[HN Gopher] USB kills off SuperSpeed branding
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USB kills off SuperSpeed branding
Author : vedanshbhartia
Score : 39 points
Date : 2022-09-30 13:25 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
| userbinator wrote:
| I think the IEEE got it right with their Ethernet standards:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet_physical_layer#Naming...
|
| The newer USB transfer speeds are basically using the same sort
| of line code as the Ethernet standards anyway. So doing something
| similar with USB would result in... 1.5BASE-UT
| (USB 1.1) 12BASE-UT (USB 2.0 FS) 480BASE-UT (USB
| 2.0 HS) 5000BASE-UT (USB 3.0 / 3.1 Gen 1 / 3.2 Gen 1)
| 10GBASE-UT (USB 3.1 Gen 2 / 3.2 Gen 2) 10GBASE-UT2 (USB
| 3.2 Gen 1 x2) 20GBASE-UT2 (USB 3.2 Gen 2 x2)
|
| Better? Worse?
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| So if I've got two computers, each with a port labelled 40 Gbps
| and a USB cable labelled 40 Gbps, what's the protocol I can use
| to copy files at close to that? FWIW I used to run PLIP back in
| the nineties (IP over parallel port) to share my dialup Internet
| connection between my desktop and "laptop", so I'm not afraid of
| anything.
| chx wrote:
| https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/co...
|
| > the Ethernet over USB4 interdomain protocol, also known as
| USB4NET enables two USB4 PCs to establish a network connection
| between each other when connected using a USB4 cable, akin to
| connecting an ethernet cable between network cards on two PCs.
|
| I wrote about this a month ago at
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32714807 it gets confusing
| because the USB4 protocol uses the word "routers" for hosts,
| devices, hubs which of course is used by Ethernet for something
| totally else.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| Ah I missed it, TYVM! It's great to see that such a feature
| made it into USB4 now that it's going to reach these speeds.
|
| > I do not quite know what happens if you were to plug three
| hosts together via a USB4 hub. As my post above details,
| USB4NET properly travels over the hub but which hosts pair, I
| can't even guess.
|
| Can't wait to see people trying this and reporting!
| aappleby wrote:
| Hey, the new branding looks exactly like what I suggested in a
| similar HN comment a few months ago. Good job (finally) USB
| people.
| aappleby wrote:
| Old comment thread:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32682264#32683540
| cududa wrote:
| This is still ridiculous. The USB certified logo should be one
| image, then a similar sized wattage and Gbps number displayed
| next to it. The pertinent information is still too tiny. The
| cables themselves are still way too easy to mix up. Connector's
| inner plastic should have different colors
| wnissen wrote:
| The whole concept of "SuperSpeed" made it more difficult to
| understand what was going on, so I'm very glad to see it go. A
| rare hiccup in the USB consortium's otherwise unbroken streak of
| making each generation more difficult to understand.
|
| The all-time prize has to go to the German wine producers,
| though, who regard a wine named "2001 Selbach-Oster Wehlener
| Sonnenheur Riesling Spaetlese Feinherb" as very precise and
| helpful.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| > 2001 Selbach-Oster Wehlener Sonnenheur Riesling Spaetlese
| Feinherb
|
| It is a dry (feinherb) white (Riesling is a white wine berry
| variety) wine that has been harvested late in the season
| (Spatlese), making it have a higher alcohol level. Wehlener
| Sonnenheur is a geographical vineyard location (should probably
| read Wehlener Sonnenuhr, which is semi-famous and located at
| the Mosel, near Bernkastel), Selbach-Oster is the name of the
| winemaker, and 2001 is the year of production.
|
| I fail to see what is complicated about that. But then I am
| German.
| loufe wrote:
| I suppose the OP wasn't being sarcastic, despite (I agree) it
| reading as such.
| vitus wrote:
| Most of those characteristics actually seem par for the
| course even in the US. For instance, Trader Joe's sells an
| in-house "Trader Joe's Reserve Merlot Sonoma Valley 2020"
| [0].
|
| At a bare minimum, you'll get vintage (year), winemaker, and
| grape varietal, possibly with some additional qualifiers,
| e.g. Reserve as above, or late-harvest. Riesling in
| particular is such a widely used grape that can be either dry
| or sweet, so breaking out "dry Riesling" is not atypical.
|
| [0] https://www.traderjoes.com/home/products/pdp/reserve-
| merlot-...
| dividedbyzero wrote:
| I think that's fine, every word carries actual information,
| though not speaking German will render the last two words
| useless and not being well versed in German wines will do the
| same to a few words at the start, so perhaps the only
| universally understood tokens are 2001 and Riesling (and
| perhaps not even Riesling?)
|
| However, there are lots of laws called things like
| Rindfleischetikettierungsuberwachungsaufgabenubertragungsgesetz
| and I don't know which level of German language proficiency you
| need to be able to read that fluently, but probably one of the
| higher ones. Even native speakers sometimes struggle with
| lengthy concatenations and I feel that German legalese is a
| whole different level of crazy. So perhaps the crown for the
| most opaque naming scheme should go to the German Bundestag?
| zuminator wrote:
| They still have the problem of "Hi-Speed" being the slowest
| speed. They should've killed that name off too and required that
| manufacturers use the designation 1/2Gbps to be in line with the
| other speeds.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| This wouldn't be necessary if Big USB had better versioning
| numbers to begin with. They're right that customers shouldn't see
| "USB4 Gen whatever x LOL", but it shouldn't be a name underneath,
| either.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| The problem is that there are too many "axes" to encode and
| simple version numbers would have never worked to encode that
| all: protocol version, port version, top-rated speed, top-rated
| power draw, optional features, etc. Not every device needs 80
| Gbps and 200 Watts, and if every USB "4" cable had to support
| that minimum it would greatly increase costs per length to
| support a tiny fraction of devices. It would drastically
| simplify things when you go looking for a USB cable for a
| device, but the cost market of USB cables would look a lot more
| like, say, HDMI cables: just about only short cables and quite
| a bit of expense to them.
|
| This new branding initiative _may_ be on the right track,
| encoding the two axes most obvious to end users of cables:
| speed and charging strength. (If cable makers move to the new
| branding. They don 't have to. That's the real confusion that
| USB should fix but can't. Branding is a _suggestion_ , not a
| requirement.)
| tinus_hn wrote:
| Names are fine, the problem is if you call something superspeed
| what are you going to call next years speed? Hyper speed?
| Ultraspeed? Turbospeed? You rather quickly run out, and that's
| if it doesn't start sounding ridiculously hyperbolic before
| that. And of course superspeed is super slow by todays
| standards.
|
| So you have to either use marketing names that don't mean
| anything by themselves, or numbers that naturally increase.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| LudicrousSpeed(tm) of course.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| That's the mistake that USB 2.0 made calling 480 Mbps "High
| Speed". Now it seems incredibly slow by today's standards.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| See also: high definition TV
| alias_neo wrote:
| Am I right in thinking that 4K and 8K are UHD 4K and UHD
| 8K?
|
| I guess this debacle goes even further back with VHF and
| UHF.
|
| Why do we insist on using such words when they don't
| clearly have an order?
|
| Is "very" larger than "ultra" and where would "super" fit
| in there?
| anikom15 wrote:
| Usable frequency is just on one axis, and is bound by the
| physical properties of the atmosphere, so there is at
| least a limit.
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| Or even USB 1.1, which called the faster of its two modes
| (12 Mbit, or perhaps more honestly Mbaud, per second) "Full
| Speed", at which point anything you name an even-faster one
| is going to be confusing.
| dwaite wrote:
| The problem is that techs push for branding to be things like a
| spec semantic version, but specs often just define options such
| that vendors would implement them in an interoperable way -
| while profiles are what define and test interoperability
| against mandatory feature sets.
|
| Spec lines like USB 3.x and HDMI 2.x are meant to be
| interoperable sets of ever-increasing options, not an upward
| climb of mandatory minimum capabilities.
|
| Vendors who didn't use SuperSpeed nomenclature before might
| have been doing so because it was clunky, but also might have
| been doing so because they didn't want to go through the effort
| of being certified against a profile (and in some cases, had
| nonconforming products)
|
| This is simpler naming, but it remains to be seen whether
| implementors will suddenly care about certification. Those
| motherboards with the "USB 3.2 2x2 USB-A" red ports on the back
| are AFAIK un-certifiable and even non-conformant. No amount of
| marketing push for simpler names is going to help if vendors
| feel they get more value from just making stuff up.
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| How does this handle 2x1 vs 1x2 vs 2x2?
| AdamJacobMuller wrote:
| > "As we started to update our branding we did a lot of focus
| group studies with many different types of consumers," he tells
| The Verge, "and none of those people understood the messaging and
| the branding, and they don't understand revision control or spec
| names."
|
| You didn't need a focus group to tell you this (though I'm glad
| they did one). Just look at every single comment thread on HN
| about USB branding, at this point it's a meme.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| USB-IF is a forum of so many different companies the focus
| group probably was needed for CYA finger pointing if no other
| reason. If _this_ branding doesn 't work out they can blame a
| bad focus group and convene a new one rather than war among
| themselves.
| schmichael wrote:
| At this point USB might as well auction their branding rights
| like sports stadiums:
|
| - USB Coke Zero
|
| - USB House of Dragon streaming exclusively on HBO
|
| - USB Crypto.com
|
| Consumers, Devices, and cables could continue ignoring it all but
| at least the consortium could have a new revenue stream.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Pepsi Presents: HDMI 3.0. With the most refreshing refresh rate
| ever.
| altairprime wrote:
| If it doesn't have any optional features, I'd take that in a
| heartbeat.
|
| HDMI Pepsi: Same great taste, no matter where you are.
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