Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

USB 3.2 is going to make the current USB branding even worse

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 158 posts

Re: USB 3.2 is going to make the current USB branding even worse

#121

Post by vardump »

kanox wrote: post #75

> For reasons that remain hard to understand, the decision was made to retroactively rebrand USB 3.0: 5Gb/s 3.0 connections became "USB 3.1 Gen 1," with the 10Gb/s connections being "USB 3.1 Gen 2." The consumer branding is "SuperSpeed USB 10Gbps." Does anyone care about Gbps for USB? I've never hit the bandwith limitation on USB and see USB type-C as just an annoyance making me buy new cables. > And 20Gb/s devices w…

> Does anyone care about Gbps for USB? I've never hit the bandwith limitation on USB and see USB type-C as just an annoyance making me buy new cables.

You haven't met new Windows (Dell, etc.) laptops yet? If you want multiple monitors with a single connector (there's often just one), it makes all the difference whether you can connect two 4k monitors @60 Hz or not.

Re: USB 3.2 is going to make the current USB branding even worse

#122

Post by stephenr »

zokier wrote: post #95
peterlk wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For real. Why not just call it USB 4.0 and divorce the branding from the technical specification? You can put a thing on the back of the box that says "implements USB specification 3.2.16a-rfc#4619" or whatever.

> Why not just call it USB 4.0 and divorce the branding from the technical specification? That is exactly what the "SuperSpeed USB" branding is all about. The technical spec is USB 3.whatever and the brand name is " SuperSpeed USB". But neither the press nor vendors seem to be able to stay in the line and actually consistently use only the branding, so here we are

But SuperSpeed was 5Gbps. Then it was SuperSpeed+.

This was the nice aspect of Firewire - once 1394B was out - everyone referred to them as Firewire 400 and Firewire 800. No ambiguity.

Heck even Thunderbolt does this better - 1 and 2 are interchangeable device/cable-wise, and just support higher speeds, but it's just a new 'version' and it just doubles the bandwidth.

With USB you have to read all the fine print to make sure you get what you want/need.

Re: USB 3.2 is going to make the current USB branding even worse

#123

Post by deafcalculus »

Animats wrote: post #110

And then there's USB-C, which is an attempt to cram all the ports on the back of a desktop into one tiny connector. It has USB! It has HDMI! It sometimes has DisplayPort! Maybe audio, too! It has power! In both directions, even! Sometimes it even has JTAG, but we don't talk about that. How does all this interact with UCB 3.2?

Good luck finding a cable that supports what you want. It might only be a matter of time before we have to have chips in the cable to indicate what it can and cannot do!

Re: USB 3.2 is going to make the current USB branding even worse

#124

Post by stephenr »

KSS42 wrote: post #113
peterlk wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For real. Why not just call it USB 4.0 and divorce the branding from the technical specification? You can put a thing on the back of the box that says "implements USB specification 3.2.16a-rfc#4619" or whatever.

Maybe be USB4 is already taken/planned?

USB 4.0 will actually be USB 1.0 with a new name, same speed.

4.1 will be what was USB 1.1

4.2 will be what was USB 2.0

4.3.0 will be what was 3.0.

4.3.1GXY1 will be what was 3.2 1x1 (which was 3.1 Gen 1 (which was 3.0)

4.3.1GXY2 will be what was 3.2 2x1 (which was 3.1)

4.3.2GXY1 will be what was 3.2 2x2

4.4.0 will be double the speed of 4.3.2GXY1 (what was called 3.2 2x2) but will max out at 25mm (~1") cables and provide no power at all.

4.4.1 will be like 4.4.0 but will expand the length to 30cm (~1')

4.4.1ZORB22 will be like 4.4.1 but also carry up to 5W power for bus powered devices.

Go ahead and laugh, and then realise this isn't really that different than what we have now from USB-IF.

Re: USB 3.2 is going to make the current USB branding even worse

#125

Post by afiori »

ksec wrote: post #115
jwr wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of this naming doesn't matter anyway, because everybody will use USB-C cables. And, as we all know, these can support (or not) almost any combination of anything (thunderbolt, video, various power combinations, USB in all its incarnations, etc) and there is no way to tell what will work by looking at the cable or socket you are plugging into. In other words, it's a crapshoot anyway, so who cares? We'll just keep…

>because everybody will use USB-C cables That is assuming all USB-C Cable will support all power combinations ( They don't ) All USB 3.2 Speed ( They Don't ), and All Thunderbolt Spec ( They Don't ). And it is precisely this comment that makes me thick why USB-C has won. Until the problem becomes so wide spread you have to test each cable whether it is working as intended before people will call for changes.

For now I am refusing to buy anything that need a USB-C cable

Re: USB 3.2 is going to make the current USB branding even worse

#126

Post by Dylan16807 »

mjevans wrote: post #24
protomyth wrote: post #2

Who the heck came up with USB 3.2 Gen 2×2? That has got to be the dumbest idea. No one cares how it works, we just have to go through the utter crap of buying a cable. Does the low end manufactures pull the most weight in this org because that's the only way this makes any sense.

Why not enumerate it based entirely on features, also toss in what power delivery it's rated at in watts and volts. USB 3 20Gbit PD 100W 20V

They all support the same voltage, and there are only two meaningful power delivery levels.

So they only have to put the speed class and PD or not PD. It would make things so much better.

Re: USB 3.2 is going to make the current USB branding even worse

#127

Post by Dylan16807 »

hakfoo wrote: post #76
gok wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And USB-C 10 Gbps cables aren't much cheaper, especially if they do 100W power delivery. Both probably could be cheaper if there were more demand for them, but siren song of cheap slow cables seems to have made it impossible to scale production up.

Well, realistically, you don't need 100 watt power delivery for a keyboard, so you might want a less robust cable. The big mistake IMO was a lack of obvious keying. Very little stops me from using that 2w-capacity keyboard cable to try to charge my laptop. If we're lucky, there's signaling at the device to tell me what's wrong, but if they had made a different plug on the 100W cable, it would eliminate a lot of cockp…

> Well, realistically, you don't need 100 watt power delivery for a keyboard, so you might want a less robust cable.

But on the other hand doubling the power wire thickness and leaving the signals wires untouched shouldn't add more than 10-20% to the price of the cable.

> The big mistake IMO was a lack of obvious keying. Very little stops me from using that 2w-capacity keyboard cable to try to charge my laptop. If we're lucky, there's signaling at the device to tell me what's wrong, but if they had made a different plug on the 100W cable, it would eliminate a lot of cockpit errors.

Every cable supports at least 60 watts. It's not a big deal if you use the wrong one to charge with.

Re: USB 3.2 is going to make the current USB branding even worse

#128

Post by Dylan16807 »

vardump wrote: post #121
kanox wrote: post #75

> For reasons that remain hard to understand, the decision was made to retroactively rebrand USB 3.0: 5Gb/s 3.0 connections became "USB 3.1 Gen 1," with the 10Gb/s connections being "USB 3.1 Gen 2." The consumer branding is "SuperSpeed USB 10Gbps." Does anyone care about Gbps for USB? I've never hit the bandwith limitation on USB and see USB type-C as just an annoyance making me buy new cables. > And 20Gb/s devices w…

> Does anyone care about Gbps for USB? I've never hit the bandwith limitation on USB and see USB type-C as just an annoyance making me buy new cables. You haven't met new Windows (Dell, etc.) laptops yet? If you want multiple monitors with a single connector (there's often just one), it makes all the difference whether you can connect two 4k monitors @60 Hz or not.

But that's a capability on top of USB that isn't even implied by the Gbps branding.

Re: USB 3.2 is going to make the current USB branding even worse

#129

Post by Dylan16807 »

zokier wrote: post #96
jrochkind1 wrote: post #84

So the very same device can be accurately labelled "USB 3.0", "USB 3.1 Gen 1" and "USB 3.2 Gen 1". Those are all actually the same thing? Do I have this right?

No, it shouldn't be labeled any of those. Instead it should be labeled "SuperSpeed USB" and nothing else. And that hasn't changed over the different USB revisions.

Except the list of speeds is ridiculously arcane. People can easily figure out that 3.1 beats 3 beats 2. Good luck getting them to guess whether "full speed" beats "high speed", or why there are three different things all called "Superspeed+"

Re: USB 3.2 is going to make the current USB branding even worse

#130

Post by zaarn »

trumped wrote: post #88
aboutruby wrote: post #39

Here is a helpful chart of USB versions and their connectors: https://preview.redd.it/s9dun6a1xmpz.png?width=960&crop=smar... e.g. USB 3.2 has the same connector as USB-C edit: I personally care far more about the connector than exact specs of each version

> edit: I personally care far more about the connector than exact specs of each version hopefully usb-c connectors are tougher then micro-usb's

In my experience, the device side is much tougher. I've had 2 cables fail but even after about 3000 operations (that's about estimated 5 operations per day for 2 years in my case), the device connector still feels new with a fresh cable.
Post reply on HN