USB 4: Oh LAWD it Comin'

that's right USB four is coming promising to bring even crazier fast speeds to a computer near you very soon and it was just announced by the USB IIF the USB implementers forum which is a nonprofit organization that kind of handles creating the specifications and definitions for what is required in different versions of USB and believe it or not there are a few things that actually do make this announcement a bit interesting that you might not have been expecting so we're gonna talk about now some of you might be thinking wait a minute that was pretty quick didn't we just get USB three but actually the upgrade from USB 3.0 to 4.0 has actually been longer than average if you look at the history USB 1.0 is released way back in 1996 then four years later it was used be 2.0 and then eight years later it was USB 3 and now eleven years later we're getting us before so it's been the longest in USB history of course that probably is because there were some incremental updates in the form of USB 3.1 in 2013 and USB 3.0 in 2017 so it kind of makes sense it's not like we've been stuck with the same one the whole time but anyway all the good stuff what is the deal with us before how is it better well the first main one is obviously the speed it's gonna have a maximum of 40 gigabits per second which is twice the current latest USB version which only supports a measly 20 gigabits per second another interesting one is like the most recent 3.2 specification USB for is going to support two separate lanes of data which will be divided into 20 gigabits per second each now you can combine that into total 40 but the advantage of having two separate lanes just means that you can have two types of data sent simultaneously to separate signals so if you wanted to combine them and both send data over both of them you get that 40 or maybe you want to have data sent over one and you're also using it to show a display like video you could have both types of data simultaneously one display one just regular data and that's mostly thanks to being able to use the two separate physical sets of pins and wires on the USB type-c connector and of course as you would expect it's all gonna be backwards compatible with previous versions of USB 3 USB 2 and Thunderbolt 3 whoa wait a minute Thunderbolt 3 where the heck did that come from isn't that a totally separate protocol well not really anymore which brings us to the next major news with this whole USB for saga you may currently know Thunderbolt as the proprietary privately owned protocol that was created by Intel and apple and it supports things like very fast speeds up to 40 gigabits per second with Thunderbolt 3 and it also supported a lot of other stuff such as alternative modes they're called which just means being able to be used not just for data but also display and like MHL protocol stuff we're not going to get into but the problem is that because Thunderbolt is proprietary it is not free to use it's not royalty-free so every time a manufacturer wanted to put in a thunderbolt connector on their computer and possibly even create wires for thunderbolt they would have to pay Intel or I believe Apple as well a fee to be able to even do that which is not the case for us because USB is an open standard but the big news is that Intel actually released the specification for Thunderbolt 3 to the usb if' organization to use it in USB for royalty-free so they will be able to use the same technology not have to pay for it so using all this new technology or at least the permission to use it Thunderbolt 3 is going to be the basis for USB for and that doesn't really come as a surprise when you look at the same speed so Thunderbolt 3 supported 4 gigabits per second make sense that now USB for is gonna have 40 gigabits per second it's kind of using the same stuff and obviously this is great news for everyone it means that we're gonna get a lot of the same features that were originally exclusive to Thunderbolt 3 in us before and yeah you could have just used Thunderbolt 3 but a lot of computers and devices might not have used it again because that royalty fee companies might not have used it in the first place at all if they wanted to keep costs down and like I said before Thunderbolt 3 was kind of superior in a lot of ways supporting those multiple protocols and being able to do things like daisy chaining displays to get and being able to empower multiple displays at once now apparently Thunderbolt still will coexist separately from us before so it seems like it's not like Intel's just getting rid of Thunderbolt they're just basically allowing USB to use it royalty free but I think the case is that Thunderbolt still might have additional services that Intel can offer manufacturers so there still might be a reason to use Thunderbolt as Thunderbolt not just us before but I don't really know what that will be I'm not sure if we're gonna see Thunderbolt as often at all but for most of us that's probably not going to matter and we're gonna get everything we're probably gonna need in USB for so I'm really hoping that this actually means that USB will kind of take its name and become actually Universal more so than it has been and we're not gonna have to buy separate under Bowl cables and USB cables because Thunderbolt 3 was using the USB type-c connector so you might have bought a USB connector that wouldn't support Thunderbolt even though Thunderbolt cables are all USB see it's a big mess so hopefully that should clear things up if you're wondering when we're gonna start to see us before connectors and devices probably not this year just the specification is going to be released this year and maybe by the beginning of next year like at CES 2020 is when we'll start to see actual physical devices and connectors they'll be able to use it because right now the USB is really just released an announcement kind of giving you over the big overview some teaser features and the final specification probably takes longer which is why they're not releasing it yet I think the 3.2 specification was like 500 plus pages so yeah that's probably why it's not out yet and here's a fun fact you may have noticed I kind of was writing USB 4 as one thing and that was not a typo unlike previous versions of USB where it was named like USB space 3.0 or USB space 2.0 the USB if' in their infinite wisdom decided to completely change things up with us before for whatever reason and that shouldn't really come to a surprise because USB if' has had a history of notoriously having the worst stupidest naming systems you can possibly conceive of and all you have look at how they handled usb3 to understand that so remember USB 3.0 well that was actually renamed to USB 3.1 genuine and then is now called USB 3.2 gen1 yes they renamed it twice but there already was a USB 3.1 so the first time they renamed it they had to call it USB 3.1 gen2 and now they renamed that one a second time again to USB 3.2 Gen 2 and then they created a new one and instead of calling it USB 3.2 Gen 3 or something like that that would make sense they decided to call it USB three-point to Gen 2 times - yeah I'm not even gonna get started on that apparently a lot of this has to do with the fact that new specifications of USB rolls the previous versions into it so they don't want to make it seem like they're totally different specs which it's so stupid we're not I don't want to get into that if you are curious though how USB C works and all that sort of stuff I did make a totally separate video talking about that I'll put the pop-up wherever it comes out and because a lot of times it is really confusing USB 3 is separate than USB see USB C is just the connector and I explained all of that in excruciating detail in a way that I think makes sense so definitely check that one out in any case though hopefully you guys enjoyed this video definitely check out some other videos I have on here you can just click on those and until next time be seeing you

Channel: ThioJoe

Views: 200,412

Rating: 4.8167262 out of 5

Keywords: technology, tech, usb 4, usb4, usb 4.0, new usb version, new usb, next usb version, usb, universal serial bus, usb-if

Id: ZxRv4L7p5Us

Length: 8min 9sec (489 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 06 2019