I hope that this is what USB4 will bring, since iiuc, USB4 is basically the IF's name for Thunderbolt-4-capable USB-C. This was enabled by Intel contributing the TB4 spec to the committee, in a shockingly benevolent move that I guess may have been the greatest internal political feat Intel staff pulled off in the last decade.

Edit: Oh and presumably the ports on the Framework are USB4, they just can't say that yet because the certification is still in the works.

Really? Interesting if true. Is that the case with other new intel gear?

Ah it seems I was slightly off, it's TB3 not TB4, "The USB4 specification is based on the Thunderbolt 3 protocol specification." [0] But it does require: USB-PD, PCIe & DP tunneling, minimum 20 Gbit speed, max 40 Gbit speed. Stated goals to "minimize end-user confusion".

I've seen some peripherals and such with it, no laptops yet though. The spec was released in 2019, so considering hardware cycle time we should start to see more devices soon. It's pretty cool that Framework will likely be on the leading edge of that wave.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB4

> PCIe tunneling

Hell yeah, USB over PCIe over USB over PCIe here we goooooo!

The Dell XPS 13 9310 has two TB4/USB4 ports.

Is Dell still gimping them to 10Gbit/s like they used to? Considered an 13" XPS for years, but then turned to Apple because of this ridiculous decision.

They'd better not be. Thunderbolt 4 mandates 32Gbps of data.

The site says each port has 4 lanes of pcie 3.0

I do not want all my USB-C cables to be able to handle 90W. That would make them very thick and expensive.

I do not want all my USB-C cables to support the maximum 40 GBps speed (or whatever it is). That would require them to have all the 19 wires and shielding and all and again, would make them expensive and short.

And just imagine how much a 90W maximum speed 3 meter cable would cost...

I prefer having one power cable, one fast cable and then a bunch of disposable cables for general use cases.

I prefer all my cables with the same heads to be exactly the same. Why thought it was a good idea to make them different? As if someone buying the cable will know the difference.

But then you lose the flexibility of using one port in many different ways. What we need is some standard color coding or other clear visual indicator on cables to reflect their capabilities.

I've opined the same before. Just put standard-colored rings (with textures, if we want to be sight-flexible) on the cables, when they're shipped from the factory.

Standardize the colors through the IF, and bam, you can tell at a glance what a cable is capable of.

Like resistors, except I don't think cables are likely to shrink too much in the future.

You'll never get Apple to do that though. They didn't with USB-3, they didn't with mouse/keyboard, they won't put them on their cables. And since they're the premium brand, everyone else will have to follow them.

I'm not sure why you're being downvoted, those examples are all absolutely true. There's no chance of Apple complying with a spec which doesn't meet their sense of industrial design (which there's no way this would).

I will say, they're not alone. Look at Razer, for instance. Electric green is not exactly a part of the USB 3 standard.

In which case Apple is welcome to deal with their users being confused about cables. I see this as how the market is supposed to work.

If it's a cable property, then Apple can do whatever it wants with its cables. And everyone else can do what they want with theirs.

But if Apple can do it then so will all the cheap cable manufacturers and everyone else will be confused too.

Some manufacturers following an indicator spec is better than what we have now.

Which is a great solution if all you have are Apple cables, but colored rings fall off or get broken. It's like the US solution to healthcare: "don't be poor", it's not practical in real-world sense. People are going to buy (and make) whatever shit cable they want and regulations and standards don't mean a thing.

You could colour the plastic inside the connector. That would be invisible once plugged which would probably suit Apple etc.

I would have to go with the parent comment although I know what you're saying as it would reduce cost.

I think what we've learned throughout the years is that your color coding idea doesn't work out in practice due to an earlier comment stating that the USB-C market being bottom-feeder. There has to be an exact, rigid specification of USB-C cables that all of them should follow (i.e. USB4/TB4). Any more complicated than that like color coding results in giant scams by manufacturers, outright wrong, or impossible-to-find cables on an eCommerce search engine. I just don't want to deal with any of those anymore. It feels so much nicer right now to look up TB4 on AliExpress and be done with it, no more worrying or guessing.

USB-PD permits 100 W with 20 V at 5 A. If that's carried over just two round copper wires (I don't know whether it is in USB-C) they would need to be 18-gauge or thicker for safety—about 0.94 millimeters. If they're copper, that's about 7.3 grams of copper per meter, 14.6 grams including the return path. Copper is expensive: almost US$7/kg. So a 3-meter 5-amp DC or two-phase cable would weigh 45 grams and contain 15¢ worth of copper. You could drop both the cost and the weight by going to aluminum. If you were designing the system from scratch, you could use 3-phase AC to cut the weight by half again, and use 48 volts to cut the weight by another 58%.

I don't have any idea how thick the 19 wires have to be for USB 40Gbps (GBps?) but I imagine the answer is "not nearly that thick".

Cables cost about 5$, no one would give a fuck if they cost $5.15

Bottom of the barrel vendors will absolutely give a fuck and will cheap out without telling you.

The advantage of USB 2 is that it's so simple that it's very hard to screw it up. You pretty much have to intentionally do it if you want to create a dangerous cable. Even the shittiest cable will work with the vast majority of devices (it might slightly heat up, voltage may sag at the receiving end meaning it will charge slower, but it'll somewhat work).

USB-C is significantly more complex and requires active electronics in the cable itself in some cases, and the potential for higher voltages means a faulty/recklessly-designed cable could request higher voltage from the charger and blow up whatever's connected at the other end.

The chip in the cable just identifies it. Cables don't request voltages.

And the cheap cables won't have that chip, so they'll support 60 watts.

That's my thinking, yes.

Afaik, signaling frequency is typically cross-talk limited, vs diameter limited. Think more shielding, stricter tolerances over thicker.

It sounds like you could maybe make substantial progress by just separating the differential pairs (?) by a millimeter or two of dielectric, giving you a ribbon cable, with much lower crosstalk than the round kind. Bonus points if you color the dielectric rainbow colors.

I feel like it's harder than shielding and tolerances, given that longer passive cables don't seem to exist despite the very high prices people are paying for active cables.

There might be issues of attenuation; we're talking about signals in the GHz range, where you have to use waveguides instead of wires to get low losses.

> I do not want all my USB-C cables to be able to handle 90W. That would make them very thick and expensive.

The difference between the minimum and 100W is that the cables need to support 5 amps instead of 3. That's not much difference at all considering there are data wires too.

Supporting 240W requires a couple tiny components in the plug. That's also barely anything.

Cables handle 60W not by being thicker, but by allowing a higher voltage. The thickness of the cable is decided by amperage, not voltage.

So when operating at 90W the cable only needs to be a tiny bit thicker and negligibly more expensive than a normal 15W cable.

By “expensive” are you talking in the $20-30 range for a single sufficiently long cable? I don’t replace cables that often but I don’t see the big deal paying a reasonable for a high throughput cable when needed.

So the problem is that those cable aren't identifiable without special tester.

They are if you buy the right cables. Just buy cables which have the capabilities you want, and are obvious to you. It's pretty easy, as long as you're willing to put about 5 minutes into the effort one time.

Then I need to put a specification label to every cable.

Lots of angry people on this thread who don't realize cables with icons describing their function exist. You just need to look.

It's definitely an improvement, because you can still carry the one cable that does it all, and use it for everything, even the things that don't actually require it.