[HN Gopher] USB4 v2 is also 120 Gbps
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       USB4 v2 is also 120 Gbps
        
       Author : WithinReason
       Score  : 61 points
       Date   : 2022-09-02 19:19 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.angstronomics.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.angstronomics.com)
        
       | syngrog66 wrote:
       | I've lost track of how many different USB standards exist now
        
       | pmalynin wrote:
       | When are we going to hear about USB4.1 2x2 Gen 1 V2? Surely that
       | will be compatible with existing cables.
        
         | Dalewyn wrote:
         | The touted 80gbps one is presumably USB4 Gen4x2x2 (or Gen4x4?),
         | this is presumably USB4 Gen4x3x1 or something.
         | 
         | No, I don't even know. Can we please just call them fucking
         | USB11 and USB12 or something?
        
           | sophacles wrote:
           | No, V1 of the USB versioning scheme has been deprecated for
           | several versioning scheme versions now.
        
         | metadat wrote:
         | But what revision? R1 or R1.31?
         | 
         | If you use an R1 cable on a 1.31 device, you may end up with a
         | brick, or even worse a fire.
         | 
         | Before plugging them in, I always dissect open the ends of my
         | cables and examine the chips under a microscope just to be
         | certain. Sometimes a delid is also needed, in such instances I
         | head over to Ken Shirriff's house. :P
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | al2o3cr wrote:
         | Personally, I'm waiting for USB4 HD Chain of Memories 358/2
         | Birth by Sleep Remix Final Chapter Prologue 2.0
        
           | ArcMex wrote:
           | Wow, this comment is a sight for Soras
        
         | bxparks wrote:
         | I _think_ you are joking about  "USB4.1 2x2 Gen 1 V2", but I
         | can't tell. USB naming is messed up.
        
           | MBCook wrote:
           | To make it less confusing they'll be moving to the old WiFi
           | style names. The new versions will be called, in order:
           | 
           | USB-A, USB-B, USB-R, USB-CZ, USB-L2, USB-S, then USB-D. To
           | avoid confusion they'll use the same physical port, which is
           | now Type-C, but renamed Type-1138.
           | 
           | USB-D is somewhat theoretical as we're likely to go through
           | more renaming by then. But I digress.
           | 
           | It's important to note each version of the standard supports
           | both active ("o") and passive ("u") variants depending on
           | distance.
           | 
           | Power levels are a simple scale of 10^nth milliwatts,
           | expressed as a Roman numeral for readability. So I = 10mw, II
           | = 100mw, etc.
           | 
           | Soon you can buy a highly advanced passive USB cable capable
           | of delivering 10kW to your car for charging.
           | 
           | USB-SuX.
        
             | [deleted]
        
           | marcosdumay wrote:
           | I think it's only a matter of they renaming every model every
           | time the standard is updated. So models come with
           | $standard_version $standard_revision $main_model_version
           | $minor_model_version, and there are different sets of all of
           | those numbers that refer to the same thing.
           | 
           | Or maybe they have another naming schema orthogonal to that
           | that I don't know about.
        
         | dheera wrote:
         | I dunno but why can't we just use fiber already
        
           | le-mark wrote:
           | I wish I could get 100gbs+ fiber as cheap and ubiquitous usb
           | 2.0. I'm curious why not as well.
        
           | jabbany wrote:
           | Doesn't pass power?
           | 
           | A huge chunk of the newer USB protocols has also been support
           | for higher wattage faster charging.
        
             | cesarb wrote:
             | Playing devil's advocate: a fiber+power cable makes some
             | sense. The main thing which limits the cable length is the
             | data wires, not the power wires (just notice how one of the
             | main counter-arguments for "one USB cable to rule them all"
             | is "the higher bandwidth passive USB cables have to be
             | shorter and thicker").
        
               | lazide wrote:
               | Fiber is far too fragile to deal with the abuse even
               | babied USB cables put up with, unless you mandate some
               | kind of semi-articulating steel conduit anyway.
        
             | dheera wrote:
             | So put power? You can run fiber right alongside 50 amp high
             | voltage cables if you want without any signal corruption
             | issues whatsoever.
             | 
             | For practical purposes they'd need just {fiber, 19VDC,
             | GND}, and none of the schengens that USB-C has. No
             | shielding issues, no signal corruption issues, nothing. And
             | you could run it for kilometers.
        
               | dTal wrote:
               | You need at least 5V DC for backwards compatibility with
               | devices that expect that.
        
               | dheera wrote:
               | No, you don't. Get an adapter with a voltage converter,
               | just like you would if you need to plug a 120V-only
               | device in a 240V outlet.
               | 
               | 120VAC outlets have not changed in 60 years and that's
               | owing to the fact that they output just straight-up
               | power, no negotiation BS.
        
               | cesarb wrote:
               | > 120VAC outlets have not changed in 60 years
               | 
               | Where I live, 120VAC outlets last changed less than 20
               | years ago, with the adoption of the new NBR 14136
               | standard for plugs and sockets.
        
         | RicoElectrico wrote:
         | ... & Knuckles (tm)
         | 
         | But in all seriousness, this is one of the worst things
         | marketer types make us suffer. Breaking consistency of naming
         | and numbering. EACH and EVERY model series of ANYTHING
         | successful just has to break the pattern at some time.
         | 
         | Remember when Nokia phones had 4-digit model numbers,
         | optionally with "i"? Then Nseries and Eseries arrived which all
         | had Symbian, but confusingly enough they continued to make
         | 4-digit models with Symbian in parallel. They also started
         | "classic" and "slide" series which often reused other unrelated
         | model numbers. Around 2010 they changed it all to a hot mess
         | like X3-02, C3-01, then came 3-digit optionally with Asha in
         | front. Thankfully they were not as creative with Lumia which
         | had 3-digit or 4-digit models.
        
           | rcthompson wrote:
           | USB4.1 2x2 Gen 1 V2 & Knuckles requires you to plug the cable
           | into a special active adapter that then plugs into the
           | device.
        
         | joshstrange wrote:
         | I was SURE they had learned their lesson after the clusterfuck
         | that was 3.1/3.2 but no, right back at the same shit again.
         | 
         | It's hard to see this as anything but purpose-built to make it
         | harder to tell what a cable is capable of (a huge boon to
         | scammers, aka: 90% of cable sellers). If the USB-IF had half a
         | brain between them all (clearly they don't) they would require
         | the data/charging/etc specs to be printed on the cable. Instead
         | they spend their time coming up with confusing standards that
         | are indecipherable to the average person which lead to a shitty
         | world where everyone needs a cable tester to know what a cable
         | is capable of, or they have constant bad experiences with a
         | cable that fits the port but underperforms if it works at all.
         | 
         | I've heard some people say this is because it's all marketing-
         | driven vs engineering-driven, if that's the case the fire the
         | whole department because they suck at marketing. It's gotten to
         | the point the only cables I can trust are from Anker and even
         | those suffer from lack of labeling on them.
        
           | bravura wrote:
           | Can you recommend a reliable cable tester?
        
             | ThrowawayTestr wrote:
             | You can get little USB power meters but they only tell you
             | voltage and current, not transfer capability. Actual cable
             | testers cost thousands.
        
             | joshstrange wrote:
             | I wish, I've looked a little but part of the problem is the
             | new specs. I doubt many testers can be "forward compatible"
             | to be able to test new specs before they exist. I have an
             | old USB-A tester I used but it's obviously useless for
             | USB-C and all it's specs. Even then, the old tester I have
             | just tells you the speed/wattage, not the max, it's more
             | for monitoring than testing.
             | 
             | At some point I'll just have to bite the bullet and get
             | whatever is on the market and hope there aren't new specs
             | right around the corner.
        
           | bryanlarsen wrote:
           | AFAICT they are learning some lessons. Its not supposed to be
           | called USB4 V2. It's USB 80Gbps. But whether vendors get with
           | the program...
        
       | shmerl wrote:
       | USB4 v2, really? How hard was it to call it USB 5?
        
       | mysterydip wrote:
       | Can consumer devices even transfer data that fast? Or is this
       | future-proofing?
        
         | AaronFriel wrote:
         | High end displays can. 8k60Hz at full (8-bit) color depth and
         | chroma (4:4:4) is around 64Gbps. The article notes that with
         | some features of the spec to reduce bandwidth, this enables
         | "8K144 HDR with Display Stream Compression and no chroma
         | subsampling" with room to spare.
         | 
         | It's a common complaint of even current generation displays &
         | docks that dual display 4k 60Hz docks are few and far between,
         | and good luck getting even one display at 4k 120Hz on docks. My
         | experience there is mostly miss, rarely hit.
        
           | threeseed wrote:
           | You can bet Apple is dying to release a 5K 120Hz (Promotion)
           | Pro Display XDR.
           | 
           | Be interesting if this USB4 v2 ends up in the upcoming
           | MacBook Pro M2.
        
         | NegativeK wrote:
         | I mentioned in a previous version of this discussion that PCIE5
         | NVME is specced to > 14GB/s, and I'd really like to have
         | external drives capable of that.
        
       | rrgok wrote:
       | Dumb question: what is stopping us from creating TCP/IP over
       | USB4v2 so that I can create a home network (LAN) of 120Gbps?
        
         | mortenjorck wrote:
         | The biggest thing stopping you might be the cost difference
         | between 100 feet of cat7 versus a 100-foot certified
         | Thunderbolt 4 cable.
        
           | lazide wrote:
           | The longest true thunderbolt 4 cable you can have is 3 meters
           | or a bit under 10 ft.
           | 
           | I guess you could try making some kind of thunderbolt 4 media
           | converter and do it over fiber, but R&D would probably be
           | pretty steep.
        
             | magixx wrote:
             | There are optical Thubderbolt 3 cables made by Corning/Wero
             | up 100m ($$$$). While not TB4, I've used regular TB3 cables
             | with TB4 devices without issue. I assume it would be
             | similar for those optical cables given same bandwidth
             | requirements. I've also seen TB4 5m cables being sold with
             | the listing saying they are rated up to 30gbps instead of
             | 40.
        
         | NegativeLatency wrote:
         | USB is a tree so IDK seems hard to generally map that to a
         | packet switched network
         | 
         | If 100G NICs were avalible you could do: computer -> usb4 ->
         | 100GB NIC -> optical -> 100GB NIC -> usb4 -> computer
        
           | prvit wrote:
           | We already have things like thunderbolt-net
        
         | DannyBee wrote:
         | The max cable Length at that speed is pretty darn short.
        
           | amelius wrote:
           | What's stopping us from adding a repeater every couple of
           | feet? Transistors aren't expensive and integrating it into
           | the cable shouldn't be too difficult.
        
             | ip26 wrote:
             | I'm sure it's possible, but 40Gbps fiber bundles probably
             | win easily on cost per bandwidth over any significant
             | distance.
        
             | wyager wrote:
             | Transistors that can pass 120gbps are probably expensive as
             | hell, possibly into InP territory.
             | 
             | The cheapest way to do this is over OS2 fiber. Look up how
             | much money you have to spend to get 2x 100gbps OS2 PHYs and
             | 2x 100gbps QSFP28 cards.
        
             | ChrisLomont wrote:
             | 120Gbps repeaters will be expensive. Making circuits that
             | fast is incredibly tricky, with power, heat, rf (and more)
             | issues.
             | 
             | If you think it's cheap make one and get rich.
             | 
             | But it's most certainly not cheap or easy or low cost.
        
         | vxNsr wrote:
         | As others have said, it comes down to length, if you want
         | 120Gbps you'll need to go with fiber
        
         | rektide wrote:
         | Using a valuable rate-limited post to say: you can. USB4
         | mandates direct host-to-host connectivity. If you bought an
         | Intel laptop with 11th-gen/Rocket Lake (March 2011) or better,
         | the cpu has built-in 40Gbps USB4/thunderbolt that can do host-
         | to-host, although not every laptop implements the actual PCIe
         | side of that. This has been support in Thunderbolt since Linux
         | 4.15[1] in 2017.
         | 
         | Alas more generally, things aren't super hot for USB4 devices &
         | things like ethernet integration. USB4<->ethernet options are
         | still very very limited. Paying multi-hundred dollars for 10Gbe
         | is... unfortunate. We have a long way to go before USB4 IP
         | starts coming to actual devices; the hubs shield us from the
         | obviousness of the need by being, in effect, a far-away mini-
         | southbridge with wild behavior-switching on each port. So it's
         | easy to keep doing what we're doing. But eventually I hope we
         | stop using bridge chips and have some re-usable PCIe tunneling
         | or other just better actual USB4<->flash or USB4<->ethernet
         | chips that really try to be modern. It'll be a while.
         | 
         | As another poster says, cable length is short. 2m with active
         | cables. USB3 had a lot of great cables with active repeaters
         | built in (for a while there my desktop was 10m away from my
         | desk), and I admit, I'm surprised I haven't seen this happen
         | yet for USB4, but it should. One of my desires from USB is to
         | make a longer range USB spec. Please give me 20Gbps over 10m?
         | But for people just wanting to plug their laptop or desktop
         | into their NAS, or wanting to direct-attach a mini-cluster
         | together... heck yeah, USB4 is there for you, today.
         | 
         | [1] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-4.15-Networking
        
         | hotpotamus wrote:
         | There was at least one model of Dell switch that used HDMI for
         | 10G connectivity a few years back, so it seems doable. I think
         | most people looking for cheap and fast home networking end up
         | going TCP over infiniband, which is a project I've been meaning
         | to look at sooner rather than later myself. You won't touch
         | 120G though, but I don't think you'll find disks that fast
         | anyway.
        
       | bitwize wrote:
       | And the only reasonable implementation will be in Apple hardware.
        
       | bastawhiz wrote:
       | Is there a reason (other than design by committee) that USB is so
       | complicated? You need to have the right kinds of connectors,
       | cables, and device support. The speeds you get vary for any
       | number of reasons. Why didn't someone just say "all the cables
       | are fast and charge good and if you want slow or bad, use old
       | USB"? It seems we've found the worst possible situation, where
       | consumers don't understand what they need or can use or why, and
       | instead of making it easier, we get the second version of the
       | fourth version which has multiple versions that all do different
       | things under different circumstances.
        
         | bombcar wrote:
         | Because if you're selling a computer, and it has a USB 2 port,
         | you don't want your spec sheet saying "USB 2" while others have
         | "USB 3", but it's hard to upgrade your stuff mid-cycle, so you
         | get "USB 3.1" to be defined as "USB 2" so you can look at least
         | competitive.
        
         | sharikous wrote:
         | Certified Thunderbolt 4 called are available and the fastest
         | and most compatible you can get.
         | 
         | Expensive but reliable.
         | 
         | I don't understand all this hate for USB. Sure the labeling
         | could be better but having a standard that is basically back
         | compatible all the way to the nineties and now a single
         | multipurpose port for charging/storage/displays/devices is a
         | nice feat.
        
           | rektide wrote:
           | Exactly. Yes.
           | 
           | I'd also just say this is a low information environment.
           | Traditionally, we'd rely on the media as a line of defense.
           | Product reviews would tell us who to trust, what the good
           | deals are. We trusted the media to review & find problems &
           | surface issues in the past. But those institutions have
           | undergone enormous revenue crunch, and there's very few left
           | who can really go in depth & do the deep, thorough,
           | intelligent exploration we ought trust them for. Online
           | marketplaces in the world today are bedlam, and there are few
           | trusted authorities. This is a general world condition, but
           | with tech it's extra bad because when things don't work, we
           | almost ever know why/who to blame, it's all just frustrating
           | wizard-shit that's broken & not going, & we are left bereft
           | utterly impotent in the face of these high tech system's
           | mysterious failures.
           | 
           | Honestly, I'd prefer not paying for USB-IF certification on
           | my cables, and I don't care that none of the official logos
           | designating certain compliances are met are embossed on my
           | cables. But I also am a geek who will go spend 3 hours to
           | find Benson (alas no longer active) or Linus's in-depth tech
           | reviews[1], and who doesn't mind trying some cables (buy a
           | couple different ones at a time), finding some not working, &
           | returning those, to save a couple bucks at some hassle. For
           | most people: just buy certified gear.
           | 
           | [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vn2vdQZhs0w https://docs.
           | google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vQ1maB_K91Aw...
        
         | cogman10 wrote:
         | The reason is $$$
         | 
         | Unfortunately, USB has more features than USB manufactures want
         | to support. So, the end result is a bunch of those features are
         | optional. That complicates everything. Is this a USB-C cable
         | that can support PD 3.1? Who knows! Because, not all USB-C
         | cables NEED to support PD 3.1, some of them just need to
         | transmit data at USB 2.0 speeds. Those can be made super cheap.
         | 
         | This is especially bad when talking about things like devices.
         | Sure, every device now-a-days has the USB-C connector, but does
         | your phone really need to be capable of doing 80gbps on that
         | port? Nope, so it's optional. (and would be sold, rightly so,
         | as a power saving measure).
         | 
         | Every USB feature has a fast, cheap, low power tradeoff going
         | on and the standard allows for you to mix and match features to
         | your heart's content.
        
         | summerlight wrote:
         | If you're trying to mandate the highest requirements for all
         | manufacturers, then they're going to either not build or not
         | conform simply because it's too expensive. This is an
         | unfortunate consequence of being the universal standard; it's
         | even worse if manufacturers decide to ignore the standard so
         | you gotta try embrace them.
        
         | Denvercoder9 wrote:
         | > Why didn't someone just say "all the cables are fast and
         | charge good and if you want slow or bad, use old USB"?
         | 
         | Part of the problem is that making fast cables is expensive,
         | and manufacturers will skimp on that expense to save money.
        
           | spicybright wrote:
           | Which is fine. There's plenty of devices I own that just need
           | a charging cable. But it's near impossible to know what cable
           | does what. Even some of the expensive ones I've bought don't
           | do what they say.
           | 
           | You would think with how much money is pumped into the
           | governing body of the standard they could both force
           | classifications of cables/devices and also verify they
           | actually do what's advertised.
           | 
           | Every company using USB-C needs to pay $3500 USD to use the
           | branding and a proper vendor ID. Every single company. And
           | yet they still can't solve the very basics.
        
           | NovemberWhiskey wrote:
           | It's not even just that it's expensive: if you look at a
           | cable that's full-everything including top-rating for power
           | delivery, it's a pretty thick inflexible thing and not at all
           | what you want for e.g. a mouse or a keyboard or whatever.
        
           | bobbylarrybobby wrote:
           | But they can just continue making old USB2 cables
        
             | spicybright wrote:
             | But there's no profit to be made when everything new uses
             | USB-C now.
        
               | bastawhiz wrote:
               | Usb-c runs usb 2.0 just fine! And yet we still have
               | companies trying to make bad USBv(n+2)
        
             | test1235 wrote:
             | Nobody would buy their old USB2 cables when they can get
             | other faster cables, so the manufacturers of the old cables
             | would actually rather pump money into politically
             | pressuring the relevant standards committee into
             | 'massaging' their latest technical definitions to include
             | products which already exist.
        
               | Dylan16807 wrote:
               | People buy USB2 cables all the time, and they're usually
               | correctly labeled too.
        
           | bastawhiz wrote:
           | But then why make them USBv4? Just make v3 cables. Has it
           | truly been politicized by the industry to add so much
           | complexity so crappy manufacturers can sell bad
           | cables/hardware with the latest version number instead of
           | just making stuff that consumers can use?
        
         | chrisseaton wrote:
         | > all the cables are fast
         | 
         | Wouldn't that be massively expensive? I don't need my charging
         | able to cost that much.
        
           | blark wrote:
           | If I'm going to waste a 120 Gbps multipurpose port on
           | charging, I want to do it with style.
        
           | bastawhiz wrote:
           | Sure, then have a charging flavor and a data flavor. Put a
           | special little logo on the connectors. Why do we need such a
           | complicated spectrum of things that plug into each other but
           | don't work well for data or power?
        
             | chrisseaton wrote:
             | > Sure, then have a charging flavor and a data flavor.
             | 
             | Well that's what they do - and then an X flavour and a Y
             | flavour, etc, and that's how we ended up where we are.
        
               | joshstrange wrote:
               | > Put a special little logo on the connectors.
               | 
               | We absolutely don't do this. All my USB-C connector
               | cables look identical, it's utter madness.
        
               | eropple wrote:
               | I've found that the good cables that I've got all have a
               | PD wattage label at least. Except for the Apple cables,
               | but I can recognize those on sight and I'm not buying
               | USB-C cables I could confuse for then.
        
               | chrisseaton wrote:
               | Yeah we didn't do the icon part. But the original comment
               | said make them all the same, then we figured out why
               | that's not practical.
        
             | Dylan16807 wrote:
             | The spectrum of cables is not really that wide. The problem
             | is that almost none of them are labeled.
        
               | smilespray wrote:
               | Please send me the number of your dealer.
        
         | AnonCoward42 wrote:
         | There is no reason they make the transfer speeds as hard to
         | read/decipher as possible. However there is a reason that
         | features are separated. These do cost money in implementation
         | in regards to the cable, the host, and client.
        
           | bastawhiz wrote:
           | But we make the up front cost trade-off at the expense of
           | nothing working right. People buy cables or chargers that
           | don't support the right level of charging. Cables work with
           | some monitors but not others. Instead of paying extra for
           | things that just work, we end up paying for impossible-to-
           | distinguish hardware that may or may not work because of some
           | flavor of the spec that doesn't work with the other piece of
           | hardware you're trying to connect it to. A lot of that ends
           | up being instant trash. Genuine, good hardware that is just
           | incompatible is indistinguishable from badly made hardware:
           | to the consumer they both don't work. And so we end up with
           | waste and frustration in the name of saving a few bucks.
        
             | kevin_thibedeau wrote:
             | The charging situation isn't their fault. USB wasn't
             | designed for it. Non-compliant devices started allowing
             | charging before it was ever permitted. Then they added PD
             | but nobody supported it and manufacturers cooked up their
             | own ad hoc systems to detect a charger.
        
               | TillE wrote:
               | I don't know what you're talking about, everybody uses PD
               | these days.
        
               | kevin_thibedeau wrote:
               | PD predates USB 3. Nobody supported it until it became
               | integrated into modern USB controllers. Prior to that
               | there were janky manufacturer specific resistor
               | combinations used to signal the presence of a charger.
        
         | poisonborz wrote:
         | I'm really starting to think this is absolutely on purpose.
         | Clear versioning would make all cables/accessories instantly
         | outdated/undesirable whenever the new generation starts to show
         | up. Unclear, obfuscated versioning is used to dampen this
         | effect - for most purposes the older cables are "good enough"
         | anyway, and when not, the user will make another buy. Same
         | thing with HDMI or WiFi.
        
       | rektide wrote:
       | Does anything else use PAM3? PAM4 is all over the place (PCIe 6.0
       | from this winter, 25/100/200 Gbe, GDDR6X, I forget who else but
       | more), but PAM3... apparently once was used for 100BASE-T4[1].
       | That's 100 mbit, not Gbit, not 1000Mbit, 100 mbit.
       | 
       | Just so excellent that the USB4 nee-Thunderbolt tunneled/packet-
       | switched architecture means that, if we do get a speed bump, that
       | boost is a win for displays, storage, egpus connected via
       | displayport, thunderbolt, what-have-you. (Not necessarily for
       | those devices, but the % of throughput they consume diminishes
       | respectively). The leap to USB4 is a huge shift, but
       | tunneling/packet-switching has so many downstream benefits.
       | 
       | I'm sure to be downvoted, but- grasping the third rail here: does
       | anyone else tire of every time USB being mentioned, the thread
       | turning into a mudslinging festival? I find repetitive, almost
       | never constructive, usually incredibly poorly defined (my dock
       | didn't work-- ok, how? at all? doubtful) complaints repeated ad-
       | nauseam, and there's such limited energy to refute the waves of
       | negativity from the sore & aggrieved. I want there to be room for
       | these voices, but the mere mention of USB is a magnet for misery.
       | I can & apparently should write some blog posts on why things are
       | they way they are, how incremental evolution happens, and how
       | progress isn't always smooth. But to the larger phenomenon of
       | muck raking being the popular activity at every mention: it's
       | definitely not just USB, in online communities this vocal
       | persistent complaint about topics is a social condition that, so
       | far, has no remedy, no redress. Systemd had to deal with this,
       | Kubernetes, react, rails; so many have had their time on the
       | planet of being targetted subjects. It just happens again and
       | again and again, and the world doesn't deserve to have only the
       | negative so amplified. It'd be so nice to redirect these energies
       | to more focused gathering places, and to let the actual news &
       | events be discussed in peace.
       | 
       | To add a usb naming joke, and to build constructively &
       | consistently on the past, this would obviously be USB4 2x12. Two
       | channels of of 60 Gbps (5Gbps * 12). The previous USB4 2.0 would
       | be 2x8. There, I fixed it for you.
       | 
       | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse-amplitude_modulation
        
         | sophacles wrote:
         | > I'm sure to be downvoted, but- grasping the third rail here:
         | does anyone else tire of every time USB being mentioned, the
         | thread turning into a mudslinging festival?
         | 
         | No. I was sold on USB being one cable to replace them all. Now
         | we're back to making sure we carry all the right cables for our
         | devices. The glorious 20 days of "all my accessories can be
         | dealt with by one cable" was amazing and the USB folks decided
         | to go ahead and screw that up.
        
           | rektide wrote:
           | to me it's exactly the opposite. but i've spent effort
           | growing into this.
           | 
           | i carry a keyring of adapters, one good 1m $25 heavy-duty
           | USB4 cable for connecting fancy stuff, & a regular short-ish
           | light $8 usb3 100w cable for most daily usage. there are
           | usb-c to anything pigtails/adapters up the wazoo: usb-a
           | male/female, usb-mini-b, usb-micro-b, displayport male,
           | displayport female, hdmi male, hdmi female, 20v dc barrel
           | jack, 12v dc barrel jack. most are under $10, less than the
           | specific cable. and a female/female c couplers for good
           | luck/desperate times.
           | 
           | there's some subtle side-perks over dedicated cables to. the
           | displayport & hdmi adapters often have power in, which means
           | if the target is closer to power, i can run a ~2m usb-pd
           | cable (if available) from power to target, & it shares the
           | same extra 1m to laptop reach.
           | 
           | that i can carry a 100w battery that works with nearly any
           | device is just _chef kiss_ icing-on-the-cake /intensely
           | better than where we were. thanks usb-c / usb-pd.
           | 
           | it sounds stupid, having a keyring of adapters. but i _used_
           | to carry cables for everything, way too often /just-in-case.
           | now i just carry one good cable, and a variety of jacks i can
           | put on the end of it. it's a world of improvement to me. i'm
           | not sure what world you lived in where one cable did it all-
           | i always had display, power, data cables, and i also totally
           | get how most people haven't realized how to properly/easily
           | do usb-c with pigtails/adapter jacks, but wow, it's just
           | night & day better to me, & i think it should be for you too.
        
             | sophacles wrote:
             | Given the world that exists, I'm interested in this good
             | cable and the adapters. Previous experience has shown
             | adapters to be janky at best, but that could just be an
             | area where tech has improved or I don't know how to find
             | quality yet - what do you recommend?
             | 
             | (I reserve the right to still be salty over the wasted
             | ideal of one cable to rule them all though)
        
         | tenebrisalietum wrote:
         | USB deserves it. It's almost as bad as SCSI, but least the 50
         | different connectors were differently shaped and I could buy
         | one that matches and know what it would do beforehand. I can't
         | do that with USB.
        
         | pclmulqdq wrote:
         | The Base-T Ethernet standards get very creative about their
         | modulation levels. 1GBase-T (IIRC) uses PAM-5. Using non-
         | standard PAM levels is a very weird thing to do, and it appears
         | to only be useful for optimizing speeds on old (or cheap)
         | cables.
         | 
         | However, PAM-4 did originally have problems with transitions
         | between the extreme levels (00 to 11 and vice versa). There was
         | academic discussion of line codes that could eliminate these,
         | but it appears that this kind of technology has fallen by the
         | wayside in favor of PAM-3 for USB.
        
           | Dylan16807 wrote:
           | > The Base-T Ethernet standards get very creative about their
           | modulation levels.
           | 
           | Yeah, just look at 100BASE-TX. It also uses 3 signal levels,
           | but in a repeating cycle and the incoming bits decide how
           | long to linger on each voltage.
           | 
           | Fun fact: Both 100BASE-TX and 1000BASE-T have a symbol rate
           | of 125MHz.
        
             | segfaultbuserr wrote:
             | Also an Ethernet fun fact: with 100BASE-T1 and 1000BASE-T1,
             | you can now get Fast and Gigabit Ethernet over a single
             | twisted pair. It's primarily used for embedded and
             | especially automotive applications to simplify wiring. Both
             | use PAM-3.
        
         | jiggawatts wrote:
         | All the things you listed are industry-wide standards or
         | frameworks where people are essentially _forced_ to use them. I
         | mean sure, not at gunpoint, but they're inescapable in
         | practice, especially at typical workplaces.
         | 
         | All of those things are also fairly opinionated and all-
         | encompassing, trying to be all things for all people... and
         | failing to be a good fit for many of them.
         | 
         | Hence the grumbling.
         | 
         | You'll see similar conversations about government too for the
         | same reasons: forced on people, wide scope, poor fit for many.
         | 
         | Inevitably someone will say: "But you have a choice! You don't
         | _have_ to use whatever the subject is!"
         | 
         | Sure... I can live on an island away from everything.
         | 
         | I'm a Windows systems integrator and I'm learning Kubernetes
         | now even though it's a poor fit for Windows.
         | 
         | Why? Because it's the "new hotness" and several vendors support
         | it and clients demand it.
         | 
         | So I'm forced to deal with something I don't really want to.
         | Not to say that k8s is necessarily bad, just that it's not nice
         | to deal with in my scenario...
        
       | awoimbee wrote:
       | Would asymmetric PCIe tunneling be possible ? For external GPUs
       | it would be perfect !
        
       | NonNefarious wrote:
       | How does this relate to Thunderbolt, if it does? Is it daisy-
       | chainable?
       | 
       | What a PITA this has become. Does USB still impose excessive
       | processor overhead?
       | 
       | Then there's the unavailability of any USB hub that doesn't suck
       | donkey balls.
        
       | [deleted]
        
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