Upcoming USB 3.2 Specification Will Double Data Rates Using Existing Cables

[Avieshek]

Both new iPad pros and the old 12.9 all have USB 3.

It still does transfer at USB 2.0 speeds. Doesn't matter, doesn't change the fact.

Whenever I buy my next macbook it's going to be a hell of an upgrade coming from a 2011 model.

- non-retina > retina
- standard SSD > faster pci-e SSD
- 802.11n 2.4ghz > 802.11ac or ax
- USB 2.0 > 3.1 or 3.2
- hardware decoding of HEVC, VP9, and hopefully AV1 if I can hold off long enough
- better battery life I assume

Con: horrible new keyboard

2018 is said to be a full refresh. Using Non-Retina 13" MacBook Pro from 2012 as well. Looking forward to 2018.
But there's a rumour of OLED screen when in 2019. If the iPhone this fall comes with it than can't deny that holding a likely probability and would rather be the actual awesome upgrade for a MacBook.

From Non-Retina LCD > 12-bit Rec2020 colour gamut, 120Hz refresh rate (ProMotion), HDR contrast Retina OLED
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The iPad Pros do USB 3.0 speeds. What Thunderbolt functionality in particular would you realistically see on an iPad? It's not like there will be an iPad with an eGPU.

Did I mention Thunderbolt? However, Thunderbolt makes 40Gb/s and is not the same as USB 3.2 It's more of a USB 3.1 with both to-&-fro transfers at 10Gb/s but if you are making a backup of your 256GB or now 512GB iOS device, it can solely transfer at 20Gb/s which is about ~2GB transfer rates. If the same logic applies to thunderbolt, 80Gb/s. One needs a dedicated chip for Thunderbolt; in USB, it does not, which is licensed by Intel but expected to be allowed as open standards in 2018.

 

[DevNull0]

Thought it was 8x? Computers are binary and 10 doesn't divide by 2.

10 divided by 2 is 5.

Well, to be fair to SillanRail since he seems to think doing it in binary makes a difference....

0b1010 divided by 0b10 is 0b101

Though I'm still not sure what his point was.

 

[SilianRail]

I meant that 10 is not 2^x of any integer

 

[DevNull0]

In a few years, phones will be paper thin and sport a 30 min battery life.

Or have no battery at all and will only work within 6 inches of an inductive charger.

 

[dampfnudel]

Meanwhile iPad Pro transfers at USB 2 speed to/from computers

So what else is new with Apple. Some parts of Apple leap too far ahead while other parts lag years behind.

 

[Essaux]

Meanwhile iPad Pro transfers at USB 2 speed to/from computers

iPad "Pro"

Buying apple's native USB to lightning connector and loading in images requires too much power from the device so it won't happen.

Apple's Pro moniker has to be taken with a grain of salt these days.

 

[alexgowers]

What? New capability over an old cable? How very un-Apple like.

Lol this is intels tech, not apple. Apple might have had input on design but this is not an apple product. I love the extra data but I do wonder if this is just adding thunderbolt 3 to the usb 3.2 spec. Having direct access to the cpu is important and would hate to see that dropped in favour of usb only.

 

[dv8r]

I'm still using my 2011 MBP, go imagine... That shiny new Surface Book will be in the trash much sooner, with slow, obsolete ports (and that Alcantara that will look and smell like s.)

Well... I'm using an Macbook Air that's going on 4 years now and I'm going to buy another Air because both Apple and Microsoft has decided to mess with (and **** up) one of the most important parts of the Laptop: the keyboard.

That computer does not have any of the new ports - I'll bet You that it's the top-seller at Apple even today, so most new computers sold, even from Apple will have all those obsolete ports on it... and it will be fine. I travel with my main machine and the power adapter, it works and will continue to work for a long time without me standing somewhere in need of connectivity through any adapter.

 

[gnasher729]

Thought it was 8x? Computers are binary and 10 doesn't divide by 2.

Ahem.... 10 divides by 2. 10 divided by 2 is 5.

The missing thing is that you cannot just transfer data, you have to transfer information where data starts and ends. Typically 10 bits need to be transmitted to get a full 8 bit byte at the other end. So 10 Gigabit ends up as 1 Gigabyte.

 

[recoil80]

Meanwhile iPad Pro transfers at USB 2 speed to/from computers

I read they support USB 3 for the 10.5'' and 12.9'' models, but the 9.7 iPad pro is still USB 2 and that's a shame.
I didn't check but I suppose the 2017 iPad is USB 2 as well

 

[curtvaughan]

8 bits in a byte actually has nothing to do with binary. It could have been any number. But a number was chosen and it's 8.

Actually, the 8-bit size did make sense for binary, being a power-of-2 size that would easily accommodate the most common character set, ASCII. Some early mainframe machines like the CDC 6000 (6-bit bytes, 60-bit words) and DEC's PDP-10 (36-bit words) had non-power-of-2 word/byte sizes, but were focused more on numerical processing than word processing. The standard character set for the CDC/Cyber machines was called "Display Code", used only 6-bits per character, and did not accommodate lower case. CDC/Cyber brought out a 8-in-12 character set which allowed the use of ASCII characters in 12 bits, for 5 characters per word. In any case, over time it became apparent - both for hardware and software reasons - that power-of-2 design was superior overall, so machines began coming out with 8-bit byte designs incorporated into 8, 16, 32, and eventually 64-bit word designs. This allowed for simpler ASCII character encoding and also was convenient for programmers using masking operations and addressing (octal and hexadecimal were convenient means of expressing binary strings).

 

[femike]

This USB-C is seems a mess. Differing cord specs, machine specs and USB3 specs. Its all over the place.

 

[T-Bob]

You got that right. Do they even realize that we'd all happily trade a thinner iPhone for a product with 100% more battery capacity, a high throughput, high power USB-C connector and even a phone that didn't need a protective case for every day use?
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Given its USB 2.0 data rate, lightning was never a good standard it was barely even fair at initial release. JMO.

As many others have said, Lightning can do 3.

That's just the thing...there isn't just one cable. There are at least 4 that I can tell. For example, the USB-C cable that came with my 2017 MacBook Pro only supports USB 2.0 speeds. It's basically a power cable. Then there are USB-C 3.1 cables, USB-C Thunderbolt 3 active cables, and USB-C Thunderbolt 3 passive cables. All 4 cables have the same ****ing ends on them.

It gets better. Not any one of those cables can cover every use case.

Thunderbolt 3 cable is thicker, heavier, and of course much more expensive. I've never tried using mine off monitor but I imagine it could also do everything a $5 cable could except be less portable. Anyone is free to only buy TB3 cables so there is no bandwidth limitation. I've not tried using my MBP C cable for data transfers, so only know the TB3 one supports higher than 2 speeds for sure, that does seem surprising as its a higher quality feeling gauge cable than the cheapest ones, oh well. But this is only a limitation of economy, not technical.

Well, Apple's magic new port is obsolete before it actually became useful. USB 3.x = Thunderbolt 1/2/3 all over again.

In the meantime, there's no useful ports on Apple computers.

There is no reason why Type C can't do USB 3.2, so the port is fine. Older devices won't be able to use it, but why would they need to if they have TB3 (excluding type C devices like MacBooks).
Actually the OP mentions type C all through it, there might not even be a type A implementation.

 

[UnalignedByte]

I appreciate the development, but this forest of different specification versions, capabilities and speed is getting quite confusing. Especially now that thunderbolt may, but doesn't have to, be included in an USB C port.

 

[T-Bob]

What the Type C port carries is all up to the OEM. It's only a bad thing if the customer expects a feature in Type C that isn't there, but that would suggest the customer has some technical knowledge already and would be able to check to see what protocols are supported in the device they're buying.

To my mind it's all about flexibility. Now you have one port that is on (nearly) all devices from phones up and it can do just about anything, it'll just make things easier in the future, and for those of us who use it now, it already does.

Just to give an example, this port allows my MBP to use two desktops, one with 5k, KB and trackpad, other with 4k, KB and mouse (shared with NUC which also has C, but this one doesn't support power). Allows MBP to use a battery pack which outputs 30w (previously you'd need a HUGE battery with AC support) and also allows better portability as the cable detaches (no strain breaks like previous).

 

[t0mat0]

Will this new USB specndonpower over the cable or daisy chain like TB3?
Getting external displays and eGPU needs huge bandwidth so whatever can provide this is appreciated (5k 60fps HDR Video on one cable for an external screen attached to a Mac for example. Or RAID array SSD. Or using SSD attached to a monitor etc).

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

Actually, the 8-bit size did make sense for binary, being a power-of-2 size that would easily accommodate the most common character set, ASCII.

ASCII only uses 7 bits, though... the last bit is just skipped unless you're using Extended ASCII.

 

[ISanych]

While you're right about the controller, Intel is going thunderbolt across the board in it's chips AND removing all royalties in 2018.....

But will we see thunderbolt in AMD systems? Intel and Apple wasted so much time making thunderbolt expensive niche solution when USB was slow, I don't see how it will retake ground now when speed difference is much smaller and USB still much cheaper.

 

[citysnaps]

Well, Apple's magic new port is obsolete before it actually became useful. USB 3.x = Thunderbolt 1/2/3 all over again.

In the meantime, there's no useful ports on Apple computers.

I hear you. My new Sound Devices six channel mixer/recorder with USB C port will not plug into my two year old iMac with USB-A ports without a $5 adapter or new $10 cable. Wah...<sound of stomping feet> Apple did not anticipate my needs soon enough.

Guess I should jump on the whinefest bandwagon here...

 

[Appleaker]

It does.

Intel announced the plan to remove the fee in 2018.
But it's not clear when - also, it's not clear if it will apply to future thunderbolt standards.

Also third party companies don't magically release custom TB controllers once the standard is free. It will take years, assuming TB3 will still be the "bleeding edge" standard afterwards.

Sorry, was supposed to say “it won’t have licence fees”. My guess is it will apply to future standards, even though I think they only mentioned Thunderbolt 3. Unless it is just a ploy to increase popularity and then introduce licence fees once people use it a lot more. I don’t think it will take years after the fees are removed, also I’m guessing we’ll have Thunderbolt 4 by the end of next year.

 

[manu chao]

What the Type C port carries is all up to the OEM. It's only a bad thing if the customer expects a feature in Type C that isn't there, but that would suggest the customer has some technical knowledge already and would be able to check to see what protocols are supported in the device they're buying.

Video ports always had the same issue, knowing the port name (VGA, DVI, mDP, HDMI) only told what kind of plug your cable needed to have. You needed the version number (eg, DP 1.1) to know the maximum transfer rate and even then, what really mattered was the maximum resolution your graphic card could put out. And the DVI plug had several versions, some of which were compatible with the VGA analog signal.

 

[T-Bob]

Video ports always had the same issue, knowing the port name (VGA, DVI, mDP, HDMI) only told what kind of plug your cable needed to be. You needed the version number (eg, DP 1.1) to know the maximum transfer rate and even then, what really matter was the maximum resolution your graphic card could put out. And the DVI plug had several versions, some of which were compatible with the VGA analog signal.

Yes exactly. And remember when 1600 res monitors came out the only solution was to use two DVI cables for the bandwidth (the newer type of DVI!) same with the first ten 5k which needed two DisplayPort until gen 2 monitors came out which allowed MST through TB3/C port.

Now the only 'problem' is making sure your cable can handle what you want from it, which just takes a small amount of research. No-one attempted to transfer 100W down a usb cable, you can't expect some cheap cable to be able to do everything.

 

[d5aqoëp]

Apple will never implement USB-C port in iPhone. Apologists will urge us to use wifi syncing. The future is slow, unreliable and full of high latency.

 

[T-Bob]

Apologists will urge us to use wifi syncing. The future is slow, unreliable and full of high latency.

Is this guy wrong then?

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/is-iphone-7-usb-3.1992437/page-2#post-23469963

I've never measured speed on 7+ but the sync speed seems pretty fast, even if it isn't 3.

We've had so many people claiming that lightning either doesn't do 3, or doesn't sync at 3 that I think we need some sources now. We know for sure that 3 models of IPP do it anyway.

 

[manu chao]

Is this guy wrong then?

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/is-iphone-7-usb-3.1992437/page-2#post-23469963

I've never measured speed on 7+ but the sync speed seems pretty fast. We've had so many people claiming that lightning either doesn't do 3, or doesn't sync at 3 that I think we need some sources now.

So far we only have seen Lightning (or iOS devices) do USB 3 speeds if the iOS device is the (USB) host (eg, using a card reader as a USB client), but not if the iOS device is the client (as it would be when synching to a computer). There is no cable with Lightning at one end and a (male) USB 3 A connector at the other, there is however, a USB-C to Lightning cable. Has anybody tried using that cable to sync one of the iOS devices that support USB 3 to some degree (iPhone 7, 10.5 & 12.9" iPad Pro) with USB-C computer (eg, MB or 2016 or later MBP)?