USB4 is Coming - Everything You Need to Know

[hat]

Me neither. Never gonna happen.

Although, an Idea just hit me. Why not just mount a bunch of USB-C ports on a motherboard and make HDDs/SSDs with USB-C connectors? That would work. It wouldn't be backward compatible with existing SATA but converters are a thing. That would be a great idea going forward!

I dunno. USB supports much higher speeds now, but I always felt like SATA was more reliable and robust than USB. If USB is now doing 20Gbps today, when it used to do 5Gbps (USB3) when SATA III was doing 6Gbps (although USB2 at 480Mbps was far more common) I don't think it's a stretch to assume "SATA IV" with much higher speeds than SATA III could be easily created. Still, it doesn't seem very practical considering the fastest drives rely on PCI-E to hit those speeds and would be bottlenecked by anything SATA could do, unless it's a cheap low performance drive anyway.

 

[lexluthermiester]

but I always felt like SATA was more reliable and robust than USB.

Can't argue with that. It has been.

If USB is now doing 20Gbps today, when it used to do 5Gbps (USB3) when SATA III was doing 6Gbps (although USB2 at 480Mbps was far more common) I don't think it's a stretch to assume "SATA IV" with much higher speeds than SATA III could be easily created. Still, it doesn't seem very practical considering the fastest drives rely on PCI-E to hit those speeds and would be bottlenecked by anything SATA could do, unless it's a cheap low performance drive anyway.

Properly engineered, the existing SATA connectors could do 24Gbps. With a few more conductors added to the back of the connector, the speeds would be higher.

 

[TheLostSwede]

I dunno. USB supports much higher speeds now, but I always felt like SATA was more reliable and robust than USB. If USB is now doing 20Gbps today, when it used to do 5Gbps (USB3) when SATA III was doing 6Gbps (although USB2 at 480Mbps was far more common) I don't think it's a stretch to assume "SATA IV" with much higher speeds than SATA III could be easily created. Still, it doesn't seem very practical considering the fastest drives rely on PCI-E to hit those speeds and would be bottlenecked by anything SATA could do, unless it's a cheap low performance drive anyway.

USB has UASP (USB Attached SCSI Protocol) now, something even early USB 3.0 host controllers didn't have, which makes file transfers a lot more secure.
Never buy a mass storage USB device that doesn't support USAP unless you don't care about your data.

Also, there are USB 3.2 SSD controllers now, no bridge chip needed and we'll most likely get those for USB4 as well.

 

[Assimilator]

Thanks for this very informative article.

I don't understand why Intel keeps trying to make Thunderbolt a thing when it's very obviously going the way of FireWire; they're way too proud of the stuff they create, they need to learn some humility and accept tghat they can and do produce failures (see: Arc). Since USB4 and TB3 are now effectively the same, there's nothing stopping other USB-IF members from improving on Intel's Thunderbolt specs and introducing those improvements back to the group. If the other members decide to adopt new features for USB and Intel is the only holdout, then Intel is the one that will lose because their products lack those features. And titans like Microsoft and Apple aren't going to sit back and let Intel tell them what to do.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Thanks for this very informative article.

I don't understand why Intel keeps trying to make Thunderbolt a thing when it's very obviously going the way of FireWire; they're way too proud of the stuff they create, they need to learn some humility and accept tghat they can and do produce failures (see: Arc). Since USB4 and TB3 are now effectively the same, there's nothing stopping other USB-IF members from improving on Intel's Thunderbolt specs and introducing those improvements back to the group. If the other members decide to adopt new features for USB and Intel is the only holdout, then Intel is the one that will lose because their products lack those features. And titans like Microsoft and Apple aren't going to sit back and let Intel tell them what to do.

Except as pointed out earlier in the comments here, Intel and Apple are the two companies that are developing Thunderbolt together.
But yes, it's all quite strange, especially as Intel "gave" Thunderbolt 3 to the USB-IF to "build" USB4 around, even though that's not quite how it ended up.

 

[Tek-Check]

75% OF THE PEOPLE IN THIS WORLD DO NOT USE BLEEDING EDGE TECHNOLOGY.

Even more than that. I'd say ~90%

Some new boards on X670 platform are coming with this ASM4242 chip. Let's see how that pans out.