Fulfilling its 2017 promise to make Thunderbolt 3 royalty-free, Intel has given the specification for its high-speed interconnect to the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), the industry group that develops the USB specification. The USB-IF has taken the spec and will use it to form the basis of USB4, the next iteration of USB following USB 3.2.
Yes, it’s called USB4, which will exist alongside USB 3.2 Gen 1, USB 3.2 Gen 2, and USB 3.2 Gen 2×2. I don’t even know what to say.
I’ve been awaiting this crisis of naming scheme ever since I walked into an Office Depot in Alabama, asked for a Firewire cable, and was pointed to a cable that the employee described as a “USB Firewire cable.” They had no IEEE 1394 cables, however.
https://www.osnews.com/story/129501/thunderbolt-enables-severe-security-threats/
Now Intel can claim that Thunderbolt vulnerabilities are also USB’s vulnerabilities.
kwan_e,
I couldn’t find USB4 tech specs published on the USB standards website, maybe they’re not published yet. I hope the spec at least requires the DMA controller to be on the host side where it can be considered trustworthy..Otherwise having it be in the peripheral I’m afraid they’re just going to be repeating bad design patterns that are responsible for thunderbolt’s current vulnerabilities. The IOMMU moves devices into new address spaces at a coarse level, which is perfect for virtualization, but it was never intended to be used for the fine grained access control that would be required to protect from untrustworthy DMA activity within a secure address space.
I certainly hope they fix these issues before slapping a USB4 label on it.
Intel’s CPU vulnerabilities seem never ending ie https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/03/05/spoiler_intel_processor_flaw/ so might as well add their other chips to the mix
Yes, it’s called USB4, which will exist alongside USB 3.2 Gen 1, USB 3.2 Gen 2, and USB 3.2 Gen 2×2. I don’t even know what to say.
Sounds like an outbreak of common sense to me. A new(ish) standard that is faster than the old one, that has a full version number bump.
Please have a requirement to properly label cables and ports so you know what they actually support…
One interface acronym to rule them all. Sigh.
I fully expect them to change the name to USB 3.2 Gen 4×4 before finalizing it.
anevilyak,
They could just use code names
USB 1 = USB TOS
USB 2 = USB TNG
USB 3 = USB DS9
USB 3.1 = USB Voyager
USB 3.2 = USB Enterprise
USB 3.2 gen 2/gen 2×2 / USB4/etc = USB JJ-verse – throw everything out the window and to hell with what users will think.
I’m not a fan of Intel essentially dictating the standard, but if we end up in a situation where we don’t have to squint at faded icons to figure out if THIS USB-C port is going to provide the function I want or not (display/power/USB signalling/Thunderbolt signalling/OTG port/whatever) then I’d be happy.
Jaysus. A pretty cool technology is made into a standard, and the vast majority of readers of this site all they have to talk about is the name. Typical.
javiercerol,
As one of said readers, my post was more of a joke. You didn’t appreciate it? Typical. Haha.
On a serious note, you can add something too, so what do you want to talk about? Beyond what’s already been said, I don’t know there’s much information to discuss at this time.
I think it is fantastic that intel finally opened up thunderbolt, so now we can have AMD or ARM systems that can use the technology for things like external GPUs or fast data/comms. Especially for AMD systems since they are having nowadays fantastic price/performance offerings compared to intel, especially when it comes to core count. It will also be interesting to see if someone manages to use it as an interconnect for clusters.
There, better?
javiercerol,
Sure, I think it’s great for intel to make the thunderbolt standard royalty free. But in terms of the direction of USB, I’m not sure I really see a great use case for USB 4 connected graphics cards. I’ve always kind of felt that the main reason for external graphics cards to exist was mostly to make up for the lack of upgradability (ie in apple mac pros). What’s the point in having a small & sleek form factor desktop computer only to then connect additional external boxes with dongles and drive cages to upgrade it?
Out of curiosity, I looked up the performance of external thunderbolt GPUs.
https://egpu.io/forums/mac-setup/pcie-slot-dgpu-vs-thunderbolt-3-egpu-internal-display-test/
In IO bottle-necked tests, the thunderbolt GPU imposed a 20-40% performance overhead over direct PCI (the faster the card, the worse the overhead). I wouldn’t necessarily call it bad if one had to run an external GPU and didn’t care so much about maximizing performance. But that’s the thing, I think most users would be better served with an upgradable internal GPU in the first place, which not only performs better, but is less of a cabling mess.
Faster IO would be nice. But there may be diminishing returns for ordinary consumer use cases. I am interested in data center/networking use cases, but personally I’d rather have integrated switched & routable 10gbe/20gbe networking than some thunderbolt or usb4 alternative. Granted, there are no guaranties that anything will evolve the way I want it to, haha. Maybe you have some other use cases in mind?
Much 🙂
Upgradable GPUs for laptops has mostly been a big failure. It’s limited to upgrades provided by the laptop manufacturer because the constraints of size, power and heat are so tight.
Or you could run a gigantic box of a laptop with dual 250W power supplies. At that point why not use a small form factor PC case instead?
As for 10 Gbps Ethernet, I saw some Thunderbolt adapters available for sale online that were exactly that.
Zan Lynx,
It’s true, laptops don’t have enough power or cooling for high end GPUs and other components. If external boxes are your thing, then go for it, but you’re paying more and still not getting desktop performance. So it’s not for me.
I’ve seen them too, but my opinion regarding external dongles doesn’t change (whether it’s usb or thunderbolt). As a practical matter for both desktop and laptops, I’d rather have internal ethernet ports than have to carry around extra dongles. It may increase latency as well. While you can recommend thunderbolt to upgrade an existing computer that cannot be upgraded, I still think for new builds it’s better get built in 10G support if you plan on using it.
javiercero1,
There are 12 comments. Only 5 are about the name. That is neither a majority, nor is it vast.
It’s also not a proper count. Since I made my comment when there were only 10 comments. Ergo 6 out of 10 is a majority.
Anyhow. This is a really cool tech which is now standardized and can be used on non intel system. I’m surprised there have not been posters bitching about how the amiga serial port was so much better or that the geekport in the bebox was light years ahead…
It is a proper count, because I used the 12 comment count as an exaggeration. You claimed “vast majority of readers”. Not commenters. Readers. Even if you only count the 10, that’s 10 commenters. Not readers. The site has vastly more readers than commenters on this article.