And if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.
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USB-IF Confusingly Merges USB 3.0 and USB 3.1 Under New USB 3.2 Branding
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Perhaps you should tell that to the Thunderbolt 3 marketing department - see "Thunderbolt 3 - The USB-C that does it all" https://thunderbolttechnology.net/consumer/ - or maybe find an example of a Thunderbolt 3 device that doesn't support at least USB 2 output* - but since the only TB3 controller chips at the moment are Intel's, which have USB 2/3.1 controllers baked in, the latter is a bit moot.
Even USB-C is a "protocol stack" with a set of minimum requirements rather than "just a connector". Cables don't work out which way up they're inserted or how much power they can draw all by themselves...
Actually, this is probably the real rationale for re-naming everything 3.2 - all the protocols for detecting device types and switching modes will have been updated to include the new possibilities. You've kinda put the finger on the basic problem, though: The USB and TB nomenclatures don't do a good job of distinguishing data transfer formats from physical connectors and 'support' protocols for marketing purposes.
(*USB 3 input on Thunderbolt peripherals is an option, and wasn't possible until last year anyway).
...because USB 2.0 used a shiny new protocol to stuff data down the same pair of wires 40x faster than usb 1.1 did, which represented a significant technological advance in signalling specs, error detection/correction etc. that, probably, either wasn't available or was too expensive when USB 1.1 launched.
USB 3.2 is just two USB 3.0/3.1 streams running in parallel - the 'innovation' is to use the two 'spare' pairs of wires in the USB-C cable, which have been available since the inception of USB-C in 2014 (after 3.1g2) to carry a second stream of data. Not having it in USB-C from the start stinks of a 'roadmap' for planned obsolescence.
They did a wonderful marketing job with USB-C that seemed to convince lots of people that it was somehow more than just a new cabling system for a bunch of established protocols.
It isn't. Tb3 already does 40 Gb/s. (And offers other benefits, such as a direct PCI Express connection.)
I don't quite see how.
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That's not the new convention. The new convention is that 5, 10, and 20 Gb/s are all called USB 3.2.
Don’t worry. You can buy USB 3.1 “Gen 1” aka 3.0 devices today and rest assured that they will be upgraded to USB 3.3 Gen 1 automagically for you a few years from now. Thank you, USB-IF!
Chucker, dude.
TB3 implements USB 3.1 Gen2 (SuperSpeed 10Gbps) in alternate mode
With the newly-fangled, dual-lane, USB 3.2 20Gbps, TB3 will remain capped at 10Gbps in alternate mode because it implements USB over a single lane.
Yes, native (encapsulated) TB3 has 40Gbps capability, but that demands TB3 at both ends.
My point, which you missed, is that using the expensive TB3 cable for USB connections is now at a disadvantage.
That should be fun for an Apple store employee to explain to Peter & Mary deciding which new MacBook to buy.
It's stupid either way, and the latter (new) naming convention is possibly even worse. Just move onto 4.0, 5.0, etc instead of all this .x version nonsense. Consumers don't care that 3.2 is the same protocol as 3.0, all they know is 3.2 is a lot faster than 3.0, and that's all that should matter. USB 3.2 speeds alone are worthy of a major x.0 version over 3.0.
"USB 3.2 Gen 2x2" is what happens when you let engineers make marketing decisions. It's so facepalm worthy the USB-IF should be embarrassed.
Qué?
I'm not an expert on this. I did miss your point (and still do), which is why I wrote: "I don't quite see how."
I'm also not sure we're talking about the same things.
Best as I can tell:
- Using a Tb3 cable to run USB connections does limit you to whichever the Thunderbolt transceiver on both sides supports. For now, that's indeed 10 Gb/s.
- You could use a USB-C cable instead, which would theoretically give you more bandwidth.
- But in practice, even then, Apple would need to add additional chips to their Macs regardless of their choice to go with Thunderbolt, because none of Intel's chipsets (nor AMD's, for that matter) include USB 3.2. In fact, USB 3.1 was only added with Coffee Lake last year, so this seems quite a ways off.
If your point is that a Tb3 cable now sucks for ideal USB use, while simultaneously being pricey, that's true, but that's not really new information. It's always been Power Delivery, Thunderbolt, high USB bandwidth: pick one. Picking multiple of those is just a waste of money. Yes, that sucks, but that's on USB-C, not on Thunderbolt, and not on Apple.
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Yes, but this nonsense isn't really new.
(For example, the Power Delivery cables that ship with MacBooks only do USB2. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)
What Apple and the IF should have done is designate cables as "best for power", "best for speed", "best for versatile use", or something like that.
(No, nobody wants to learn and look at the iconography.)
But that's exactly what the IF doesn't want. They want you to think that all of those are the "newest", latest and greatest. That's why we're in this mess.
Nah, it's what happens when an industry forum wants to sell water and pretend it's wine.
In fact, Thunderbolt 3 does work with those same USB 3.x cables of up to 2 meters length, albeit limited to 20 Gbit/s (which is the same transfer rate as USB 3.2 Gen 2x2).
Passive Thunderbolt 3 cables essentially are just high quality USB cables, as far as I'm aware.
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I don't think that is true.
Active Thunderbolt 3 cables (that support the full 40 Gbit/s at more than a meter cable length) don't support SuperSpeed USB at all, only basic USB 2.0 support is implemented. I'm not sure whether that's a limitation of the spec or just of the cables currently available, but I suspect the former.
Passive Thunderbolt cables however essentially are just high quality USB 3.1 cables, aren't they?
The question is when Thunderbolt controllers will implement support for dual-lane USB operation. But that's not affected by the cables.
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This "branding"—it isn't though; the branding is SuperSpeed, SuperSpeed 10 Gbit/s and SuperSpeed 20 Gbit/s respectively—actually makes a lot of sense, because the USB 3.2 specification replaces the USB 3.1 specification which replaced the USB 3.0 specification.
Just like the USB 2.0 specification replaced the USB 1.1 specification which had replaced the USB 1.0 specification.
All USB transfer rates are encompassed and fully defined by USB 2.0 and USB 3.2 now.
3.1 and 3.0 are redundant, just like 1.1 and 1.0.
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Yeah, USB-C is basically just a connector with some extra spice for determining how to configure its pins based on orientation and protocol, guaranteed to do at least USB 2.0, except on some arcane power-only cables defined in the spec, which I have yet to see. As you've said, it's a very difficult technology to market due to its complexity, so marketing departments have settled on a variety of inaccurate ways to describe its usefulness to the average consumer. Unfortunately, the destiny of this tech seems to be to perpetually confuse people, since it has been clearly stated in the documentation that even more protocols may be added in the future.
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Just call it USB-C3PO that way it can translate in over 6,000,000 forms of communication.
Light speed is too slow..we're going to have to go to....LUDICROUS SPEED!