure how bad or inconvenient is that. Well, let's do "only" 15 watts per USB-C port (3A 5V) save one or two special ones. Still some power draw to plan for if you want many of them.

Much Disappoint

[Anonymous Coward]

USB 4? USB 4???

Whatever happened to USB 3.2.8.1.9.4.5.3.9.6.7, Revision 12, Update 7, Patch 4, Mango Edition?

Re:"...the mother of all wired connectivity option

[Anonymous Coward]

USB is jinxed, explain how I can plug it in wrong over %50 of the time?

Can you make a tiny LAN with these?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it possible to make a tiny short-range machine to machine LAN with USB 4.0? I'd really like to be able to network my machines like you could with firewire. I miss the days where I could network my machines at a high speed over a short distance without needing to buy an expensive NIC.

Re:"...the mother of all wired connectivity option

[Anonymous Coward]

I use the USB Bus on the bank's ATM Machine all the time!

Good ole rs232 over fiber.

[Anonymous Coward]

Blackbox must have had a firesale on fiber optic bridged rs232 serial cables!!!

Re:"...the mother of all wired connectivity option

[DCFusor]

Rubber ducky. USB has a fatal flaw that can't be fixed with back compatibility. It has to trust the device to tell the truth about what it is.

Re:"...the mother of all wired connectivity option

[vadim_t]

So buy a laptop with more ports.

I've got a laptop with 1 thunderbolt port (and two USB C), and damn, it's nice. I can charge from either side of the laptop, which is great for safety and comfort. I can plug two 4K monitors into one port with a pretty cheap dongle. It even works in Linux. And I can plug an external video card, but I've not tried yet.

It's extremely cool that I can expand a small, light, long battery life laptop into a configuration that's got all the comforts of a high end desktop.

Re:Be stuck with shit on board video? so no amd hi

[Joe_Dragon]

but most AMD cpu's don't have any on board video. workstations are the same way.
Also you don't want USB bandwidth to eaten up by an HDMI display.

And Will cards pass more then 1 DP bus as there are limits to the number of displays

Re:"...the mother of all wired connectivity option

[fbobraga]

support will drop on the next stop :P

Re: "...the mother of all wired connectivity optio

[fbobraga]

cheap cables to chager my phone seems to doesn't work anymore... I'm suspicious it's because the change on standards (that the cable claims to support, but does not on the real word...) - it's more expensive to by working USB cases (to charge mobile devices and transfer files) now...

Re:"...the mother of all wired connectivity option

[thegarbz]

Indeed. Fortunately unlike Apple and Microsoft other manufacturers choose to continue to compete on the desires of consumers and while that happens you'll continue to see multiple ports on laptops.

Where's my high speed LAN?

[hoggoth]

Great. Now my keyboard can do 40 Gbps, but my LAN is still stuck at 1 Gbps. Why can't this inexpensive technology be used to give me a high speed LAN? 10GB Ethernet still costs thousands of dollars.

Dear Christopher

[Anonymous Coward]

I was mean. You never hurt me chris but you're sure frustrating. We must like it because we're still here.
Oh speaking of which. I regularly tell you to get your teeth fixed up. It shouldn't matter but it matters.. So I started working on mine. Just finished the last of my dental work and it really feels nice.
I will also take your advice and see a shrink to mellow me out a bit. It's on my to do list, been way too busy.
    Sorry I was mean on your pap, if it makes you feel better that story about your teeth pisses me off. You were just a kid and you got zero justice there and it was a long tail shitty deal. You should say enough is enough and get your shit fixed. Like at least cosmetically.
Well chris, as usual please prioritize paying off your credit cards and uhm you should see some sort of coach to help you figure out how to get you aligned with your next level goals.