TECH

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USB4 Spec Published

The USB Implementer's Forum (USB-IF), responsible for creating USB specifications, today published the USB4 spec. Besides removing the space from its naming system, USB4 offers twice as much bandwidth as USB 3.2, resulting in a maximum throughput of 40 Gbps when using appropriately certified cables.
USB-IF announced the USB4 spec in March. In addition to increased throughput, USB4 offers "the ability to optimally scale allocations for display data flow," which makes it possible for daisy chain devices even if they are a mix of external displays and data-driven devices, such as external storage. The next-generation USB interface will also be backwards compatible with USB 2, USB 3.2 and Thunderbolt 3.
The backwards compatibility with Thunderbolt 3 - along with some of the improvements made to USB4 as a whole - results from Intel contributing its Thunderbolt technology to the USB specification. That means Thunderbolt-compatible products will no longer have to pay the company a licensing fee, too, which should encourage manufacturers to adopt Thunderbolt in their products sooner than later.

Specification	Throughput	Previous Term	Technical Term	Marketing Term
USB 4	40 Gbps	N/A	USB 4.0	Not Announced
USB 3.2	20 Gbps	N/A	USB 3.2 Gen 2x2	SuperSpeed USB 20Gbps
USB 3.1	10 Gbps	USB 3.1 Gen 2	USB 3.2 Gen 2	SuperSpeed USB 10Gbps
USB 3.0	5 Gbps	USB 3.1 Gen 1	USB 3.2 Gen 1	SuperSpeed USB

USB-IF plans to announce a new specification for the USB Type-C connector to handle USB4 bus delivery (the backwards compatibility wouldn't mean that much to most people if they had to deal with yet another connector type). The group plans to reveal more about its plans for USB4, USB Type-C, USB Power Delivery and "new USB-IF branding strategies" at the USB Developer Conference days in Seattle and Taipei later this year.

by Nathaniel Mott