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USB4 v2 Will Support Speeds Up To 80 Gbps (liliputing.com) 117

Posted by msmash from the shape-of-things-to-come dept.
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.
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USB4 v2 Will Support Speeds Up To 80 Gbps More

USB4 v2 Will Support Speeds Up To 80 Gbps

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  • What would be the use case for that? Which peripherals are supposed to get that speed?

    • use it instead of ethernet maybe

      • Re:Just one question... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by DesScorp ( 410532 ) on Thursday September 01, 2022 @02:34PM (#62844209) Journal

        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.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Rhipf ( 525263 )

          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

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by bjwest ( 14070 )

          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.

      • Re:Just one question... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by tdailey ( 728882 ) on Thursday September 01, 2022 @03:35PM (#62844397)

        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.

        • 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)

          by gmack ( 197796 ) <gmack.innerfire@net> on Thursday September 01, 2022 @06:23PM (#62844931) Homepage Journal

          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

        • 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.

        • Turning a 5 pound laptop into a portable hard drive seems like a solution looking for a problem. If the motherboard dies, you can't do that.
          • The one really good solution was when you bought a new Mac. The OS installer offered the option to transfer all your files and settings from your old computer via "Target Disk Mode" (as it was called) via FireWire that used the old computer as an external drive. It worked really well.

        • 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

          • My first thought was multi channel audio interfaces with a LOT of channels. I'd like that a lot :)

            • 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.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mjwx ( 966435 )

          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

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dgatwood ( 11270 )

          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)

      by omnichad ( 1198475 ) on Thursday September 01, 2022 @01:51PM (#62844045) Homepage

      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.

    • So you can chain two 4k monitors and still plug an ssd into the end and not lose bandwidth.

      • 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.

        • I liked chains on Firewire/IEEE1394, it was light diagnosing a bad bulb in a string of christmas lights.

          • Firewire was never a good idea.

            • 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".

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dryeo ( 100693 )

            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.

            • 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.

        • Is a hub not a chain? Plug your mouse into the USB port on your keyboard, and your keyboard into a hub, you got a nice little chain going.

          • 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.

            • 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.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Junta ( 36770 )

          Displayport chaining is very much a thing and used with usb-c.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Scoth ( 879800 )

          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.

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday September 01, 2022 @01:56PM (#62844067)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Security is a moot point around the same desk... USB is smaller than a LAN in range.

      • You don't want that because the USB protocol is a pile of shit.

        The entire protocol is designed around the master CPU doing a lot of the work because Intel wanted to sell more expensive processors.

      • 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.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dgatwood ( 11270 )

          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.

    • Streaming VR porn, so you can unplug your drive and hide your shame in your sock drawer.

    • 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.

    • It will allow dimwit editors to rapidly hook up to spell check servers so they don't publish nonsense words like "Promotor".

    • 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.

    • The first use case that comes to mind is multiple peripherals. Even if none of them individually reach 5Gbps, they could easily benefit from the maximum speed promised by USB4, subject to the infamous "up to" caveat for all data storage and transfer devices.

    • 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)

    by battingly ( 5065477 ) on Thursday September 01, 2022 @01:54PM (#62844057)
    ...but since it uses the same USB-C physical connection, why didn't they just give USB4 (or even USB3) this bandwidth in the first place?
    • Tech and signalling algorithms evolve.

      • 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?

        • I can't say specifics, but USB 3 was first released in 2008.
          Time and tech marches on.
        • Faster CPUs, faster memory, faster microcontrollers, more experience on the existing protocols . . . Just the usual advancement in electronics.

        • 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.

        • 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

    • Re:Probably a dumb question... (Score:4, Informative)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 ) <slashdot AT worf DOT net> on Thursday September 01, 2022 @02:33PM (#62844207)

      ...but since it uses the same USB-C physical connection, why didn't they just give USB4 (or even USB3) this bandwidth in the first place?

      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.

    • I'd rather they went the other way and called this USB5. Because now USB4 means either "USB4 V2" or "USB 4 which by the way in this case means before there were variants of it so not V2"

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tdailey ( 728882 )

      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

  • 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)

      by jacks smirking reven ( 909048 ) on Thursday September 01, 2022 @02:14PM (#62844139)

      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]

      • 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.

      • 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.

    • 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.

    • USB PD Revision 3.1 is up to 240W. Ref: https://www.usb.org/usb-charge... [usb.org]

    • A single outlet in a room? Why the hell would anyone prefer that? Its pretty handy to have an outlet on each wall if you ever want to configure your room differently than a single outlet would allow.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Rhipf ( 525263 )

      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.

  • 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.

  • USB v4.1_Gen-2x2_v02_Final-Revised (Score:5, Interesting)

    by im_thatoneguy ( 819432 ) on Thursday September 01, 2022 @02:13PM (#62844129)

    How the fuck does the USB group keep messing up their names so badly? USB 4.0 v2?! Seriously?

    • It's on purpose.

      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.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bws111 ( 1216812 )

      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)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Thursday September 01, 2022 @04:56PM (#62844651)

      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.

    • Anything past the standard ("Universal") plugs should not be called universal anymore. TSB-C (Temporary Serial Bus) is a deviation from being universal.

  • Version 2?? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by MTEK ( 2826397 ) on Thursday September 01, 2022 @02:38PM (#62844225)

    Call it USB 5, you fuck-knuckles.

    • 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

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dohzer ( 867770 )

      USB-D

  • I know, I know. "640k should be enough!" and all that.
    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.

    • 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)

    by Your Anus ( 308149 ) on Thursday September 01, 2022 @03:41PM (#62844423) Journal
    USB4 V2 Pumpkin Spice Edition for the fall?
  • I have repeatedly tried to get Microsoft, Apple, and the USB committee to retain backwards compatibility with smoke signals, with no success. -- Chief Shaman Many Horses Eaglefeather, IT VP at Highcloud Enterprises

  • Because I only have 6 different USB connectors to choose from. =/

  • 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)

    by OneOfMany07 ( 4921667 ) on Thursday September 01, 2022 @08:23PM (#62845163)

    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 N^2 more adapter cables.

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