News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on USB Type-C to Become More Secure with Authentication Standard. Parent comment

Re:USB Type-C to Become More Secure with Authentication Stan... by justadudeama on Wednesday January 02, 2019 @06:50PM (#18811506)
USB C != Thunderbolt 3 != Thunderbolt 3 < 1m, but all of them have the same port.

Things like charging your phone can be done with USB C.

Things like external hard drive are generally done with Thunderbolt

Things like External GPU's have to be done with a Thunderbolt cable that is less than 1m

All of that said, I am not 100% sure of all of that, because it is all so confusing.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:USB Type-C to Become More Secure with Authentication Stan... by crazygringo on Wednesday January 02, 2019 @06:57PM (#18811552)
OK... is is just a Mac-only Thunderbolt issue then, which I guess you could kind of say is a problem with Apple and not with USB-C itself?

If you ignore Thunderbolt, can you always rely on the latest USB-C cables Apple and Google sell working for everything? Or are there still issues?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:USB Type-C to Become More Secure with Authentication Stan... by TheAceOfHearts on Thursday January 03, 2019 @12:38AM (#18813092)
Apple isn't the only vendor using Thunderbolt 3. According to Wikipedia [0], the following vendors have all shipped devices with at least one port: Acer, Asus, Clevo, HP, Dell, Dell Alienware, Lenovo, MSI, Razer, and Sony.

This affects everyone.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbolt_(interface)#Thunde...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:USB Type-C to Become More Secure with Authentication Stan... by gumby on Wednesday January 02, 2019 @08:45PM (#18812119)
No, this has entirely to do with thunderbolt and USB spec.

Dating back to the early days of Apple, they have been hyper conformant with the spec (e.g. no drivers needed to connect to conforming devices). They still are.

I answered your question about which cables above.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:USB Type-C to Become More Secure with Authentication Stan... by jhasse on Thursday January 03, 2019 @04:04AM (#18813793)
> Things like external hard drive are generally done with Thunderbolt

Why? External USB drives are much more common.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:USB Type-C to Become More Secure with Authentication Stan... by gumby on Thursday January 03, 2019 @06:48AM (#18814442)
Thunderbolt 3 is 40 Gb/s of PCIe + DP — basically exposes your bus out through a Type C connector. USB theoretically tops out, as of last year, at half tha, though in practice you won’t see anything faster than USB 3.0 (if you’re lucky) which tops out at 625 MB/s, before all the USB protocol overhead.

TL;DR: USB drives are really really slow.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:USB Type-C to Become More Secure with Authentication Stan... by dragonwriter on Friday January 04, 2019 @12:36PM (#18825883)
> though in practice you won’t see anything faster than USB 3.0 (if you’re lucky) which tops out at 625 MB/s

625 MB/s is 5Gb/s; the switch from bits to bytes seems to be a way to exaggerate the difference from Thunderbolt speeds quoted in GB/s; at any rate, USB 3.1 Gen 2 (equivalent to USB 3.2 Gen 2×1) 10 GB/s cables and device support isn't hard to find; I don't know that anyone had USB 3.2 hardware (controllers, or cables supporting the new 2×2, 20Gb/s, mode) yet.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:USB Type-C to Become More Secure with Authentication Stan... by jhasse on Thursday January 03, 2019 @06:59AM (#18814486)
625 MB/s is "really really slow"? I don't know any HDD which can deliver more than 100 MB/s. And for SSDs there's also USB 3.1 Gen 2.
[ Parent | on HN ]