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  • ianmills - Wednesday, July 26, 2017 - link

    I guess those speeds are getting pretty good. With my legacy connector it takes me a few minutes to deliver 725MB of data. Negotiating the protocol is an issue as is the the associated latency before transmission can begin. On the plus side both connectors have been compatible for hundreds of thousands of years and show no signs of obsolescence
  • Uurah - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link

    You win sir
  • MxC6maxP - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link

    Ha! And you can plug the connector upside down too, although sometimes it requires a little bit of work.
  • Alexvrb - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link

    Always use shielded cabling for your dongle!
  • surt - Sunday, July 30, 2017 - link

    Waaay more than 725MB of data, just FYI. That's per-unit, with a typical unit count in the ballpark of ~40M = ~30 exabytes of data.
  • cnhorn - Friday, January 12, 2018 - link

    Unfortunately a legacy connector very rarely transmits on the first insertion. It most often requires repeated partial removal and reinsertion for data transmission to properly initiate.
  • dishayu - Wednesday, July 26, 2017 - link

    So, I understand that USB 3.1 Type-C are required for full performance, but will the old cables still work? For example, if I have a USB 2 cable with Type-C connectors, will it still work with a USB 3.2 port/host with USB 2 spec?
  • ganeshts - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link

    Yes, it will - using only the D+ / D- pins for a max of 480 Mbps theoretical bandwidth.
  • mukiex - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link

    It kinda blows my mind that Corning hasn't announced any development in Thunderbolt 3 or USB-C cables, as it's basically the one place where their optical cables would make a perfect fit. Maybe they're busy trying to make the converter hardware fit in the smaller plug width?
  • MajGenRelativity - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link

    That's a plausible outcome. Although, I'd take a longer rigid plug extension if it meant I could have a longer cable than 1 meter.
  • Alexvrb - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link

    Or even an inline lump a few inches away from the connector. The next USB port should be backwards compatible and add optical to the mix. That way you've got good compatibility, power, and higher-speed optical all in the same package. Honestly they should have done that with type-c to start with.
  • Zoomer - Wednesday, August 2, 2017 - link

    I know, they could easily charge several hundred or even tens of thousands for a long run. Companies would pay for it.
  • damianrobertjones - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link

    ...and all the people that moaned about the Surface pro not having this port... are now stuck with the older port and the prospect of buying new kit AND cables in the future. Progress. It's ace.
  • Zeratul56 - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link

    They make it seem like the hardware is all the same, I would think a simple firmware update would be possible for any USB 3.1 gen 2 device to add 3.2 speeds. Wether that actually happens or not is anyone's guess. They aren't changing anything either port or protocol. They are just opening up one of the high speed lanes if it is not in use
  • extide - Friday, July 28, 2017 - link

    Probably not as I would bet most USB 3.1 Gen 2 devices only have one set of transceivers -- you would need a second set which means new hardware.
  • PixyMisa - Saturday, July 29, 2017 - link

    No, you need the equivalent of two USB 3.1 controllers to run one USB 3.2 port.
  • name99 - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link

    That's a stupid argument. These things ALWAYS get better. The same will be true in 5 years with USB4 is released, then again when USB5 is released.
    And people cope the way they ALWAYS do. Some of your kit is old, and when you connect to it you accept slower speeds and/or use dongles. Some of your kit is newer and life is great. And eventually the older stuff dies. NONE of this is any sort of argument for delaying using any new spec.

    Compare when cell phone or WiFi specs get updated. Do you buy a new base station the day a new WiFi spec comes out? Or do you just accept that things work exactly the way they used to, then your new phone connects to your old base station as slow as before, then one day, maybe three years from now, you get a new base station and your phone and tablet now connect twice as fast.
  • mkozakewich - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link

    We're stuck with USB 3.1 A, yes, with the prospect of buying new kit and cables in the future.
    If they supported USB C, we would be using the same cables used in the near future, and could reuse them for the future devices that charge at 15v with USB PD.
  • yhselp - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link

    If/when USB goes up to and beyond 40 Gbps, external GPU docks should really come into their own - virtually any laptop would be compatible out-of-the-box, and a connection that's the equivalent of PCIe 2.0 x8 with room to spare should sort most bandwidth-related bottlenecks. A GTX 1060 paired with a 28W Intel CPU, or a TDP-down quad-core, should provide adequate mid-range performance.
  • weilin - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link

    Thunderbolt 3 is a PCIe 3.0 x4 implementation. Which is the equivalent bandwidth of PCIe 2.0 x8. That's available today.

    With the coming of PCIe 4.0, bandwidth doubles again. a Thunderbolt 4? implementation would be PCIe 4.0 x4, which is equivalent to PCIe 3.0 x8 or PCIe 2.0 x16.
  • Eden-K121D - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link

    PCIe 4.0 is getting skipped to directly implement PCIe 5.0 with 32GT/s transfer speeds
  • MajGenRelativity - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link

    True, but the DMI bus can limit it then. Depends on where the Thunderbolt port gets its PCIe lanes.
  • repoman27 - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link

    Thunderbolt 3 has been shipping for over a year now for $8.55 (if you believe Intel's tray pricing), and contains a 4 port / 4 lane PCIe 3.0 switch and protocol converter. How are you going to connect a discrete GPU to a host PC using USB? Thunderbolt 3 is much better suited to eGPU solutions, especially now that Intel and Apple have finally given them their blessing.

    However, while the next PCIe revision will give Thunderbolt a bit of a bump, the link itself is still limited to 40 Gbit/s. And I'm not sure where they could even go with lane rates. The fastest transceivers in the datacenter are only pushing 28.05 Gbit/s per lane, and Thunderbolt 3 is already at 20.625 Gbit/s. Unless they add more channels, which I really don't think they will, we're probably going to be capped at 40 Gbit/s for a while.
  • repoman27 - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link

    Well, it looks like FPGAs can support up to 32.75 Gbit/s now, but I'm not sure how soon that type of performance will trickle down to a 2.2 W, 10.7 x 10.7 mm chip designed to provide external I/O for consumer laptops.

    Even a theoretical Thunderbolt 4 controller with a PCIe 4.0 x4 back end and two 30.9375 Gbit/s channels for a 60 Gbit/s link would only be equivalent to a native PCIe 3.0 x6 connection. (Ever since Thunderbolt introduced channel-bonding, there seems to be additional overhead which causes PCIe throughput to top out at 80% of what you'd normally expect.)
  • extide - Friday, July 28, 2017 - link

    PCPer did some testing with an external GPU dock -- it actually hampers performance quite a bit -- much more so than just putting a GPU into a native PCIe 3.0 x4 slot.
  • SharpEars - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link

    So, half as much as Thunderbolt 3. Who cares?
  • Fergy - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link

    Exactly. Who cares about Thunderbolt when it is, at best, only 2x faster. The only thing that makes sense is to have a thunderbolt/USB 3.x usb-c port because the chance that somebody is buying a thunderbolt device is extremely low.
  • BillBear - Friday, July 28, 2017 - link

    So they've developed an alternate mode that supports another USB connection over the same cable.
  • Morawka - Friday, July 28, 2017 - link

    now it's time for Intel to actually give USB some CPU Lanes to work with. Enough with the 16 lane K series CPU's. or 4 lane i3's, we need more lanes Intel!
  • extide - Friday, July 28, 2017 - link

    Yeah having 20-24 natively off the CPU would be really nice. Hopefully pressure from AMD will finally make them do this.
  • PixyMisa - Saturday, July 29, 2017 - link

    I think they're concentrating on releasing PCIe 4.0. That will double bandwidth in one go, so no need for more lanes.

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