Now THAT'S a universal bus. Seriously though - this looks pretty cool. Even beyond the different daisy chaining configurations it will be nice to just have one cable to hook stuff together if this works out. Need to connect your printer, scanner, mobile device, monitor - use this cable. Need to charge your whatever - use this cable.
Cable gone bad and giving you a bad day? It's OK because all the other cables you have are the same kind of cable. Just use one of them. It's a glorious, glorious vision of the future.
I wish I could upvote you, because I would upvote you so hard.
This really is the cabling revolution we need. Getting rid of cables entirely is unrealistic (at least until battery technology advances by huge leaps and bounds) but minimizing and simplifying the cables that we use on a regular basis would be a massive improvement.
It also couldn't handle power transfer... THIS is what the mobile industry has needed for years and what will possibly mark the return of the dock model and laptops/mobile more frequently devices connected to full size/peripherals and displays at home.
There is absolutely a demand for this, it just hasn't been very easy (the average consumer looking at a power cable, USB hub, display cable, etc just gives up). I know Mac users young and old that bought iMacs even tho they had MBP already because they wanted something larger at home.
It'll be interesting to see whether Apple ignores this spec and plows forward with Thunderbolt for a while or wether they adopt it fast. Personally speaking I have no big need for it as I still have a desktop, but it'd make a future Surface Pro A LOT more interesting.
We need this NOW! I'm trying to hook up 4 monitors and i need a freakin different cable for every one! The stupid radeon has DVI, HDMI, MiniDP. So not only do i need regular cables, i need to wach out for this Mini plug crap. WTF! I had to just stick one in the VGA of the intel integrated and called it a day.
Check the specs of your video card, but DisplayPort (including mini DP) can support multi-stream transport, meaning that with a MST hub you might be able to connect more than one monitor to just that one port.
What are the chances we'll see Type C on 2015 phones? I know it's still not necessary from a voltage or data rate standpoint, but it'd definitely help drive the adoption rate quickly AND Samsung has already been implementing USB 3.0 on recent models... The quicker Type C starts becoming commonplace the more likely it'll be to realize it's fill potential, even if we don't see things like these alt modes for 2 years.
Great question, I'm wondering the same thing. Idk if 2015 flagships might be too early to have this. If I had to bet I'd say no, because it's a process that starts with the SOC, and it has to be USB 3.1 compatible. It's possible that SOC makers have already started preparing for this to be in next year's SOCs, but that would be the only hope of it being in phones next year.
You can use Type-C for USB 2.0 devices as well. There is no need for the SoC to include a USB controller that supports an Enhanced SuperSpeed bus just to use this connector.
Actually, I believe that the most glorious vision of the future would be wireless everything. No bluetooth, wifi, cell, nfc, usb, power, just one signal to everything.
Intel not integrating thunderbolt into all their chipsets killed Thunderbolt. If they'd done that we'd have no need for this solution because we'd all already have it. That being said this solution is just a good and better for backwards compatibility so let's hope everyone jumps on board..
I wonder if, since DisplayPort works with this and Thunderbolt works over DisplayPort cables, it would be possible to have Thunderbolt as an alternate mode on USB Type C.
As I contemplate then an external PCIe bay attached over Thunderbolt over USB-C containing a USB3 controller running a USB->DisplayPort adapter.
Replying again to say I have since found other articles quoting USB-IF representatives mentioning PCIe as a potential alternate mode, which would effectively be the same thing as Thunderbolt.
Not quite. The PCIe scenario they describe involves only one lane, or maximally two if you get rid of the SuperSpeed USB link. ThunderBolt allows 4 lanes of PCIe and DisplayPort, subject to overall bandwidth limitations of course. This does of course come at a cost though - rather than a simple and cheap multiplexer ThunderBolt has to collect and resend every packet of data.
Am I missing something; or will this only work with lower resolution DP modes? The graphic "USB Type C device switch..." shows USB3 and DP nominally sharing two of the 4 data lines. If you're using a high resolution monitor at a combination of resolution/displayport level that needs all 4 lanes (2560x1600 @60hz with DP 1.1, 2560x1600 @120 or 4k @60, with DP1.2, or 4k @120 with DP 1.3), all 4 data line pairs would be needed for DP video data. It feels like they missed the boat here; if it was possible to re-purpose the 2.0 wires in the alternate mode as well you could run DP at it's full resolution and USB3 at the same time.
Longer term, I'd be concerned that a future USB data mode would double bandwidth by using both TX/RX pairs instead of just one and be completely incompatible with this sort of setup.
AFAIK SuperSpeed USB requires the lower speed USB 2.0 connection to function. You won't be able to use all 4 DisplayPort lanes and USB 3 at the same time - if you need that kind of bandwidth you will need ThunderBolt.
You obviously run out of bandwidth at some point. To be frank 4K@60Hz AND heavy data transfer over the same cable is kind of ackward. There's nothing stopping you from using 2 cables instead to monitor and external HDD.
That's the only advantage of ThunderBolt. If you think about that, it is MUCH nicer to have high wattage and 4K. tha 4K@60Hz + HS data transfer, so actually ThunderBolt advantage is not really such.
This will be a game changer if we get all the devices with USB Type-C connectors. Then we will have 1-2m long USB Type-C cables for basically everything, for all the devices, for all the needs (Except for $30 apple cables with anti-copy chips on it so apple customers continue paying a useless premium, that is)
Keep in mind that you can have 4K@60Hz over just 2 pairs as of DP 1.3. So you can have 100W, 4K, and 2 lanes of USB Superspeed+ (10Gbps up + 10 Gbps down) all on the same cable.
SirPerro has it right. Just use more cables. If your monitor has only one cable connected to it (I just realized you won't need the power cable, even for the monitor) the video signal can use all four lanes. TB can't power the monitor so that's that. If you want to use the USB ports on the monitor to plug in your mouse and keyboard you can use one cable for that and another for full res video signal. More wires is still better, if all else is the same.
I wonder if it simplifies the part of video card design at all, it's unlikely it'd happen any time soon tho given the vast legacy of old displays... Even VGA is still more common in the wild than DP.
It will be great, they are much smaller than DVI, HDMI and DP ports, so you will have more room for vents.
Now we just need a networking alt mode and all the connectors on the back of your PC will be USB Type-C. ALL OF THEM!!! Ok, that's pretty unlikely. It might be funny, but it won't happen because it would be confusing. You would have different ports which support different alt modes. People have trouble cabling things today when the wrong cable doesn't fit; imagine the confusion if every cable were the same.
USB GigE adapters are pretty common anyway, and I imagine many hubs and displays geared for a laptop dock model will feature Ethernet connectivity. The average consumer just uses Wi-Fi for the most part anyway. I still find phone cables from faxes and random phone lines jammed into Ethernet ports across offices all the time btw, or even USB printer cables.
This is extraordinary news for everybody but Apple.
They will have a very hard time promoting Lightning and Thunderbolt after Type-C. Lightning was rendered useless just with Type-C alone. Thunderbolt still offers (currently) some bandwidth advantage for a <0.1% of the users with some amazing price premiums I doubt people will be ready to pay after this hits the market.
There’s also the small difference of Thunderbolt and Lightning being available on devices already, and have been for some time.
Apple doesn’t give a shit either way, they want good connectivity and they needed to bring out their own tech to get it. If USB catches up/overtakes Thunderbolt, they’ll just ship that, too (not unlike how they stopped shipping Firewire and kept USB 3).
Competition is good. And once 4k displays get to be mainstream, and people will want to run 2 or more of them, the connectivity and GPU tech providers will have to have caught up.
I don’t understand how peple keep bringing up Apple in and thinking it’s bad for them. Do you really think they want to circlejerk around their own connection types that hard? They want to seel hardware, if someone comes up with technology that satisfied their needs, they’ll just use that.
Apple isn't a cable vendor. In fact, you could argue that Lightning and Thunderbolt were their attempts to do exactly what USB is doing now- squeeze as much functionality as possible, particularly power, high data rates and a video protocol into as few small, reversible cables as possible. Now that USB is doing all that in something that people will actually use, you'd think Apple would be happier than most. Except for their customers, who will be able to actually find and afford peripherals now.
There's good reason for not wanting cheap Chinese knockoffs - there was a case recently of some Chinese power adapters looking like the Apple ones having an electric shock hazard.
As for the chip necessary in the cables I don't think it increases costs that much. What they should have done is enabled a passive default mode which provided USB and power while requiring a chip to reconfigure the pins for other uses. That's how the USB type C connector is going to work, except that the chips are going to be in the devices rather than the cables.
Did you read the article? Thunderbolt works by encapsulating data as PCIe, that is, packetizing it. It requires expensive chips made by Intel to pack and unpack those packets. USB Type-C has a simple hardware mux, meaning the DP lanes get connected to the DP controller and the USB lanes get connected to the USB controller, no shenanigans.
1) Lightning was created before USB type C existed. Since there are no type C products on the market Lightning's existance is justified for a little while longer but yes, it should ultimately be replaced with type C.
2) Thunderbolt, in addition to having more bandwidth, uses PCIe which permits lower latency and can usually get much closer to the theoretical bandwidth. This offers a significant advantage in RAID arrays, SSDs, and NICs. A niche market, like you say, but ThunderBolt will probably continue to exist. A lot of those problems could be solved if devices switched to USB-attached SCSI rather than the slow and unreliable Bulk Only Transfer protocol, but that hasn't happened yet.
Lightning still does have some advantages over type C in terms of physical form factor, but keep in mind that, for the moment, Lightning is nothing more than a non-standard USB 2.0 connector. There is nothing stopping Apple from producing Lightning to type C cables just like they currently produce Lightning to type A cables.
The problem is that as soon as they committed to a given connector, it became in their best interest to stick to that connector for a while, to maintain compatibility with docks and accessories. It's possible that Apple may eventually migrate to a type C connector, but they have an incentive not to.
How does lightning have more bandwidth than type c? We know it can push BOTH 10gbps data and dp 1.2a (so around 20gbps, or so). This isn't even including future implementations of things like pcie.
I never said it did. Type C cables can carry about the same amount of data as ThunderBolt 2 (at the expense of some flexibility in how bandwidth can be allocated).
"Thunderbolt, in addition to having more bandwidth,"
What flexibility did you have in mind? Of protocol? Well, since we're talking about type c, the protocol seems limited to what can be carried on a 4 lane differential cable with whatever the host controller's clock rate is limited to.
The flexibility is that each channel doesn't have to be dedicated to specific use - you have 20 Gbit/s upstream and 20 Gbit/s downstream and that can be taken up by whatever needs it.
And you quoted me as saying lightning had more bandwidth than USB.
I didn't say USB, i said type c. Is not lightning using the thunderbolt protocol? If not, pardon the error. Is there a real flexibility advantage to thunderbolt given type c and alternate modes? From the article it seems as though any protocol than has a line protocol which can be run over 4 pairs of differential wires (plus various other wires for aux) can be supported.
Thunderbolt and Lightning are not the same thing. Lightning is just a connector which allows its pins to be configured as USB, audio, and perhaps other uses.
And my point about flexibility is this: If you want to transmit data and video over a type C connection you have one USB lane in each direction and two DisplayPort lanes. But if you're not using the full bandwidth of two DisplayPort lanes for your monitor, you can't reallocate some of that bandwidth to data, whereas you can with ThunderBolt since everything is combined. On the other hand this might be advantageous in certain situations because you have dedicated upstream and downstream space for data whereas with ThunderBolt you could potentially saturate the downstream link with just video.
I realize lightning is a connector, but I thought it used the thunderbolt protocol. Regardless, it is only 8-pins (according to wikipedia), so it looks like it's pretty limited, bandwidth wise. Thanks for clarifying your point. Are we certain that AMs won't allow for a unified bus?
If half the USB 3.0 lanes (2 of 4) are now used for DisplayPort links then both are running at half of the current maximum data rate. 5gbps each way for USB 3.0 and the bandwidth of 2 lane DisplayPort instead of the usual 4 lanes.
I am simply reading the image in the article. It says that it can utilize both superspeed usb (so, 10gbps), and dp 1.2. Apparently usb 3.1 is simply clock doubled usb 3, as far as max signalling is concerned. So, it only needs two pairs to achieve that speed. The other two pairs can act as a two lane dp. This isn't too surprising. They've had time since thunderbolt was released to work on this and incorporate useful ideas. Obviously, given the inherent limitations to the usb protocol there was only so much they could do with it, so they came up with the alternate modes idea along with the type c connector.
Apple has time to market, economies of scale and the fact that Lightning is proprietary to their mobile devices. Long term, I can eventually see them dropping Lightning in favor of the Type-C but that'll play out depending on how low power alternative mode host controllers can be added to their SoC and if the die space for it can be spared. Short term, the Lightning connector has nothing to fear.
FWIW, Android handsets will face the same problems and likely the first generation of handsets supporting the Type-C connector will not use any of the alternate modes. This likely kills off MHL over the long term too.
These alternative modes pretty much does kill of Thunderbolt. Since we're just dealing with the announcement of this today, it'll be a year or two before silicon arrives supporting type-c alternative mode but when they do, I can see Apple adopting it rather quickly. Like Firewire, Thunderbolt will likely live on a few more years in the Apple ecosystem on high end models due the need for legacy peripheral support.
I can see Apple welcoming Type C on the desktop/laptop side where they don't have as much control over the silicon, they'll probably let it coexist for a while or whatever depending on what Intel does...
I'm not so sure they ever adopt it on the mobile side tho, when Lightning becomes obsolete they're just as likely to come up with some other proprietary nonsense. The ONLY way they adopt Type C on phones/tablets is the adoption rate is already huge by the time Lightning becomes inadequate.
Despite their love for proprietary connections and other methods of lock in, I couldn't see them ignoring an established standard that fits their needs. Here's hoping Type C displays and hubs and docks are common by then.
according to the register apple (along with msft and goog) were pushing for the displayport/usb integration. So, I don't think apple is upset at all. Now, their customers might come to be upset, seeing as how much bitching they did on the internets when lightning came out, but also seeing as how apple forums are, from what I've heard on this site, filled with folks with broken lightning connectors, the move to type c may be welcomed by all.
So I'm guessing this replaces the micro DisplayPort connector that has been in development?
Also any chance that this will be the connector for Thunderbolt 3? It seems to fit all of the specs from Intel's leaked slides and if this is the future of DisplayPort then it seems like using it for TB is a natural next step.
uDP was not mentioned in the briefing. The DisplayPort physical layer is still alive and well, but certainly this removes some of the need to create any new physical layer standards.
Thus being able to switch between DP, PCIe and native USB 3.1, it looks like the type-c connector is going to suffice for the majority of Thunderbolt's use-case scenarios. Thunderbolt still offers more bandwidth, daisy chaining and the ability to mix PCIe and DP signals simultaneously over the same cable but these are small advantages.
Power is carried on different wires than data. The Type-C connector is designed to allow data rates above 10Gbps in order to meet the USB-IF's longevity goals (though I don't know for sure what this would mean for the wires).
Is it going to be a mess or is Type-C going to be the one perfect cable? The physical device makers had better come up with some very clear symbols to indicate what devices can be matched up on the other end of the cable. Things I can think of: Power source/sink requirements Alt mode standards supported/required Bandwidth for PCIe, DP resolutions (will be affected by cable length like DP alternate) Daisy chain capability
I hope they get in the habit of color coding and not just slapping on small easy to miss labels... This isn't an issue for enthusiasts but Type C's biggest potential doesn't lie with enthusiasts anyway.
Thing is blue is already sort of standard for USB 3.0 (as it was for VGA /facepalm), red is already used on some high powered USB ports (makes sense), green has traditionally been used for 3.5mm audio connections...
They need to pick a different and distinctive color for the DP alt mode, and fast. Orange, purple, yellow, who cares, but it'd be a good idea to have one.
There's a provision for devices to notify the user if a device is plugged in improperly. Whether or not that is implemented properly will be a key factor.
So, when not used with DP Alt Mode, what's SSTX2/SSRX2 used for in terms of USB 3.1? Are they just spare wires? Is there a bandwidth hit to USB 3.1 (aka half bandwidth) if DP Alt Mode is utilized?
The second pair of lanes is for a second Superspeed connection. You can actually get 2 of them off of a single Type-C connector. You only need 4 wires/pins (2 lanes) for Superspeed; the TX +/- pair, and the RX +/- pair.
No. To quote the Type-C Spec, "Multiple sets of USB data bus signal locations in this layout facilitate being able to functionally map the USB signals independent of plug orientation in the receptacle."
It's to enable the plug flipping feature. Nowhere in the spec does it allow for establishing a second SuperSpeed link over a single cable. Of course, this *could* be done via an Alternate Mode, but only between a host and device that both supported that particular mode.
This could get interesting. My monitor/keyboard/mouse are 10 feet away from the computer so I have to run a USB 3.0 hub cable and HDMI cable. It works but it would be even better if I could eliminate at least one of the cables without having to go wireless.
Heh, eliminate one cable... I run 2x DVI cables and 1 DP cable from my case (which sits on a file cabinet) to my desk and the three displays on it, PLUS 1 USB cable to a hub (the display's) and a 2nd USB cable for the keyboard (camera, BT dongle and some LED lighting stuff take up all ports on hub and keyboard has a second pass thru connector anyway).
Five cables plus power cables for the displays. Type C on a video card and the displays or a hub could eliminate the two USB cables for me, I'd still need a cable for each display tho. What I'm really looking forward to are displays or hubs with multiple Type C inputs. That way I could more easily switch the second or third display to a tablet or laptop's input, while also charging it.
Not having any more random laptop AC adapters strewn around would be glorious. I keep my desktop cables check and neatly hidden but the laptop stuff is always a mess.
lol...I could never run that many cables. Mine crosses smack dab through the middle of a major traffic walkway. I'm looking forward to the monitor + hub single cable.
I don't understand how this kills Thunderbolt in any way.
For what it does (and the people that actually need it), this isn't really a competitor. Thunderbolt seems much more suited to high bandwidth scenarios (it currently has higher bandwidth and lower latency) necessary for high performance applications.
Not to mentioned the long term goal for Thunderbolt is connection over fiber. These serve different use cases.
The mass market doesn't have those high end demands and will never see Thunderbolt unless Intel lowers pricing and starts integrating it more... And there IS a demand for units kinda thing amongst the mass market. In all likelihood Type C will quickly lap TB in adoption rate which will mean lower prices and more compatibility.
FireWire had some advantages over USB 2.0 too, but what did most enthusiasts end up using over the long term? The cheaper and more ubiquitous alternative.
USB is designed specifically for the mass market, and it is the most ubiquitous PC I/O interface to date. Thunderbolt is for those markets where the customer is willing to pay more for additional bandwidth or functionality. NVIDIA and AMD spend a ton developing $1000+ GPUs for hard-core gamers and crypto-currency miners despite the fact that those will never be mass market products. Enthusiasts may have stuck with USB 2.0, but professionals bought whatever tool was best for the job, and in many cases that was FireWire. The same is true today. USB 3.0 is great, but the adoption rate of Thunderbolt by video professionals clearly demonstrates that people will still pay more for higher performance when they can afford to.
And spoiler: Type-C will almost surely be the next generation Thunderbolt connector.
The key technology here is the SERDES with CML signaling. DP 1.3 has a signalling rate of 8.1Gbps USB3.0 has one of 10Gbps, PCIe 3.0 has one of 7.9 Gbps. The same hardware is used to send the signals down the wire. It is not inconceivable for a single controller to have a mux behind the SERDES and support all 3, in point of fact this would not likely even be much more expensive to do.
The protocol layer is however specialised on each of these devices to work differently. It is likely beneficial to send video over DP signalling however, as this will keep the displays cheaper (less hardware at the display).
Yes, the speeds Varno quoted are per link, per direction. USB 3.1 has two 10 Gbit/s links, one in each direction and DisplayPort has four 8.1 Gbit/s links in the same direction.
Finally, it's here! I have waited for a single cable dock port already very long, like many others! How come the USB standards didn't come up with this earlier since the release of usb 3.0?
I hope the laptops/tablets coming out very soon, early 2015 with core M (Intel Broadwell), will have USB 3.1 c so we can finally enjoy a single cable dock for our laptops! Seeing as the Samsung Galaxy S6 is expected around march 2015, I really hope this phone but others too will directly use the new usb plug!
I don't think Intel will implement USB 3.1 natively until at least Skylake - they're not making any substantial changes to the chipset with Broadwell (though outboard controllers are still a possibility). It's entirely possible that we'll see the type C connector before then though.
Discrete controller chips for USB 3.1 is probably not something many laptop makers wanna bother with, so the market that might benefit the most from Type C might be one of the last to see it... 3.0 vs TB Intel politics all over again?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that the type C connectors are allowed to work with USB 3.0, so it's possible we'll see the new connectors before 3.1 is implemented.
Yeah, that's true, but it's almost pointless other than just for the sake of featuring the new connector... That in itself might be novel ands innocuous enough on a phone but I'm not sure laptop makers are gonna wanna have "that new USB 3 port" if people are just gonna complain it's a non standard port with no immediate benefit. On something like Surface where space is really at a premium I can see it tho.
I'm sure we'll see the Type-C connector before then though. Someone must be working on discrete silicon to support Type-C host ports with existing USB controllers.
This sounds really great! I really hope it takes off and everything starts using this.
But: "the DisplayPort physical layer tops out at 8.4Gbps for HBR3"
How can it support 4K @ 60hz displays with just 8.4Gbps? And i take it that 5K @ 60hz will definitely not be possible on USB Type C? So the only way to do that for now is DP 1.3.
That is awesome. This is the perfect connector, finally! I was looking forward to DP 1.3 because HDMI 2.0 is a disappointment, and i want a 4K or 5K monitor. But now DP seems kind of pointless, i'd rather they just use Type C on everything.
It's increasingly hard to justify the "serial" part of USB. Now that the type C cable has 5 wire pairs (up from three in USB 3.0 and one in USB 2.0), when does it become the Universal Parallel Bus?
DisplayPort and PCIe can bond multiple channels together into a single link, but I think they're still considered serial because individual bytes are transmitted over a single link at a time rather than each bit being sent over a different pin as in the old ATA, SCSI, and Parallel Ports.
"USB Type-C – which immediately implies using/supporting USB 3.1 signaling – uses 4 lanes (pairs) of differential signaling for USB Superspeed data, which are split up in a 2-up/2-down configuration for full duplex communication."
Ryan, please, because this is Anandtech and not one of those other sites, get this right.
The USB Type-C Cable and Connector Specification does not imply USB 3.1 at all. In fact, it explicitly defines USB 2.0 Type-C receptacles, plugs and cables. Type-C is a replacement for Type-A and all of the many B variants. Although it might be total overkill to use Type-C with its 24-contact connectors and up to 18-conductor cables for USB 2.0 only applications, I think we'll see it anyway simply due to the size and reversibility factors.
Only 2 differential signaling pairs are ever used for SuperSpeed / SuperSpeedPlus links. Signal paths for 4 lanes (2 Tx/Rx pairs) are provided in Type-C to facilitate mapping the USB signals independent of plug orientation in the receptacle.
"...2-3 of those lanes on the Type-C cable then can be left to running USB Superspeed signaling..."
Once again, only 2 lanes (1 TX/RX pair, or a single full-duplex channel) can be used for SuperSpeed signaling.
Also, USB 3.1 introduces the Enhanced SuperSpeed Bus Architecture which includes both the Gen 1 physical layer and SuperSpeed protocol of USB 3.0 (5 Gbit/s with 8b/10b encoding) and the Gen 2 physical layer and SuperSpeedPlus protocol new to USB 3.1 (10 Gbit/s with 128b/132b encoding). There seems to be a ton of confusion about this which is undoubtedly attributable to the ridiculous marketing names bestowed thus far on the various USB protocols.
wow, very impressive. It even includes 4k@60Hz which I really like. i thought lighpeak (thunderbolt) will be the be the "it" cable....but just the nuisance of charging our devices makes this cable a must.
Displayport Alt Mode?! Did they not notice the acronym? Now I'm going to have to plug my DAM cable into my DAM computer port in order to get a DAM connection to my monitor. DAM it! Ok, if we don't misinterpret the spelling, then that leaves the question, does DAM do to my signals what a dam does to a river? They picked the worst name since fracking. It's worse than WinCE. They need to pick a different name, pronto. Or at least start saying DPAM a lot, to inoculate the public, to prevent hooligans like me from infecting everybody with the DAM meme.
More seriously: 1. The newest SATA is SATA Express, which is simply NVMe-or-AHCI over PCIe (plus a couple of legacy SATA links bundled into the cable), with its own dedicated connector type. 2. USB with DAM is USB-3 and DP multiplexed onto the same physical link (plus a USB-2 link and power lines bundled into the cable), with a USB-C connector. 3. Thunderbolt is essentially encapsulated PCIe and DP multiplexed onto the same physical link, with a DP connector. 4. USB with PCIe altmode will be USB-3 and PCIe multiplexed onto the same physical link, with a USB-C connector.
All those high-speed physical links are similar in speed per signaling pair, within a factor of 2, depending on the currently-latest version of the spec. #4 will undoubtedly enable use of all four high-speed pairs in USB-C, just as DAM does. #4 will have no more overhead or latency than Thunderbolt does.
Notice what #1 and #4 together imply: SATA Express will become an altmode for USB-C with no extra effort. Thus when #4 is available, the dedicated connector type for #1 will be unnecessary, and eSATA (external SATA) will be unnecessary. UAS will also be unnecessary. USB-C will be the highest-speed, lowest-latency connection available for disks and SSDs, both internal and external, except for internal SSD cards that plug directly into motherboard PCIe slots.
Using USB-C for data and power even for internal disks will be very nice for people who put together desktops and servers. Besides providing a physically small connector and eliminating the need for different internal vs. external cable types, this also lets drives be used internally or externally without any adapter needed, which reduces the cost premium for external drives, since the premium is then just for the physically protective housing.
In a future version of the spec, the USB-3 protocol could itself be made into an optional altmode; after all, if USB-C is used for internal disks, there's no reason to waste money supporting USB-3 for the connector on the motherboard, since only the PCIe mode will be used.
With USB-C able to carry 40Gbps aggregate via 4 signaling pairs, just as 40GBase-T ethernet does, the latter could be an altmode for the former. Besides providing a small and nicer connector than traditional 8P8C, USB-C also provides much more efficient power transmission than power over 24 AWG as with PoE.
Minor note - ThunderBolt is more than just multiplexing - I believe it aggregates packets from multiple sources and resends them over a higher bandwidth link - TB has 10 Gbit/s links whereas the PCIe 2.0 and DP 1.2 links it feeds from are only ~5 Gbit/s each. TB3 will double that to 20 Gbit/s links - with active cables, of course.
1000Base-T encodes each byte and spreads it across all four signaling pairs, yet it's still a serial link. The essential attribute of a serial link is that there's only one data line (or signaling pair, for differential signaling) per clock signal. (The clock signal is embedded in the data signal for asynchronous links.) A parallel link has more than one data line per clock signal. How the bits or bytes of the payload are mapped to the data lines is irrelevant. And as you pointed out, how many data lines there are is also irrelevant. Giving each data line its own dedicated clock signal, which enables high speed by eliminating clock skew, is what makes a serial link.
My reply was supposed to be to SirKnobsworth's message where he wrote "they're still considered serial because individual bytes are transmitted over a single link at a time". I'm sure I clicked the right reply button; I think there's a bug in anandtech's forum software.
100W and all this functionality? Are these cables going to resemble a fire-hose? Also, looking at the wattage on high end video cards and imaging trying to run another pair of monitors (including power) off the single card. Will be taking those little PCB electrical pathways to the limit in the future.
cable lengths always seem a closely guarded secret.. so in summary from this article I gather: displayport over usb type c max length: HBR2 -> 2m HBR3 -> 1m
However with standard displayport cables the max length is 2m regardless of HBR2 or HBR3 correct?
Then the question becomes, what are thunderbolt 3 max lengths? I'd suppose the same as displayport over USB type c?
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savagemike - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
Now THAT'S a universal bus.Seriously though - this looks pretty cool. Even beyond the different daisy chaining configurations it will be nice to just have one cable to hook stuff together if this works out.
Need to connect your printer, scanner, mobile device, monitor - use this cable.
Need to charge your whatever - use this cable.
Cable gone bad and giving you a bad day? It's OK because all the other cables you have are the same kind of cable. Just use one of them.
It's a glorious, glorious vision of the future.
SniPerfidy - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
Well said.Minion4Hire - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
I wish I could upvote you, because I would upvote you so hard.This really is the cabling revolution we need. Getting rid of cables entirely is unrealistic (at least until battery technology advances by huge leaps and bounds) but minimizing and simplifying the cables that we use on a regular basis would be a massive improvement.
Zertzable - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
Agreed! This is precisely what the market needs. USB is both cheap and ubiquitous, Thunderbolt is neither of these.Impulses - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
It also couldn't handle power transfer... THIS is what the mobile industry has needed for years and what will possibly mark the return of the dock model and laptops/mobile more frequently devices connected to full size/peripherals and displays at home.There is absolutely a demand for this, it just hasn't been very easy (the average consumer looking at a power cable, USB hub, display cable, etc just gives up). I know Mac users young and old that bought iMacs even tho they had MBP already because they wanted something larger at home.
It'll be interesting to see whether Apple ignores this spec and plows forward with Thunderbolt for a while or wether they adopt it fast. Personally speaking I have no big need for it as I still have a desktop, but it'd make a future Surface Pro A LOT more interesting.
Byte - Tuesday, September 23, 2014 - link
We need this NOW! I'm trying to hook up 4 monitors and i need a freakin different cable for every one! The stupid radeon has DVI, HDMI, MiniDP. So not only do i need regular cables, i need to wach out for this Mini plug crap. WTF! I had to just stick one in the VGA of the intel integrated and called it a day.SirKnobsworth - Tuesday, September 23, 2014 - link
Check the specs of your video card, but DisplayPort (including mini DP) can support multi-stream transport, meaning that with a MST hub you might be able to connect more than one monitor to just that one port.Impulses - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
What are the chances we'll see Type C on 2015 phones? I know it's still not necessary from a voltage or data rate standpoint, but it'd definitely help drive the adoption rate quickly AND Samsung has already been implementing USB 3.0 on recent models... The quicker Type C starts becoming commonplace the more likely it'll be to realize it's fill potential, even if we don't see things like these alt modes for 2 years.JCP2014 - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
Great question, I'm wondering the same thing. Idk if 2015 flagships might be too early to have this. If I had to bet I'd say no, because it's a process that starts with the SOC, and it has to be USB 3.1 compatible. It's possible that SOC makers have already started preparing for this to be in next year's SOCs, but that would be the only hope of it being in phones next year.repoman27 - Tuesday, September 23, 2014 - link
You can use Type-C for USB 2.0 devices as well. There is no need for the SoC to include a USB controller that supports an Enhanced SuperSpeed bus just to use this connector.ALLSMRTSLIFE - Monday, May 9, 2016 - link
You can visit our website to look at the relevant producthttp://www.allsmartlife.com/usb-series/usb-type-c-...
WavelengthAudio - Tuesday, July 21, 2015 - link
The EU has designated 2017 for all compliant phones to be USB-C compatible. But you will see a ton of stuff go USB-C in the next year.ALLSMRTSLIFE - Monday, May 9, 2016 - link
You can visit our website to look at the relevant producthttp://www.allsmartlife.com/usb-series/usb-type-c-...
invinciblegod - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
Actually, I believe that the most glorious vision of the future would be wireless everything. No bluetooth, wifi, cell, nfc, usb, power, just one signal to everything.Murloc - Tuesday, September 23, 2014 - link
yeah I don't think we're going to see that any time soon.ALLSMRTSLIFE - Monday, May 9, 2016 - link
You can visit our website to look at the relevant producthttp://www.allsmartlife.com/usb-series/usb-type-c-...
TEAMSWITCHER - Wednesday, September 24, 2014 - link
This is just another pointless expansion of the USB spec.danjw - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
Yep, I think this is the stake in the heart of Thunderbolt. At least for wide adoption.Flunk - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
Intel not integrating thunderbolt into all their chipsets killed Thunderbolt. If they'd done that we'd have no need for this solution because we'd all already have it. That being said this solution is just a good and better for backwards compatibility so let's hope everyone jumps on board..wolrah - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
I wonder if, since DisplayPort works with this and Thunderbolt works over DisplayPort cables, it would be possible to have Thunderbolt as an alternate mode on USB Type C.As I contemplate then an external PCIe bay attached over Thunderbolt over USB-C containing a USB3 controller running a USB->DisplayPort adapter.
wolrah - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
Replying again to say I have since found other articles quoting USB-IF representatives mentioning PCIe as a potential alternate mode, which would effectively be the same thing as Thunderbolt.SirKnobsworth - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
Not quite. The PCIe scenario they describe involves only one lane, or maximally two if you get rid of the SuperSpeed USB link. ThunderBolt allows 4 lanes of PCIe and DisplayPort, subject to overall bandwidth limitations of course. This does of course come at a cost though - rather than a simple and cheap multiplexer ThunderBolt has to collect and resend every packet of data.ALLSMRTSLIFE - Monday, May 9, 2016 - link
You can visit our website to look at the relevant producthttp://www.allsmartlife.com/usb-series/usb-type-c-...
DanNeely - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
Am I missing something; or will this only work with lower resolution DP modes? The graphic "USB Type C device switch..." shows USB3 and DP nominally sharing two of the 4 data lines. If you're using a high resolution monitor at a combination of resolution/displayport level that needs all 4 lanes (2560x1600 @60hz with DP 1.1, 2560x1600 @120 or 4k @60, with DP1.2, or 4k @120 with DP 1.3), all 4 data line pairs would be needed for DP video data. It feels like they missed the boat here; if it was possible to re-purpose the 2.0 wires in the alternate mode as well you could run DP at it's full resolution and USB3 at the same time.Longer term, I'd be concerned that a future USB data mode would double bandwidth by using both TX/RX pairs instead of just one and be completely incompatible with this sort of setup.
Homeles - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
Check the last slide.SirKnobsworth - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
AFAIK SuperSpeed USB requires the lower speed USB 2.0 connection to function. You won't be able to use all 4 DisplayPort lanes and USB 3 at the same time - if you need that kind of bandwidth you will need ThunderBolt.SirPerro - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
You obviously run out of bandwidth at some point. To be frank 4K@60Hz AND heavy data transfer over the same cable is kind of ackward. There's nothing stopping you from using 2 cables instead to monitor and external HDD.That's the only advantage of ThunderBolt. If you think about that, it is MUCH nicer to have high wattage and 4K. tha 4K@60Hz + HS data transfer, so actually ThunderBolt advantage is not really such.
This will be a game changer if we get all the devices with USB Type-C connectors. Then we will have 1-2m long USB Type-C cables for basically everything, for all the devices, for all the needs (Except for $30 apple cables with anti-copy chips on it so apple customers continue paying a useless premium, that is)
Ryan Smith - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
Keep in mind that you can have 4K@60Hz over just 2 pairs as of DP 1.3. So you can have 100W, 4K, and 2 lanes of USB Superspeed+ (10Gbps up + 10 Gbps down) all on the same cable.SirPerro - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
That is amazing. I really hope the industry widely adopts this as the next standard everywhere.It would be extremely convenient for everybody.
SleepyFE - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
SirPerro has it right. Just use more cables. If your monitor has only one cable connected to it (I just realized you won't need the power cable, even for the monitor) the video signal can use all four lanes. TB can't power the monitor so that's that. If you want to use the USB ports on the monitor to plug in your mouse and keyboard you can use one cable for that and another for full res video signal. More wires is still better, if all else is the same.Communism - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
It's going to be funny if/when we get Video Cards with 4+ USB Type-C connectors coming out the back :D.Video Cards that double as USB Type-C powered hubs will be awesome :D
Communism - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
Also powering your Laptop/Tablet from your Monitor will be nice :DImpulses - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
I wonder if it simplifies the part of video card design at all, it's unlikely it'd happen any time soon tho given the vast legacy of old displays... Even VGA is still more common in the wild than DP.Communism - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
When displays switch over to predominantly 4k60p, the D-SUB and DVI connectors will finally give way to HDMI and DP.USB Type-C essentially does both DP1.3 and HDMI 2.0, making it a superior connector for that purpose.
SirKnobsworth - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
It will need an active converter for HDMI 2.0.ALLSMRTSLIFE - Monday, May 9, 2016 - link
You can visit our website to look at the relevant producthttp://www.allsmartlife.com/usb-series/usb-type-c-...
dew111 - Tuesday, September 23, 2014 - link
It will be great, they are much smaller than DVI, HDMI and DP ports, so you will have more room for vents.Now we just need a networking alt mode and all the connectors on the back of your PC will be USB Type-C. ALL OF THEM!!! Ok, that's pretty unlikely. It might be funny, but it won't happen because it would be confusing. You would have different ports which support different alt modes. People have trouble cabling things today when the wrong cable doesn't fit; imagine the confusion if every cable were the same.
Impulses - Tuesday, September 23, 2014 - link
USB GigE adapters are pretty common anyway, and I imagine many hubs and displays geared for a laptop dock model will feature Ethernet connectivity. The average consumer just uses Wi-Fi for the most part anyway. I still find phone cables from faxes and random phone lines jammed into Ethernet ports across offices all the time btw, or even USB printer cables.SirPerro - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
This is extraordinary news for everybody but Apple.They will have a very hard time promoting Lightning and Thunderbolt after Type-C.
Lightning was rendered useless just with Type-C alone. Thunderbolt still offers (currently) some bandwidth advantage for a <0.1% of the users with some amazing price premiums I doubt people will be ready to pay after this hits the market.
xype - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
There’s also the small difference of Thunderbolt and Lightning being available on devices already, and have been for some time.Apple doesn’t give a shit either way, they want good connectivity and they needed to bring out their own tech to get it. If USB catches up/overtakes Thunderbolt, they’ll just ship that, too (not unlike how they stopped shipping Firewire and kept USB 3).
Competition is good. And once 4k displays get to be mainstream, and people will want to run 2 or more of them, the connectivity and GPU tech providers will have to have caught up.
I don’t understand how peple keep bringing up Apple in and thinking it’s bad for them. Do you really think they want to circlejerk around their own connection types that hard? They want to seel hardware, if someone comes up with technology that satisfied their needs, they’ll just use that.
Timbrelaine - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
Apple isn't a cable vendor. In fact, you could argue that Lightning and Thunderbolt were their attempts to do exactly what USB is doing now- squeeze as much functionality as possible, particularly power, high data rates and a video protocol into as few small, reversible cables as possible.Now that USB is doing all that in something that people will actually use, you'd think Apple would be happier than most. Except for their customers, who will be able to actually find and afford peripherals now.
SirPerro - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
I think Apple DO is a cable vendor. There's an obvious exercise in Apple trying to force people to buy their overpriced cables.Lightning is such an obvious example... That chip to prevent the chinese copies and increasing the price enormously?
SirKnobsworth - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
There's good reason for not wanting cheap Chinese knockoffs - there was a case recently of some Chinese power adapters looking like the Apple ones having an electric shock hazard.As for the chip necessary in the cables I don't think it increases costs that much. What they should have done is enabled a passive default mode which provided USB and power while requiring a chip to reconfigure the pins for other uses. That's how the USB type C connector is going to work, except that the chips are going to be in the devices rather than the cables.
dew111 - Tuesday, September 23, 2014 - link
Did you read the article? Thunderbolt works by encapsulating data as PCIe, that is, packetizing it. It requires expensive chips made by Intel to pack and unpack those packets. USB Type-C has a simple hardware mux, meaning the DP lanes get connected to the DP controller and the USB lanes get connected to the USB controller, no shenanigans.SirKnobsworth - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
1) Lightning was created before USB type C existed. Since there are no type C products on the market Lightning's existance is justified for a little while longer but yes, it should ultimately be replaced with type C.2) Thunderbolt, in addition to having more bandwidth, uses PCIe which permits lower latency and can usually get much closer to the theoretical bandwidth. This offers a significant advantage in RAID arrays, SSDs, and NICs. A niche market, like you say, but ThunderBolt will probably continue to exist. A lot of those problems could be solved if devices switched to USB-attached SCSI rather than the slow and unreliable Bulk Only Transfer protocol, but that hasn't happened yet.
Guspaz - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
Lightning still does have some advantages over type C in terms of physical form factor, but keep in mind that, for the moment, Lightning is nothing more than a non-standard USB 2.0 connector. There is nothing stopping Apple from producing Lightning to type C cables just like they currently produce Lightning to type A cables.The problem is that as soon as they committed to a given connector, it became in their best interest to stick to that connector for a while, to maintain compatibility with docks and accessories. It's possible that Apple may eventually migrate to a type C connector, but they have an incentive not to.
tuxRoller - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
How does lightning have more bandwidth than type c? We know it can push BOTH 10gbps data and dp 1.2a (so around 20gbps, or so). This isn't even including future implementations of things like pcie.SirKnobsworth - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
I never said it did. Type C cables can carry about the same amount of data as ThunderBolt 2 (at the expense of some flexibility in how bandwidth can be allocated).tuxRoller - Tuesday, September 23, 2014 - link
"Thunderbolt, in addition to having more bandwidth,"What flexibility did you have in mind? Of protocol? Well, since we're talking about type c, the protocol seems limited to what can be carried on a 4 lane differential cable with whatever the host controller's clock rate is limited to.
SirKnobsworth - Tuesday, September 23, 2014 - link
The flexibility is that each channel doesn't have to be dedicated to specific use - you have 20 Gbit/s upstream and 20 Gbit/s downstream and that can be taken up by whatever needs it.And you quoted me as saying lightning had more bandwidth than USB.
tuxRoller - Tuesday, September 23, 2014 - link
I didn't say USB, i said type c.Is not lightning using the thunderbolt protocol? If not, pardon the error.
Is there a real flexibility advantage to thunderbolt given type c and alternate modes? From the article it seems as though any protocol than has a line protocol which can be run over 4 pairs of differential wires (plus various other wires for aux) can be supported.
SirKnobsworth - Thursday, September 25, 2014 - link
Thunderbolt and Lightning are not the same thing. Lightning is just a connector which allows its pins to be configured as USB, audio, and perhaps other uses.And my point about flexibility is this: If you want to transmit data and video over a type C connection you have one USB lane in each direction and two DisplayPort lanes. But if you're not using the full bandwidth of two DisplayPort lanes for your monitor, you can't reallocate some of that bandwidth to data, whereas you can with ThunderBolt since everything is combined. On the other hand this might be advantageous in certain situations because you have dedicated upstream and downstream space for data whereas with ThunderBolt you could potentially saturate the downstream link with just video.
tuxRoller - Thursday, September 25, 2014 - link
I realize lightning is a connector, but I thought it used the thunderbolt protocol. Regardless, it is only 8-pins (according to wikipedia), so it looks like it's pretty limited, bandwidth wise.Thanks for clarifying your point.
Are we certain that AMs won't allow for a unified bus?
tygrus - Tuesday, September 23, 2014 - link
If half the USB 3.0 lanes (2 of 4) are now used for DisplayPort links then both are running at half of the current maximum data rate. 5gbps each way for USB 3.0 and the bandwidth of 2 lane DisplayPort instead of the usual 4 lanes.tuxRoller - Tuesday, September 23, 2014 - link
I am simply reading the image in the article. It says that it can utilize both superspeed usb (so, 10gbps), and dp 1.2.Apparently usb 3.1 is simply clock doubled usb 3, as far as max signalling is concerned. So, it only needs two pairs to achieve that speed. The other two pairs can act as a two lane dp.
This isn't too surprising. They've had time since thunderbolt was released to work on this and incorporate useful ideas. Obviously, given the inherent limitations to the usb protocol there was only so much they could do with it, so they came up with the alternate modes idea along with the type c connector.
Kevin G - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
Apple has time to market, economies of scale and the fact that Lightning is proprietary to their mobile devices. Long term, I can eventually see them dropping Lightning in favor of the Type-C but that'll play out depending on how low power alternative mode host controllers can be added to their SoC and if the die space for it can be spared. Short term, the Lightning connector has nothing to fear.FWIW, Android handsets will face the same problems and likely the first generation of handsets supporting the Type-C connector will not use any of the alternate modes. This likely kills off MHL over the long term too.
These alternative modes pretty much does kill of Thunderbolt. Since we're just dealing with the announcement of this today, it'll be a year or two before silicon arrives supporting type-c alternative mode but when they do, I can see Apple adopting it rather quickly. Like Firewire, Thunderbolt will likely live on a few more years in the Apple ecosystem on high end models due the need for legacy peripheral support.
Impulses - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
I can see Apple welcoming Type C on the desktop/laptop side where they don't have as much control over the silicon, they'll probably let it coexist for a while or whatever depending on what Intel does...I'm not so sure they ever adopt it on the mobile side tho, when Lightning becomes obsolete they're just as likely to come up with some other proprietary nonsense. The ONLY way they adopt Type C on phones/tablets is the adoption rate is already huge by the time Lightning becomes inadequate.
Despite their love for proprietary connections and other methods of lock in, I couldn't see them ignoring an established standard that fits their needs. Here's hoping Type C displays and hubs and docks are common by then.
tuxRoller - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
according to the register apple (along with msft and goog) were pushing for the displayport/usb integration. So, I don't think apple is upset at all.Now, their customers might come to be upset, seeing as how much bitching they did on the internets when lightning came out, but also seeing as how apple forums are, from what I've heard on this site, filled with folks with broken lightning connectors, the move to type c may be welcomed by all.
ALLSMRTSLIFE - Monday, May 9, 2016 - link
You can visit our website to look at the relevant product . TYPE-C serieshttp://www.allsmartlife.com/usb-series/usb-type-c-...
SirKnobsworth - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
So I'm guessing this replaces the micro DisplayPort connector that has been in development?Also any chance that this will be the connector for Thunderbolt 3? It seems to fit all of the specs from Intel's leaked slides and if this is the future of DisplayPort then it seems like using it for TB is a natural next step.
jann5s - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
haha, why not put TB2 over the Type-C layer.SirKnobsworth - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
You could but it's outside the spec. We know that TB3 will involve a new connector which will at the very least look very similar to this one.Ryan Smith - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
uDP was not mentioned in the briefing. The DisplayPort physical layer is still alive and well, but certainly this removes some of the need to create any new physical layer standards.Kevin G - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
There is a PCIe alt mode as well:http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/09/reversible-...
Thus being able to switch between DP, PCIe and native USB 3.1, it looks like the type-c connector is going to suffice for the majority of Thunderbolt's use-case scenarios. Thunderbolt still offers more bandwidth, daisy chaining and the ability to mix PCIe and DP signals simultaneously over the same cable but these are small advantages.
Ryan Smith - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
PCIe is a possible use of Alt Modes. But there is not a standard for it (yet).SirPerro - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
Quick question. This USB Type-C is built thinking on the future they say. Is it phisically possible to go beyond 10Gbps and keeping the same 100W?Communism - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
The only thing stopping them is how high they want to allow the voltage over the cables.They got to 100W by allowing up to 5a and 20v.
Ryan Smith - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
Power is carried on different wires than data. The Type-C connector is designed to allow data rates above 10Gbps in order to meet the USB-IF's longevity goals (though I don't know for sure what this would mean for the wires).Zink - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
Is it going to be a mess or is Type-C going to be the one perfect cable? The physical device makers had better come up with some very clear symbols to indicate what devices can be matched up on the other end of the cable.Things I can think of:
Power source/sink requirements
Alt mode standards supported/required
Bandwidth for PCIe, DP resolutions (will be affected by cable length like DP alternate)
Daisy chain capability
Impulses - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
I hope they get in the habit of color coding and not just slapping on small easy to miss labels... This isn't an issue for enthusiasts but Type C's biggest potential doesn't lie with enthusiasts anyway.Thing is blue is already sort of standard for USB 3.0 (as it was for VGA /facepalm), red is already used on some high powered USB ports (makes sense), green has traditionally been used for 3.5mm audio connections...
They need to pick a different and distinctive color for the DP alt mode, and fast. Orange, purple, yellow, who cares, but it'd be a good idea to have one.
Impulses - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
I guess using red would make SOME sense tho since in all likelihood you wanna carry power AND video...SirKnobsworth - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
There's a provision for devices to notify the user if a device is plugged in improperly. Whether or not that is implemented properly will be a key factor.weilin - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
So, when not used with DP Alt Mode, what's SSTX2/SSRX2 used for in terms of USB 3.1? Are they just spare wires? Is there a bandwidth hit to USB 3.1 (aka half bandwidth) if DP Alt Mode is utilized?Ryan Smith - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
The second pair of lanes is for a second Superspeed connection. You can actually get 2 of them off of a single Type-C connector. You only need 4 wires/pins (2 lanes) for Superspeed; the TX +/- pair, and the RX +/- pair.weilin - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
is there anything in the spec concerning ganging the 2 connections together for a 20gb/s link?repoman27 - Tuesday, September 23, 2014 - link
No. To quote the Type-C Spec, "Multiple sets of USB data bus signal locations in this layout facilitate being able to functionally map the USB signals independent of plug orientation in the receptacle."It's to enable the plug flipping feature. Nowhere in the spec does it allow for establishing a second SuperSpeed link over a single cable. Of course, this *could* be done via an Alternate Mode, but only between a host and device that both supported that particular mode.
Peeping Tom - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
This could get interesting. My monitor/keyboard/mouse are 10 feet away from the computer so I have to run a USB 3.0 hub cable and HDMI cable. It works but it would be even better if I could eliminate at least one of the cables without having to go wireless.Impulses - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
Heh, eliminate one cable... I run 2x DVI cables and 1 DP cable from my case (which sits on a file cabinet) to my desk and the three displays on it, PLUS 1 USB cable to a hub (the display's) and a 2nd USB cable for the keyboard (camera, BT dongle and some LED lighting stuff take up all ports on hub and keyboard has a second pass thru connector anyway).Five cables plus power cables for the displays. Type C on a video card and the displays or a hub could eliminate the two USB cables for me, I'd still need a cable for each display tho. What I'm really looking forward to are displays or hubs with multiple Type C inputs. That way I could more easily switch the second or third display to a tablet or laptop's input, while also charging it.
Not having any more random laptop AC adapters strewn around would be glorious. I keep my desktop cables check and neatly hidden but the laptop stuff is always a mess.
Peeping Tom - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
lol...I could never run that many cables. Mine crosses smack dab through the middle of a major traffic walkway. I'm looking forward to the monitor + hub single cable.HardwareDufus - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
One cable to rule them all.The_Assimilator - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
Spoiler: this kills Thunderbolt.wiz329 - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
I don't understand how this kills Thunderbolt in any way.For what it does (and the people that actually need it), this isn't really a competitor. Thunderbolt seems much more suited to high bandwidth scenarios (it currently has higher bandwidth and lower latency) necessary for high performance applications.
Not to mentioned the long term goal for Thunderbolt is connection over fiber. These serve different use cases.
Impulses - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
The mass market doesn't have those high end demands and will never see Thunderbolt unless Intel lowers pricing and starts integrating it more... And there IS a demand for units kinda thing amongst the mass market. In all likelihood Type C will quickly lap TB in adoption rate which will mean lower prices and more compatibility.FireWire had some advantages over USB 2.0 too, but what did most enthusiasts end up using over the long term? The cheaper and more ubiquitous alternative.
repoman27 - Tuesday, September 23, 2014 - link
USB is designed specifically for the mass market, and it is the most ubiquitous PC I/O interface to date. Thunderbolt is for those markets where the customer is willing to pay more for additional bandwidth or functionality. NVIDIA and AMD spend a ton developing $1000+ GPUs for hard-core gamers and crypto-currency miners despite the fact that those will never be mass market products. Enthusiasts may have stuck with USB 2.0, but professionals bought whatever tool was best for the job, and in many cases that was FireWire. The same is true today. USB 3.0 is great, but the adoption rate of Thunderbolt by video professionals clearly demonstrates that people will still pay more for higher performance when they can afford to.And spoiler: Type-C will almost surely be the next generation Thunderbolt connector.
piroroadkill - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
Yeah, it does. Nobody has ThunderBolt. You know full well USB C will spread immediately.Varno - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
The key technology here is the SERDES with CML signaling. DP 1.3 has a signalling rate of 8.1Gbps USB3.0 has one of 10Gbps, PCIe 3.0 has one of 7.9 Gbps. The same hardware is used to send the signals down the wire. It is not inconceivable for a single controller to have a mux behind the SERDES and support all 3, in point of fact this would not likely even be much more expensive to do.The protocol layer is however specialised on each of these devices to work differently. It is likely beneficial to send video over DP signalling however, as this will keep the displays cheaper (less hardware at the display).
sheh - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
Isn't it 10Gbps cumulative in USB31 versus 8.1Gpbs per lane in DP13, so 32Gbps cumulative?SirKnobsworth - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
Yes, the speeds Varno quoted are per link, per direction. USB 3.1 has two 10 Gbit/s links, one in each direction and DisplayPort has four 8.1 Gbit/s links in the same direction.THE_DOM!NAT0R - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
Finally, it's here! I have waited for a single cable dock port already very long, like many others! How come the USB standards didn't come up with this earlier since the release of usb 3.0?I hope the laptops/tablets coming out very soon, early 2015 with core M (Intel Broadwell), will have USB 3.1 c so we can finally enjoy a single cable dock for our laptops!
Seeing as the Samsung Galaxy S6 is expected around march 2015, I really hope this phone but others too will directly use the new usb plug!
SirKnobsworth - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
I don't think Intel will implement USB 3.1 natively until at least Skylake - they're not making any substantial changes to the chipset with Broadwell (though outboard controllers are still a possibility). It's entirely possible that we'll see the type C connector before then though.Impulses - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
Discrete controller chips for USB 3.1 is probably not something many laptop makers wanna bother with, so the market that might benefit the most from Type C might be one of the last to see it... 3.0 vs TB Intel politics all over again?SirKnobsworth - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that the type C connectors are allowed to work with USB 3.0, so it's possible we'll see the new connectors before 3.1 is implemented.Impulses - Tuesday, September 23, 2014 - link
Yeah, that's true, but it's almost pointless other than just for the sake of featuring the new connector... That in itself might be novel ands innocuous enough on a phone but I'm not sure laptop makers are gonna wanna have "that new USB 3 port" if people are just gonna complain it's a non standard port with no immediate benefit. On something like Surface where space is really at a premium I can see it tho.repoman27 - Tuesday, September 23, 2014 - link
Cannonlake at best for native USB 3.1 chipsets from Intel: http://www.kitguru.net/components/motherboard/anto...I'm sure we'll see the Type-C connector before then though. Someone must be working on discrete silicon to support Type-C host ports with existing USB controllers.
SunLord - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
Does this mean type C could be used to replace mini-DP?yefi - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
"something the DisplayPort physical layer itself is not cable of."I think you have cables on the mind ;)
SunLord - Tuesday, September 23, 2014 - link
Well I was more interested in if this might lead to the type-c connector replacing mini display ports on video cards or all displayport in generalyefi - Tuesday, September 23, 2014 - link
I'm sorry, I did not intend for my comment to be a reply to yours. I was pointing out a spelling mistake in the article to the author.Torashin - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
What I want to know is why the bandwidth of all these fancy connectors is still dwarfed by a simple TV aerial.B3an - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
This sounds really great! I really hope it takes off and everything starts using this.But: "the DisplayPort physical layer tops out at 8.4Gbps for HBR3"
How can it support 4K @ 60hz displays with just 8.4Gbps? And i take it that 5K @ 60hz will definitely not be possible on USB Type C? So the only way to do that for now is DP 1.3.
Ryan Smith - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
That's 8.4Gbps per pane. Just as on DP, Type-C allows you 1-4 lanes.So Type-C can support 5K@60Hz just as well as DP 1.3 can.
B3an - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
That is awesome. This is the perfect connector, finally! I was looking forward to DP 1.3 because HDMI 2.0 is a disappointment, and i want a 4K or 5K monitor. But now DP seems kind of pointless, i'd rather they just use Type C on everything.SirKnobsworth - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
That's per link. DisplayPort has four parallel links, though it can function with fewer.The Von Matrices - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
It's increasingly hard to justify the "serial" part of USB. Now that the type C cable has 5 wire pairs (up from three in USB 3.0 and one in USB 2.0), when does it become the Universal Parallel Bus?SirKnobsworth - Tuesday, September 23, 2014 - link
DisplayPort and PCIe can bond multiple channels together into a single link, but I think they're still considered serial because individual bytes are transmitted over a single link at a time rather than each bit being sent over a different pin as in the old ATA, SCSI, and Parallel Ports.repoman27 - Tuesday, September 23, 2014 - link
"USB Type-C – which immediately implies using/supporting USB 3.1 signaling – uses 4 lanes (pairs) of differential signaling for USB Superspeed data, which are split up in a 2-up/2-down configuration for full duplex communication."Ryan, please, because this is Anandtech and not one of those other sites, get this right.
The USB Type-C Cable and Connector Specification does not imply USB 3.1 at all. In fact, it explicitly defines USB 2.0 Type-C receptacles, plugs and cables. Type-C is a replacement for Type-A and all of the many B variants. Although it might be total overkill to use Type-C with its 24-contact connectors and up to 18-conductor cables for USB 2.0 only applications, I think we'll see it anyway simply due to the size and reversibility factors.
Only 2 differential signaling pairs are ever used for SuperSpeed / SuperSpeedPlus links. Signal paths for 4 lanes (2 Tx/Rx pairs) are provided in Type-C to facilitate mapping the USB signals independent of plug orientation in the receptacle.
"...2-3 of those lanes on the Type-C cable then can be left to running USB Superspeed signaling..."
Once again, only 2 lanes (1 TX/RX pair, or a single full-duplex channel) can be used for SuperSpeed signaling.
Also, USB 3.1 introduces the Enhanced SuperSpeed Bus Architecture which includes both the Gen 1 physical layer and SuperSpeed protocol of USB 3.0 (5 Gbit/s with 8b/10b encoding) and the Gen 2 physical layer and SuperSpeedPlus protocol new to USB 3.1 (10 Gbit/s with 128b/132b encoding). There seems to be a ton of confusion about this which is undoubtedly attributable to the ridiculous marketing names bestowed thus far on the various USB protocols.
zodiacfml - Tuesday, September 23, 2014 - link
wow, very impressive. It even includes 4k@60Hz which I really like.i thought lighpeak (thunderbolt) will be the be the "it" cable....but just the nuisance of charging our devices makes this cable a must.
gkujyhtsre - Wednesday, September 24, 2014 - link
Network?Portme - Wednesday, September 24, 2014 - link
Displayport Alt Mode?! Did they not notice the acronym? Now I'm going to have to plug my DAM cable into my DAM computer port in order to get a DAM connection to my monitor. DAM it!Ok, if we don't misinterpret the spelling, then that leaves the question, does DAM do to my signals what a dam does to a river?
They picked the worst name since fracking. It's worse than WinCE. They need to pick a different name, pronto. Or at least start saying DPAM a lot, to inoculate the public, to prevent hooligans like me from infecting everybody with the DAM meme.
More seriously:
1. The newest SATA is SATA Express, which is simply NVMe-or-AHCI over PCIe (plus a couple of legacy SATA links bundled into the cable), with its own dedicated connector type.
2. USB with DAM is USB-3 and DP multiplexed onto the same physical link (plus a USB-2 link and power lines bundled into the cable), with a USB-C connector.
3. Thunderbolt is essentially encapsulated PCIe and DP multiplexed onto the same physical link, with a DP connector.
4. USB with PCIe altmode will be USB-3 and PCIe multiplexed onto the same physical link, with a USB-C connector.
All those high-speed physical links are similar in speed per signaling pair, within a factor of 2, depending on the currently-latest version of the spec. #4 will undoubtedly enable use of all four high-speed pairs in USB-C, just as DAM does. #4 will have no more overhead or latency than Thunderbolt does.
Notice what #1 and #4 together imply: SATA Express will become an altmode for USB-C with no extra effort. Thus when #4 is available, the dedicated connector type for #1 will be unnecessary, and eSATA (external SATA) will be unnecessary. UAS will also be unnecessary. USB-C will be the highest-speed, lowest-latency connection available for disks and SSDs, both internal and external, except for internal SSD cards that plug directly into motherboard PCIe slots.
Using USB-C for data and power even for internal disks will be very nice for people who put together desktops and servers. Besides providing a physically small connector and eliminating the need for different internal vs. external cable types, this also lets drives be used internally or externally without any adapter needed, which reduces the cost premium for external drives, since the premium is then just for the physically protective housing.
In a future version of the spec, the USB-3 protocol could itself be made into an optional altmode; after all, if USB-C is used for internal disks, there's no reason to waste money supporting USB-3 for the connector on the motherboard, since only the PCIe mode will be used.
With USB-C able to carry 40Gbps aggregate via 4 signaling pairs, just as 40GBase-T ethernet does, the latter could be an altmode for the former. Besides providing a small and nicer connector than traditional 8P8C, USB-C also provides much more efficient power transmission than power over 24 AWG as with PoE.
SirKnobsworth - Thursday, September 25, 2014 - link
Minor note - ThunderBolt is more than just multiplexing - I believe it aggregates packets from multiple sources and resends them over a higher bandwidth link - TB has 10 Gbit/s links whereas the PCIe 2.0 and DP 1.2 links it feeds from are only ~5 Gbit/s each. TB3 will double that to 20 Gbit/s links - with active cables, of course.Portme - Thursday, September 25, 2014 - link
1000Base-T encodes each byte and spreads it across all four signaling pairs, yet it's still a serial link. The essential attribute of a serial link is that there's only one data line (or signaling pair, for differential signaling) per clock signal. (The clock signal is embedded in the data signal for asynchronous links.) A parallel link has more than one data line per clock signal. How the bits or bytes of the payload are mapped to the data lines is irrelevant. And as you pointed out, how many data lines there are is also irrelevant. Giving each data line its own dedicated clock signal, which enables high speed by eliminating clock skew, is what makes a serial link.Portme - Thursday, September 25, 2014 - link
My reply was supposed to be to SirKnobsworth's message where he wrote "they're still considered serial because individual bytes are transmitted over a single link at a time". I'm sure I clicked the right reply button; I think there's a bug in anandtech's forum software.Tunder89 - Monday, September 29, 2014 - link
100W and all this functionality? Are these cables going to resemble a fire-hose? Also, looking at the wattage on high end video cards and imaging trying to run another pair of monitors (including power) off the single card. Will be taking those little PCB electrical pathways to the limit in the future.masotime - Monday, March 9, 2015 - link
And here comes Apple's new Macbook leading the charge with the new USB-C connector!ALLSMRTSLIFE - Monday, May 9, 2016 - link
You can visit our website to look at the relevant product...http://www.allsmartlife.com/usb-series/usb-type-c-...ALLSMRTSLIFE - Monday, May 9, 2016 - link
You can visit our website to look at the relevant product.TYPE-C to DP or miniDP..http://www.allsmartlife.com/usb-series/usb-type-c-...
variab1e - Saturday, June 25, 2016 - link
cable lengths always seem a closely guarded secret.. so in summary from this article I gather:displayport over usb type c max length:
HBR2 -> 2m
HBR3 -> 1m
However with standard displayport cables the max length is 2m regardless of HBR2 or HBR3 correct?
Then the question becomes, what are thunderbolt 3 max lengths? I'd suppose the same as displayport over USB type c?