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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.
Further reading, from last week: USB-IF Confusingly Merges USB 3.0 and USB 3.1 Under New USB 3.2 Branding.
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.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
So double the speed of 3.2... But which 3.2? Will it be equal to 3.2 2x2 or twice that?
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.
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?
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.
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.
So now I need to buy another fucking cable.
--- Keep the choice with the user..
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.