Podcast #894: USB 4.0

USB 4.0

The USB Promoter group recently announced that the latest specification (4.0) will be released towards the latter part of the year which means USB 4.0 devices should be available at sometime in early 2021. Here is a quick rundown of what you can expect.

Main Benefits

• 40 Gbps - By using two-lane cables some devices will achieve speeds up to 40 Gbps. Speeds of 10 and 20 Gbps will be considered low speed and will more than likely be used by smaller less expensive devices like cell phones and chromebooks.
• Compatibility with Thunderbolt 3 devices - Some USB 4.0 devices will also work with Thunderbolt 3 devices.
• Better Resource Allocation for Video - If you are using your USB 4.0 port for both video and data simultaneously the port will allocate bandwidth as needed. So if you are watching a video and copying files and the video is only using 10% of the available bandwidth the port will allocate the remaining 90% to data transfer. This mix will be adjusted on the fly as the video demands increase or decrease.

USB 4.0 will use the Type-C connectors and will be backwards compatible with older specifications.