USB4 v2 Will Support Speeds Up To 80 Gbps (liliputing.com) 117
The next generation of USB devices might support data transfer speeds as high as 80 Gbps, which would be twice as fast as current-gen Thunderbolt 4 products. From a report: The USB Promotor Group says it plans to publish the new USB4 version 2.0 specification ahead of this year's USB Developer Days events scheduled for November, but it could take a few years before new cables, hubs, PCs, and mobile devices featuring the new technology are available for purchase. According to the group, the new protocol will make use of the same USB Type-C cables and connectors as USB4 version 1.0. In fact, if you've already got a USB Type-C passive cable that's capable of 40 Gbps speeds, you should be able to use that same cable with next-gen hardware to achieve speeds up to 80 Gbps. But the new standard will also introduce a new USB Type-C active cable designed specifically for speeds up to 80 Gbps. The new standard is also backward compatible, which means that if you buy a new device with USB 4 v2 support, it will still work with older hardware featuring USB 2.0, 3.2, or Thunderbolt 3 connectivity. You just won't be able to take advantage of the full speeds.
Just one question... (Score:2)
What would be the use case for that? Which peripherals are supposed to get that speed?
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Re:Just one question... (Score:5, Interesting)
use it instead of ethernet maybe
Back when DSL was still competitive with cable (circa early 2000's), I had a DSL modem that connected to the PC via USB, and it worked pretty well. I got the full speed and bandwidth with no connection problems. Now, I wouldn't want to chuck Ethernet ports on servers, but using USB as an Internet connection for home PC's makes a lot of sense. I'm kind of surprised that with the advent of USB 3, low end home PC's didn't go to an all-USB standard since video is easily handled over the interface.
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Why wouldn't you want to "chuck Ethernet ports on servers"?
I guess you don't want to have 5+ network port on a server but then again if you have a server you usually aren't making connections directly to it anyway. The Ethernet ports are on the switch not on the server itself. I wouldn't want to have 5+ USB connections to a server (connecting other computers) anymore than I would want 5+ Ethernet ports.
Again, to connect home computers to the Internet it make much more sense to connect them to your Internet
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use it instead of ethernet maybe
Back when DSL was still competitive with cable (circa early 2000's), I had a DSL modem that connected to the PC via USB, and it worked pretty well. I got the full speed and bandwidth with no connection problems. Now, I wouldn't want to chuck Ethernet ports on servers, but using USB as an Internet connection for home PC's makes a lot of sense. I'm kind of surprised that with the advent of USB 3, low end home PC's didn't go to an all-USB standard since video is easily handled over the interface.
Most mid to low-end laptops already don't include an Ethernet port, and some of the higher end ones are starting to leave them off. They make Ethernet to USB adapters for them, and USB4 v2 will make those closer in speed to actual 1000 GB Ethernet.
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Until USB can do 3phase 220V, dont. fucking. care.
That’s probably below the dielectric breakdown voltage for the insulators, so why not? Of course you would be limited to 4 amps and you would need to define a new protocol that uses the data lines for the other two phases’ voltage instead of for a new communication format. :-D
Re: Real voltage (Score:2)
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Why would you want mains type current going thru your peripheral cables? And USB4 sounds great for the next generation of displays and graphics cards. Think 8k 120FPS? Probably also some of the new AR/VR type headsets with insane cameras, sensors, and eye-displays coming to market in the next few years. Would make counterstrike all the more intense.
It's a joke. That said, if I'm wrong about the breakdown voltage, that would also make Counterstrike more intense. :-D
Re:Just one question... (Score:5, Insightful)
USB wasn't intended to connect two PCs together. That's the reason for the differently shaped cable ends in first generations; to prevent people from trying to do that. Done carelessly between 2 live PCs with a sketchy non-compliant cable is a smoke & fire event.
Later generations of USB can do it if the hardware is proper, but you can try that first on your own PC, not mine.
Firewire, OTOH, did have intent to be able to link 2 machines. Apple Macs, with Firewire ports standard on every model, had a feature where they could be booted with no UI and behave like an external drive connected to another Mac. Two Macs could form a 400 Mbps network over a cable too. Not all PCI Firewire cards supported this ability, however. I exploded a card in a Windows PC connecting it to a Mac.
Finally, you have to ask, "why bother" with chasing 80 Gbps speeds. Almost no storage device in a common PC can send or receive at that speed. Maybe a M.2 PCIE drive or maybe transmitting directly to or from RAM. But just like USB 3 and USB 2 before it the bottleneck is the storage which usually can't read, and certainly can't write, at those speeds anyway.
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But just like USB 3 and USB 2 before it the bottleneck is the storage which usually can't read, and certainly can't write, at those speeds anyway.
True -- but storage will never exceed those speeds if the bus can't handle them first.
Peripheral speeds nearly always lag bus speeds, which is why bus speeds need to improve first.
Yaz
Re:Just one question... (Score:4, Interesting)
Finally, you have to ask, "why bother" with chasing 80 Gbps speeds. Almost no storage device in a common PC can send or receive at that speed. Maybe a M.2 PCIE drive or maybe transmitting directly to or from RAM. But just like USB 3 and USB 2 before it the bottleneck is the storage which usually can't read, and certainly can't write, at those speeds anyway.
80 Gbps would be great for having a standard docking station laptops. Might even be able to handle a 10gbps networking port on the docking station
Re: Just one question... (Score:2)
And after FireWire, Macs could network with each other using Thunderbolt, which of course is over a USB cable now. They can still also be started in targeted disk mode too.
This bandwidth is great if you want to connect all peripherals via one cable (like a dock). It can be used like an external PCI bus with external GPUs, storage, networking, multiple displays, etc.
Re: Just one question... (Score:2)
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Finally, you have to ask, "why bother" with chasing 80 Gbps speeds. Almost no storage device in a common PC can send or receive at that speed. Maybe a M.2 PCIE drive or maybe transmitting directly to or from RAM. But just like USB 3 and USB 2 before it the bottleneck is the storage which usually can't read, and certainly can't write, at those speeds anyway.
If everyone thought that way we'd still have "full speed" USB at 12MBit/s on everything. USB PD would be a distant pipe dream. It's called forward-thinking development.
As for the applications: 80GBit is 10GByte/sec... things like high refresh rate high resolution displays will eat that up in a heartbeat. nVME SSDs are hitting 7GByte/sec, bumping up against the PCIe 4.0 limits. Why would you not want to be able to put those SSDs in an external housing and access them at full speed? Have you never used a port
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My first thought was multi channel audio interfaces with a LOT of channels. I'd like that a lot :)
Re: Just one question... (Score:2)
Audio is not very bandwidth intensive. Stereo CD quality is about 1.5 Mbps. Even 24 bit 192 kHz stereo is under 10 Mbps. The problem with multi channel audio is generally latency. Something USB 1, 2 and 3 have not been historically very good at.
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Finally, you have to ask, "why bother" with chasing 80 Gbps speeds. Almost no storage device in a common PC can send or receive at that speed. Maybe a M.2 PCIE drive or maybe transmitting directly to or from RAM. But just like USB 3 and USB 2 before it the bottleneck is the storage which usually can't read, and certainly can't write, at those speeds anyway.
For the same reason we make cars that can go at 120 MPH when the speed limit is 70 MPH.
Because when you're doing 70 MPH you don't want to be ragging the nuts of your car.
80 Gbps would be a maximum, not an average. How often do you max out a USB 3 connection? Not often because going that fast would not be as stable.
Also there are high bandwidth applications that aren't storage related, video over USB has tried to be a thing before. I grant you, it's a bit alarming that they seem to be dedicated to
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Finally, you have to ask, "why bother" with chasing 80 Gbps speeds. Almost no storage device in a common PC can send or receive at that speed. Maybe a M.2 PCIE drive or maybe transmitting directly to or from RAM. But just like USB 3 and USB 2 before it the bottleneck is the storage which usually can't read, and certainly can't write, at those speeds anyway.
Think about aggregation. You might want to connect a monitor with enough bandwidth for high-fps video and still have enough bandwidth for connecting disks and other devices to the monitor on top of your desk instead of to the computer down below. Maybe even daisy-chain multiple displays.
Re:Just one question... (Score:5, Informative)
For one, don't forget alternate mode like DP. 80Gbps just so happens to be the total max bandwidth for DP 2.0 (single screen).
But if you have a dock with two 4K screens, an external hard drive, and more all going through a single port then you need a lot of bandwidth.
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So you can chain two 4k monitors and still plug an ssd into the end and not lose bandwidth.
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Chains went out of style a while ago... it was part of USB 1.0 but rarely implemented. This is why motherboards/cards have multiple USB ports.
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I liked chains on Firewire/IEEE1394, it was light diagnosing a bad bulb in a string of christmas lights.
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Firewire was never a good idea.
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I don't fully agree. For my use case, Firewire was excellent. I had a Tascam FW-1884 back in the day, and nothing on the USB market could touch it's dependable stability.
Firewire was fine. It just didn't compete well with the huge market in which USB was "good enough".
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"FIRE"-wire... get it? Use it too much and the cable catches on fire.
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You liked swapping bulbs until the string worked? I hated it, 30 light string meant an average of 15 bulb swaps until you found the bad bulb, sometimes you lucked out, other times it was number 30.
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sometimes more than 30 if you had two dead bulbs and swapped a dead one back in and it still didn't work. fun times.
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Hubs divide the serial chain into letting multiple devices take turn speaking, a chain lets another device connect to the first device... both reduce speeds when there's contention.
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Hubs divide the serial chain into letting multiple devices take turn speaking, a chain lets another device connect to the first device... both reduce speeds when there's contention.
USB is exclusively poll driven from the host. There is no contention possible.
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Displayport chaining is very much a thing and used with usb-c.
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It mainly went out of style because it turned out that there we more end-chain devices made for it than expected. It's one thing to chain things like disk drives (think SCSI) but quite another to chain things like mice, cameras, etc. Ended up being very inconvenient, and hubs mostly solved the problem anyway.
Also just more convenient than having a bunch of hubs plugged in too.
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The only chain that made sense was mouse-to-keyboard.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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Security is a moot point around the same desk... USB is smaller than a LAN in range.
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The entire protocol is designed around the master CPU doing a lot of the work because Intel wanted to sell more expensive processors.
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There is a reason that PCIE exists as a layer between the CPU and USB devices. USB is fine for file transfers and peripherals. It would be terrible for direct connections.
Fortunately, USB 4 ports also typically incorporate Thunderbolt, which is basically tunneling PCIe over a set of serial links.
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Streaming VR porn, so you can unplug your drive and hide your shame in your sock drawer.
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Pretty sure you can do that fine with 3.1. Maybe even 3.0.
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Plug your laptop into a docking station with a single cable and get:
- 3x 2GB\s Gen4 external NVMe drives
- and a 25gbps NIC
Tada portable workstation.
That's similar to what I have now for my laptop only it's 10gbe and 1GB\s NVMes.
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It will allow dimwit editors to rapidly hook up to spell check servers so they don't publish nonsense words like "Promotor".
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so they don't publish nonsense words like "Promotor"
Sounds like something that someone who's antimotor would say.
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I am only mildly antimotor but confess to being wholeheartedly antimacassor.
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SSDs for one. A single SSD can already saturate a 40Gbps link. But we're not designing USB 4 v2 for yesterday's hardware. 8K displays are pushing that kind of bandwidth as well.
But why are you asking about individual peripherals? As it stands my work laptop connects via a single USB cable which does everything and the result is quite slow, limited by a USB link shared by display, sound, and all the things plugged into the back of the screen.
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There are QNAP Thunderbolt NAS models which connect directly to a Mac or a Thunderbolt machine to give 10gigE+ Ethernet speeds without needing the network cards and cabling. For this purpose, it works well.
Having fast USB speed means that some device like a router or disk array can be connected to a PC at 10+ gigE... faster than normal copper connections. Getting 40gigs speed to a NAS without needing to get two fiber SFP+ modules and a length of fiber cord, but just using a humble USB-C cord can help thin
Probably a dumb question... (Score:3)
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Tech and signalling algorithms evolve.
Right, but that's my question. What evolved in this specific case? What tech wasn't available for USB3 that is now available?
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Time and tech marches on.
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Waiting on Moore's law to catch up. Anyone could have imagined such an interface, but that doesn't make it practical if you need a separate heatsink and fan and 30W just to run it.
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The USB spec runs in the several hundreds of pages and hasn't been published yet. All sorts of tiny details change to enable a faster signal to go through. Nothing as dramatic as adding extra data pairs but subtle tweaks on the electrical layer for example allowed USB4 Gen2x1 to achieve the same speed as USB3 Gen2x1 using a less robust encoding mechanism 64b/66b. USB4 Gen3 reintroduces the 128b/132b to up the speed. They also included error correction in the spec (previously USB had none, and any error requ
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My phone, ereader, and all my USB drives use 3. The first 2 use a type C connection as well. All purchased within the last 2 years.
My vape pen uses type C for power.
The only thing I am not 100% sure on is the dongle for my G603. The dongle is type A, but don't know if its 2 or 3. I use the BT in it, so I don't know.
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There are lots of devices being sold right now, today, that are USB 2,
Like what?
My new USB2 devices within the last 12 months:
* an UPS (Eaton; type-B)
* a musical keyboard (Yamaha; type-A for external storage, type-B for USB-MIDI connection)
* a wildlife camera (white label; mini-B)
* a portable wifi/4G hotspot (micro-B for USB-ethernet) (24 months ago)
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Sounds more like you would like manufacturers to deploy USB-C not necessarily USB3 (the two aren't mutually inclusive).
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I'm pretty sure my keyboard is USB 1.1, though I'm on a desktop.
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It's worth noting that USB-C doesn't imply USB 3. There are plenty of USB 2 only devices that use USB-C. For example, my Fire 8 tablet. I had a cheap burner phone I used for a vendor project that was the same way.
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because cheapskate manufacturers don't want to pay a few extra pennies per device.
It is not always about cost. USB 2 chipsets / devices are smaller, easier to use, use less power, and typically require fewer external components. So if you only require RS232 like speeds, why go with USB3? Stick with the smaller, cheaper, proven solution that is still faster then what you require.
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Do you really need to pump 80Gbps of data from your mouse or keyboard to your computer?
Until you can pump that much data out of your keyboard/mouse then I think there will always be a place for USB2 devices.
Re:Probably a dumb question... (Score:4, Informative)
Because the chips and technologies didn't exist, and the difficulty in properly designing USB traces to handle 80Gbps is far beyond what we currently have.
It was only a decade ago when HDMI 2.0 with 18Gbps was considered hard. These days, 40Gbps (HDMI 2.1) is just about do-able but tricky.
80Gbps is probably just within reach, but will require impedance controlled circuit boards and traces and likely is too expensive to implement 5 years ago, but prices have dropped where it's not prohibitively expensive to do.
It's not easy, and it's partly been while 40GbE networking gear is so pricey. A lot of work in HDMI 2.1 went into figuring out ways to make it much cheaper that you can have 40Gbps in a consumer electronics device that costs as much as a 40GbE network card and switch.
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Would be easier to call that USB 4 AWD
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Right! The CPU socket on my motherboard uses the same physical connection as newer, faster CPUs. Why didn't they just give this bandwidth in the first place? /S
More Power! (Score:2)
What I want is not more bandwidth, but more electricity. Whole devices, laptops, powered through their USB would cut us down to one cable.
For a lot of the household, there's just no need, in the era of LED lighting, for more than 100W in most rooms of a home. You could cut bedrooms down to one 110V socket, mostly.
Re:More Power! (Score:4, Informative)
That's already on it's way the new USB-PD 2.1 spec allows power up to 240W which is enough for any laptop and most monitors and other peripherals.
https://www.androidpolice.com/... [androidpolice.com]
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That's already on it's way the new USB-PD 2.1 spec allows power up to 240W which is enough for any laptop and most monitors and other peripherals.
This is begging for disaster.
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Any laptop? lol
My Legion 7(Ryzen 9 5900HX / RTX 3080 / up to 64 GB ram / up to dual M2 drives) has a 300W power brick. It can probably run at 240W as well, but maybe not at full capabilities.
But 240W will probably be enough for most average laptops.
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I want 10 amp cables that are thin and flexible.
You probably want a few outlets in a bedroom on at least two different walls for a fan, vacuum, hair dryer, oxygen concentrator, whatever.
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USB PD Revision 3.1 is up to 240W. Ref: https://www.usb.org/usb-charge... [usb.org]
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So instead of conveniently locating wall sockets around the room you would rather just have one socket and a whole bunch of cables strung around the room going from one device to another?
I think I prefer having multiple outlets around the room so I can place my electrically run items where I want without cables running around the room.
labeling (Score:1)
Can't wait to see what confusing labels they decide to slap on these things. Cable confusion will continue, just as it has for the life of USB-C.
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USB v4.1_Gen-2x2_v02_Final-Revised (Score:5, Interesting)
How the fuck does the USB group keep messing up their names so badly? USB 4.0 v2?! Seriously?
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The more confusing it is, the more likely you'll end up buying multiple items to get the one you need. It's not like you can get away from it.
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It is V2 of the USB 4 spec. The marketing names will be USB4 40Gbps and USB4 80Gbps. This makes it clear what the difference between the version is, unlike 'USB4' and 'USB5'.
Re:USB v4.1_Gen-2x2_v02_Final-Revised (Score:5, Informative)
It's not messed up, it's actually quite descriptive. Here's a simple run down:
USB x - defines a whole lot of electrical and encoding characteristics.
Gen X - defines link speed (USB 4 Gen2x1 has the same link speed as USB 3.2 Gen2x1 but differs electrically).
Gen Xx# - defines the number of links. (Gen 3x1 has the same total speed as Gen2x2)
And all of this is supposed to be completely irrelevant to the end user because the end user only needs to give a shit about marking names which are:
Superspeed 5 (USB 3.2 Gen 1×1)
Superspeed 10 (USB 3.2 Gen 2×1)
Superspeed 20 (USB 3.2 Gen 2×2)
USB4 20 (USB4 Gen 2×2)
USB4 40 (USB4 Gen 3×2)
USB4 80 (USB4 v2 - presumably this is not the final name and they'll call it Gen4)
The biggest problem is companies which intentionally confuse users by not using the simple marketing names and that ranges between opposite absurd such as Dell using the full names for every port vs Lenovo just writing "USB-C" as if that is any fucking help at all.
The USB-IF is quite clear in providing marketing names. It's the manufacturers we should be slapping around.
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Version 2?? (Score:4, Insightful)
Call it USB 5, you fuck-knuckles.
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It's not USB5, it's an updated publication of USB4 spec which includes an additional speed. The actual name for the new mode will most likely be "USB4 80" as opposed to "USB4 40" and if I'm going to take a guess I'd say the new full spec name is likely to be USB4 Gen 4×2
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USB-D
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USB-D would indicate a new type of USB connector not the data rate.
When will it end? (Score:2)
But when will we really not need more speed? This is getting a bit ridicolous.
I would very much prefer longer cable lengths and better performance over bad wires than even more speed.
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I would very much prefer longer cable lengths and better performance over bad wires than even more speed.
Then I heartily recommend RS-485 [wikipedia.org].
Will They Offer (Score:3)
some things hard to do (Score:2)
We do get another connector right? (Score:2)
Because I only have 6 different USB connectors to choose from. =/
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Version nightmare (Score:2)
USB 4.0 2.0? I didn't think that the USB people could come up with anything dumber than their past shenanigans, but I'll admit it, they did.
Why oh why 2 different numbers? (Score:3)
Please can we stop with the TLA# #.# stuff? Is this USB4 or not? I want anything after that to be USB5.
Apparently we didn't learn anything with the USB 3.0 3.1 and 3.1a debacle. At least then they'd only had one leading number. Now this has USB4 2.0?!?!
Will support (Score:2)
Will support N^2 more adapter cables.
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Yes, but if it can reliably sustain 50 Gbps, that is good enough to stream 8K at 120 fps uncompressed.
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Or stream 4K with an SSD attached to the monitor's USB hub. At this point we're talking not about how fast peripherals are getting, but how few cables we are putting on the desk.
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Yes, but if it can reliably sustain 50 Gbps, that is good enough to stream 8K at 120 fps uncompressed.
Yes, but if it can reliably sustain 50 Gbps, that is good enough to stream 8K at 120 fps uncompressed.
Too bad that, being USB, it probably uses 7 of your eight cores just moving the data, so there’s nothing left for generating the video. :-D