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USB Type-C is still a mess

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Re: USB Type-C is still a mess

#201

Post by nol13 »

chx wrote: post #136
exmadscientist wrote: post #22

Speaking as someone in the industry who's worked on Type C-enabled gadgets, half the bloody problem is that the Type C products offered by the major semiconductor companies are _terrible_. For sake of a simple example, consider designing a rechargeable flashlight. For whatever reason, you'd like it to be rechargeable over a USB-C port. You also want the flashlight to charge as fast as possible from whatever power sou…

There's no innovation in this sector. It needed Apple to kick Ti's sorry ass to get us to Ti 83 even instead of the Ti 82. It says quite a lot every Thunderbolt enclosure uses this chip: there are no other USB PD controllers (USB PD is used to negotiate Alternate Modes). Another example: you can buy a small and cheap USB C to DisplayPort adapter with power passthrough (< 20 USD). You can buy a (relatively) small and…

"you can buy a small and cheap USB C to DisplayPort adapter with power passthrough (*may destroy motherboard

Re: USB Type-C is still a mess

#202

Post by fphhotchips »

yathern wrote: post #122

I always hear how USB-C is such a mess, and everyone agrees - I just wanted to quickly provide a counter anecdote. As a user, who knows nothing about the protocol or the politics or anything else - USB-C works wonderfully for me - I only wish more devices used it. My laptop plugs into my monitor, provides more USB ports there, and audio out, which feeds into speakers. My dinky phone charger can charge my laptop, whic…

Ok, so counter-counter point. I was recently in the market for a laptop. The one I bought has a USB-C port and two USB-A ports. Because it's a Thunderbolt USB-C Port, it even has a little lightning bolt printed next to it on the chassis.

Previous laptops I've owned with USB-C could charge over it. This one can't. The model with the smaller screen can, but not the 15 inch. The slightly different model can, but not the one with the discrete graphics card.

Why is this? I assume it's because charging the laptop at full utilisation requires over 100W. But really I have no idea.

Re: USB Type-C is still a mess

#203

Post by lpmay »

tjoff wrote: post #183
AngryData wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You only really need to slow charge when you get near to top or bottom end of the battery's charge. From around 20-80% charge you can charge the fuck out of you shit with no drawbacks, but if you try and push the those limits then you start seeing significant wear.

Source? I thought heat was the primary source of wear. And fast charge produces lots of heat regardless if it's in the middle of the range or not.

I'm not an electrochemist, but I have been told one of the major wear mechanisms is lithium plating, which is a function of anode voltage and charge current (and probably 100 other things). As I understand, the standard CI/CV charge cycle is very conservative to avoid this complexity. I believe more sophisticated parts like the TI Max charge series get around this by running estimators of the cells anode voltage and can scale charge current appropriately.

Sorry no good references to offer off hand, this is all just stuff I've been told by engineers and chemists. Take with a grain of salt.

Re: USB Type-C is still a mess

#204

Post by ksec »

mmagin wrote: post #168
chx wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no innovation in this sector. It needed Apple to kick Ti's sorry ass to get us to Ti 83 even instead of the Ti 82. It says quite a lot every Thunderbolt enclosure uses this chip: there are no other USB PD controllers (USB PD is used to negotiate Alternate Modes). Another example: you can buy a small and cheap USB C to DisplayPort adapter with power passthrough (< 20 USD). You can buy a (relatively) small and…

Is this because of patents, or is this because nobody wants to do the R&D?

Regardless of industries, you can always assume, as it is always 98% of the cases, that any failure of correction or innovation is because 1) It doesn't improves their bottom line and 2) Anything that involves higher cost budget or lower profits.

That is why we need competitions. Sadly patents also prevent competitions from happening.

Re: USB Type-C is still a mess

#205

Post by lopmotr »

ryzvonusef wrote: post #3

https://xkcd.com/927/ cycle of life

No need for comics. This is literally the documentation for the .PLY mesh format:

"The way out of this morass of formats is to create a single file format that is both flexible enough to anticipate future needs and that is simple enough so as not to drive away potential users."

and now it really is just one more format to have to deal with.

Re: USB Type-C is still a mess

#206

Post by Dylan16807 »

paulmd wrote: post #103
vertexFarm wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, unfortunately that is quintessentially apple-y. Even the charging cable has seen endless unnecessary permutation, all proprietary and all expensive as hell. And mostly pointless. It's two wires. Two wires that carry a constant DC charge. Why so complicated? I use my computer in a metal shop and my magsafe gathers iron filings, shorts itself and catches fire. I've gone through so many chargers. I've vowed that t…

> Even the charging cable has seen endless unnecessary permutation, all proprietary and all expensive as hell. And mostly pointless. It's two wires. Two wires that carry a constant DC charge. Why so complicated? Which voltage, and how much current? Put 20V down the wire and you'd blow up a device expecting 5V. Pull 100W through a cable rated for 5W and you'd burn your house down. As soon as USB-C became the catch-all…

> Which voltage, and how much current? Put 20V down the wire and you'd blow up a device expecting 5V. Pull 100W through a cable rated for 5W and you'd burn your house down.

Those aren't really cable issues. All USB-C cables support 20 volts and 60 watts. The only cable permutation is whether it's 3 or 5 amps, which isn't a fire-hazard-level distinction, just a small annoyance.

Re: USB Type-C is still a mess

#207

Post by chx »

SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #123
chx wrote: post #65

My highest score answer on superuser.com is about USB C https://superuser.com/a/1200112/41259 and I had this to say after a long list of capabilities: > They really, really should have provided some way to clarify this mess but they didn't. If colors and icons with the big variety and the space constrains are not viable then provide a standard way for software to give a capability list to the user. Or a diagnostics t…

After reading through this thread, I was thinking something similar to what you are proposing is the cleanest way forward (except I was thinking numbers instead of letters). You could even get more clever and use colors, where complementary colors work together. Couple that with some error messages that mirror what you wrote in the last part of your post in software whenever you plugged in a USB-C device to a connect…

Out of the five points I wrote only 1 and 3 can be tested via a standard USB C tester device if it existed. 2 and most especially 5 is fiercely expensive to test and 4 is well, software bugs (firmware is just software, after all). You know how that goes.

Re: USB Type-C is still a mess

#208

Post by Dylan16807 »

digi_owl wrote: post #118

The crazy part is that "reversible USB" was already a solved problem, by clever engineering of the A plug. Never mind that on its face, the C plug is a nice reversible plug. But then someone noticed all those contact points on one side that went to waste half the time, and thought they could cram even more signals down the wire, and here we are...

> thought they could cram even more signals down the wire, and here we are...

How so? I'd say 95% of the complication would still exist if you only used the contact points on one side. You would eliminate 3.2 speeds (would anyone notice?), the video+data mode would be slightly different and slightly simpler... and not much else would change.

Re: USB Type-C is still a mess

#210

Post by chx »

civilitty wrote: post #195
chx wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The latter. The entire area of vaguely PC peripheral chips died in 2014 when MegaChips took over ST's DP chips. Consider how much a 10 GbE card still costs -- this is the same speed! Apparently, it's not cheap making chips working with 10-20-40 gigabit/s line speeds but the market demands low cost. USB C wouldn't get far if a plain USB C to DP adapter would cost a hundred bucks.

> Consider how much a 10 GbE card still costs -- this is the same speed! Apparently, it's not cheap making chips working with 10-20-40 gigabit/s line speeds but the market demands low cost. USB C wouldn't get far if a plain USB C to DP adapter would cost a hundred bucks. You can thank the laws of physics for that because at 10+ gbit data rates you start needing crazy internal clock speeds (which can be significantly…

Yes, it seems ten gig is about where the fertilizer hits the circular cooling device. The new 2.5 and 5 gbe cards are much cheaper and DisplayPort 1.2 ICs with the 5.4 gbit HBR2 lane speed are widespread and of course there's USB 3.1 Gen 1 (formerly known as 3.0) with also 5 gbit/s. There is practically nothing working with the DP 1.3 defined HBR3 8.1 Gbit/s lane speed, though.

The only strange thing here is how five years ago we already had USB 3.0 and DP 1.2 devices in abundance but ten gig is still somewhat problematic.

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