USB Finalizes 10Gbps SuperSpeed+ Standard as USB 3.1

[martinX]

Does anyone know why USB 3.1 has been released, when everyone thought USB 3 would be it for quite some time? I'll tell you. It's because I just bought a new iMac, two 4TB USB3 external hard drives and a 1 TB USB 3 portable hard drive, that's why.

Want to know what cool band is about to drop out of favour? What clothing trend will start to stink next week? Just ask me what is cool and popular and do the opposite.

The universe sticks it to me every single time.

 

[pdjudd]

Does anyone know why USB 3.1 has been released, when everyone thought USB 3 would be it for quite some time?

It hasn't been released. The spec for it has been finalized, but there aren't any products out there that actually support them and likely won't be any for another year or so.

 

[SlCKB0Y]

Competition is good for progress and the consumer. For most users, USB will probably win out, but Thunderbolt will continue to have a function as long as it keeps improving.

Errr not when it comes to "standards".

Tell that to people who bought HD DVD, Mini Disc, Laser Disc, Betamax. This stuff goes all the way back to AC vs. DC for mains power and is never good for the consumer, especially the early adopters ...

 

[SlCKB0Y]

I walked into Fry's 2 weeks ago and their USB 2.0 selection of external HDs is so much larger than USB 3.0s. Pricewise it's only difference of $10 it seemed like. If 3.0 is better and backward compatible AND at a decently low price, why are people creating USB 2.0 stuff? This way it seems like it will never be adopted.

Put simply, you're looking at old stock. Id be hard pressed to buy a USB drive in my area which wasn't USB 3, unless I pulled it out of the bargain bin.... But congrats for taking one branch of one retailer and generalising that to the state of USB across the entire planet.

 

[iSayuSay]

Does anyone know why USB 3.1 has been released, when everyone thought USB 3 would be it for quite some time? I'll tell you. It's because I just bought a new iMac, two 4TB USB3 external hard drives and a 1 TB USB 3 portable hard drive, that's why.

Want to know what cool band is about to drop out of favour? What clothing trend will start to stink next week? Just ask me what is cool and popular and do the opposite.

The universe sticks it to me every single time.

I wouldn't care nor worried about having USB 3.0 for external hard drives. It's fast enough to the point the hard drive itself becomes the bottleneck instead of the USB interconnect.

Anything faster wouldn't matter unless you go with RAID or SSD externals.

And about USB 3.1 on the Mac. Unless Intel supports it natively with Broadwell or later, it wouldn't be there on a Mac. Third party USB host controller is too mainstream for Apple blood

 

[martinX]

I wouldn't care nor worried about having USB 3.0 for external hard drives.

I know. I was just having flashbacks to when me and a friend bought dual G4 Mac Pro towers a month before G5s were released...

From what I can tell, USB 3.0 is even fast enough for current SSDs, so USB 3.1 won't come into its own until you start RAIDing as you said. And who RAIDs SSDs? Not that many people, I'd wager.

I'm not quite sure why the USB people felt the need to up the speed and potentially introduce confusion into their own market - the speed increase will have no bearing on almost every peripheral that people will plug into it. Also, as has been established, they don't exactly compete with the Thunderbolt crowd. In the area they do compete with them (external drives mainly), they'd win on the basis of the ubiquity of USB3 drives, cables and ports. TB has its own uses that USB3 can't do regardless of speed. Maybe they're expecting SSDs to quadruple their speed and come down to 1/4 of their current price any day now.

 

[APlotdevice]

Errr not when it comes to "standards".

Tell that to people who bought HD DVD, Mini Disc, Laser Disc, Betamax. This stuff goes all the way back to AC vs. DC for mains power and is never good for the consumer, especially the early adopters ...

Betamax and Laser Disc both continued to exist alongside the more mainstream VHS, serving the professional and videophile markets respectively.

 

[SlCKB0Y]

Betamax and Laser Disc both continued to exist alongside the more mainstream VHS, serving the professional and videophile markets respectively.

I realise that, but how'd that work out for the people that bought one and expected to go down to their local video store?

Either way, haven't you illustrated my point that fragmentation of competing standards is not good for the consumer?

The Majority (who purchased VHS) ended up with a technically inferior standard. The Minority that purchased Betamax (and Laser Disc) missed out on all the benefits associated with widespread consumer adoption.

 

[Eidorian]

Next year is going to be fun with SATA Express (PCI Express SSD connector) native to the Intel 9 Series chipset for the Haswell refresh and a good chance the USB 3.1 controllers will show up for the ride too.

Though I will probably be getting a new notebook in the next few weeks if I am lucky.

 

[phrehdd]

I'll be the first to admit that I was not happy with how Apple rolled out TB with little or no real devices to exploit this amazingly fast form of communication. Part of why it is expensive is not just that it is new but it requires more electronics.

On the other hand, as most know, USB also has its challenges as it can impact CPU performance and hang not just devices but impact on rare occasions the OS itself. Also running multiple USB connected devices seems at times to have its problems when running at the same time and also, some "disconnect" for no apparent reason.

Since I love the idea of choice - I'll chose which ever one works 'well enough,' have the least issues and is cheaper. I do agree that TB might suffer the same fate as Firewire if Apple doesn't put some real cost/effective benefit to the customer.

So in short we can be glad we will have choices unless of course Apple absolutely (most likely argh) decides NOT to put this new USB 3.1 in any of their systems so that we are forced to use TB. - Solution: adapters to go back and forth between these two forms of communication.

 

[el-John-o]

It may not kill it in the strictest sense, but it does place Thunderbolt as the latest in a very unenviable pattern, namely port obsolescence. All of the many obscenely-overpriced devices bought by pros will work fine until Apple abandons the standard as it did with FireWire. Not to worry, though! When they arbitrarily choose another intentionally-hobbled version of yet another proprietary standard, you'll still be able to use your JBODs, RAIDs and sundry enclosures cluttering your desk, because they'll offer a conversion dongle for the bargain price of $50 a pop.

God, I seriously hope Dock Port goes open standard and gains traction, if only to hit Intel where it hurts.

FireWire was introduced in 1995 and still exists today on some of Apples lineup. It's hardly 'abandoned'. Obsolete? On it's way out? Sure. But people keep saying "thunderbolt is going to go the way of FireWire". But.. c'mon. 1995-Present (okay, we'll throw a bone and say 2008 when USB 3.0 came out). That's a long, healthy lifespan for a niche/high performance connector standard.

My biggest problem with ThunderBolt, which you touched on, is the restrictiveness of the standard. Even so, I'm STILL thinking people really don't know a thing about FireWire when they call it 'short lived' or 'obsolete' or 'outdated'. It's been on Mac's since the NINETIES! Someone born the same year FireWire was introduced probably graduated High School this past May (If they are in the U.S.) And it's not quite 'abandoned', even though it's being phased out, with a planned replacement (thunderbolt). Thunderbolt will hold the same role; high speed daisy-chainable file transfers to and from storage devices. Other things, like audio devices, will probably switch over to USB.

 

[GSPice]

All I care about is that everybody who says TB is dying will come back to the forums in 5 years and apologize when it hasn't.

 

[el-John-o]

Put simply, you're looking at old stock. Id be hard pressed to buy a USB drive in my area which wasn't USB 3, unless I pulled it out of the bargain bin.... But congrats for taking one branch of one retailer and generalising that to the state of USB across the entire planet.

+1.

The local MicroCenter even sells USB 3.0 thumb drives out of a 'bargain bin' where you can buy a USB 3.0 thumb drive for $10. USB 2.0 devices are pretty much relegated to peripherals. USB 3.0 devices work with USB 2.0, so there really isn't a good reason for manufacturers to produce products that are USB 2.0. (My USB 3.0 external HD enclosure and USB 3.0 thumb drive work nice and fast on my Mac and on my USB 3.0 equipped PC, but on my wifes 2.0-only laptop they also work just fine, albeit a little slower!)

 

[JohnGrey]

FireWire was introduced in 1995 and still exists today on some of Apples lineup. It's hardly 'abandoned'. Obsolete? On it's way out? Sure. But people keep saying "thunderbolt is going to go the way of FireWire". But.. c'mon. 1995-Present (okay, we'll throw a bone and say 2008 when USB 3.0 came out). That's a long, healthy lifespan for a niche/high performance connector standard.

My biggest problem with ThunderBolt, which you touched on, is the restrictiveness of the standard. Even so, I'm STILL thinking people really don't know a thing about FireWire when they call it 'short lived' or 'obsolete' or 'outdated'. It's been on Mac's since the NINETIES! Someone born the same year FireWire was introduced probably graduated High School this past May (If they are in the U.S.) And it's not quite 'abandoned', even though it's being phased out, with a planned replacement (thunderbolt). Thunderbolt will hold the same role; high speed daisy-chainable file transfers to and from storage devices. Other things, like audio devices, will probably switch over to USB.

I grant you that FireWire had a surprisingly long life span for an unarguably niche standard but we're also at a time in history where the period of standards maturity and obsolescence is much faster than it used to be. The unified VHS standard was released in 1976 and remained universally supported until the middle of the 2000s. That's nearly three decades. By comparison, DVD's became common in the late 90s into the middle 2000s, barely lasting a decade before it was superceded in earnest by Blu-Ray, and that's ignoring the format war for most of '05. It's only been six years and hardware manufacturers and content distributors are already making actual consumer-available inroads to the 4k market.

And that decreasing longevity is unconscionable when dealing with a standard as costly and restrictive as Thunderbolt.

 

[el-John-o]

I grant you that FireWire had a surprisingly long life span for an unarguably niche standard but we're also at a time in history where the period of standards maturity and obsolescence is much faster than it used to be. The unified VHS standard was released in 1976 and remained universally supported until the middle of the 2000s. That's nearly three decades. By comparison, DVD's became common in the late 90s into the middle 2000s, barely lasting a decade before it was superceded in earnest by Blu-Ray, and that's ignoring the format war for most of '05. It's only been six years and hardware manufacturers and content distributors are already making actual consumer-available inroads to the 4k market.

And that decreasing longevity is unconscionable when dealing with a standard as costly and restrictive as Thunderbolt.

That's a good point, but I'm not sure Thunderbolt will go the same route as the DVD. It might, but it also very well may not. The very fact that it is still a direct-route PCI-Express connector bodes well for it. As your example is a bit more linear than Thunderbolt vs USB as this thread discusses. Your example explains why USB 1.1/2.0 lasted for so very long but USB 3.0 for so short before ALREADY becoming obsolete to USB 3.1. I guess that's my whole point; Thunderbolt is going to exist and grow independent of USB. The two really shouldn't be in the same conversation as they always are, because they aren't the same thing.

I could be wrong, and thunderbolt could be short lived. But, I still am convinced that although it'll never be a huge mainstream product (neither was FireWire), it will continue to be a staple of at least the Macintosh platform for years to come.

 

[Mr. Wonderful]

There's a big difference between how USB to HDMI (or VGA or DVI) handles video and Thunderbolt. I don't consider even USB 3.0 to Video adapters competent. Even the USB 3.0 ones are like driving a monitor with old Intel 950GPU's. Sure you can do it, but do anything beyond internet and low end video and you might as well forget about it. To be proper, it needs to be driven by the computers GPU which USB 3.0 (or 3.1 for that matter) is NOT doing. Further, you won't find any that can do above 1920x1200 because the frame buffers just can't handle it.

Again, one cable (thunderbolt) to rule them all. True GPU accelleration. Monitors up to 2560 x 1440 (for now) and 4K monitors with Thunderbolt 2. Easily expandable with PCIE enclosures. Low latency. Etc. etc. Now if you just want to hang a hard drive off your computer, then USB 3.0 is awesome.

Edit: Also do not forget, using a USB to Video cable uses your USB Data bandwidth to drive the monitor. This means you now have less bandwidth for the rest of your USB devices. For Thunderbolt, the Video is independent of the data bus thus not affecting the data bandwidth for all of your other devices.

Thunderbolt 2 still isn't fast enough for the scenario where external GPUs would make sense.

 

[devilofspades]

i guess i can kinda see peoples points on the matter. i mean i would be upset too if there was some technology i relied on and apple took that away too. owww wait a minute, that's right, apple didn't take away usb at all! they even actually added 3.0 support like some people asked for. ok, so i guess i don't get what the big deal is? no one is losing their usb ports so why all the bitching? my main question though is, when will i be able to get my thunderbolt 2.0 magic mouse?!?

Apple's not going to sell that. You really have no clue how Thunderbolt fits in the marketplace vs. USB.

you're an idiot if you can't see the sarcasm in that...

 

[martinX]

If there were no Firewire, there would have been no 'desktop video editing' revolution. It was not made 'obsolete' by USB 1 or 2, or thrown into irrelevance by a lack of Firewire hard drives at Costco/Office Works/Aldi. Thunderbolt will start appearing on devices you may not have thought of. And the people that use those devices will rejoice

 

[toke lahti]

II, for one, love thunderbolt for it's docking ability.

Funny thing that usb3.1 will be better for docking than TB. Finally all 3: power, data & display in one cable.

And that decreasing longevity is unconscionable when dealing with a standard as costly and restrictive as Thunderbolt.

I also think this is the biggest problem. I don't want to invest devices that will be obsolete in few years, because they have some very expensive connector, that has no added value compared to mainstream. So far TB acceptance in ICT sector overall has been pretty close to zero. And quite a few years already now.
If you look at what Apple just did with MP, it's pretty scary to invest something like Decklink's products, if you could only use them with Macs. Luckily many of them have also other ports than TB.

If there were no Firewire, there would have been no 'desktop video editing' revolution. It was not made 'obsolete' by USB 1 or 2, or thrown into irrelevance by a lack of Firewire hard drives at Costco/Office Works/Aldi. Thunderbolt will start appearing on devices you may not have thought of. And the people that use those devices will rejoice

Will start or not. Usb3.1 will give even less reason for choosing TB.
Firewire was missed opportunity. It was and still is much better design than usb and the sad thing was how Apple and Sony messed the chance to get it mainstream. Looks like same will happen to TB, but in much more faster pace. When FW was introduced, within about one year, you could have it an almost every computer as an add-on card. Every big laptop manufacturer offered a model with it. Not so with TB.

 

[APlotdevice]

Funny thing that usb3.1 will be better for docking than TB. Finally all 3: power, data & display in one cable.

Big problem there: USB is a host/client type connector. With the host (usually the computer) supplying power to the client, not the other way around.

 

[toke lahti]

Big problem there: USB is a host/client type connector. With the host (usually the computer) supplying power to the client, not the other way around.

Damn those usb engineers are stupid!
They put the cable the wrong way!
The power brick needs to be host and the laptop the client.
They have to fix this fast...

 

[APlotdevice]

Damn those usb engineers are stupid!
They put the cable the wrong way!
The power brick needs to be host and the laptop the client.
They have to fix this fast...

The computer needs to be the host if you're going to connect it to a dock.

 

[toke lahti]

The computer needs to be the host if you're going to connect it to a dock.

...and (drumroll) computer can't take juice from client like power brick, a dock, a hub or a display? (This is why there is 100 W in the specs...)

 

[APlotdevice]

...and (drumroll) computer can't take juice from client like power brick, a dock, a hub or a display? (This is why there is 100 W in the specs...)

No, the 100W is so that USB can be used as a standardized high-powered DC connector. They haven't eliminated the host and client nature of the standard. You can have a host and client on the same device, but you still need two separate cables.

 

[throAU]

Real world throughput on USB 3 5GB is about 3 gigiabit with horrible millisecond latency.

Thunderbolt 1 real world throughput is pretty darn close to the rated 10 gigabit with nanosecond scale latency.

Presumably, USB 3.1, like every previous USB version will get approximately 60-70% of it's rated throughput, with similarly horrid latency due to the way the protocol is designed.

Which is fine, for the devices it is intended to drive - which aren't the same devices thunderbolt is designed for.


Those who think USB is in any way comparable to thunderbolt, or that it will "kill" thunderbolt are completely deluded.

It's like saying that SATA will kill SAS, or that copper cables will kill fibre, now they can do 10 gigabit ethernet too (despite fibre having moved on past 40 gigabit per port and the copper is over a max distance of 5 metres).

If you don't need it, fine.