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:"...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.