Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “USB Changed its name AGAIN”.
Why don’t we jump right into the headline topic today, which is that the USB implementers forum is changing The Branding again I just wan na. I just want to give a shout out to GD felt over on the Forum long time, Member First Time poster I actually don’t know if you’re a long time, member first post on the Forum in 2019. Okay, so why don’t we go through some of the some of what has led up to this moment in 2019? Not a long time. Remember the USB iaf implemented the following name changes. They took USB 3.0, which was pretty selfish. You get it it’s the first one. It’S USB 3.. You had your USB 1 and 1.1. Okay, that was the slow one. Then you had your USB 2 okay, that was the fast one. Then you had your USB 3. That was the faster one: okay, easy good; okay, they renamed USP 3.0, which was good to the USB 3.1 gen 1, which is bad okay. They renamed USB 3.1, which was I don’t even remember now was that the one that was like 10 gigabit? I don’t remember what the differential I don’t remember anymore, but that got renamed to USB 3.1 Gen 2.
Then later it was actually renamed to 3.2 gen 2. and then USB 3.2 got renamed to USB 3.2 Gen 2 by 2.. The group sought to make things easier for consumers by recommending to vendors that they label products not by their specification name but by super speed, USB followed by the max speed, which, in my opinion, pretty okay, not bad, yeah, okay.
So, for example, with that guidance, USB 3.2 gen 2×2 would become super speed, USB 20 gigabit per second okay. So now the usbif is recommending that vendors just drop the super speed, so USB 3.2 gen 2×2 super speed, USB 20 gigabit per second is now USB. 20 gigabit per second, I like it, that’s actually fine. I didn’t actually know the conclusion of this when we got into it. You know what’s really great about it.
The best thing about it is that that’s what I’ve been doing for years yeah, because no one said no one says super speed USB. Instead of trying to do any of this like you’ll, you guys watch me watch me and I don’t always do it, because it wasn’t a formal naming convention. It was just something that I did, because it was the only thing that could possibly make sense of this. For me is I’ll, be holding up a laptop or I’ll, be looking at the back eye of a motherboard and I’ll be like yeah. It’S got. It’S got four USB 10 gigabit ports, because that’s the only thing anyone cared about was: how fast does it go? I don’t care how, by how many things whatever gen thing it is. I did like the logo setups that they had for it. That’S a weird curveball that I’ll throw out there.
Okay, I didn’t mind that so they have good graphic designers and bad product naming people. Well, no, like here I’m trying to find one. I found an article from how to geek that might have it. If I can find it.
No, it showed on Google Images. I hate how Google Images works now. Uh. Can I use this. I still get angry when I right click, a Google search result and go to paste it somewhere and it’s like 14 miles long, okay, okay, my generation remembers when you used to right click it and it didn’t have any of that tracking crap in it. It was just the actual link yeah. I need an extension or something that fixes that I don’t need that hold on Boom there, the port and cable logo. I liked that is that going to change this, isn’t even the one that I thought it was which one’s the which one darn it which one do you like.
I brought us to the wrong thing: okay, wide cam, where it shows the SS. I got you where it shows the s s thing, and then it shows the cable and it has the speed under it. I thought it was good. Okay, it’s very straightforward.
Talking about I’m like okay, that’s a USB plug. This is the speed that it’s at I’m done, we’re good all right, so I hope they keep the logo simple. Now, where things are gon na get a little bit complicated here, is that USB has gotten a lot more well complicated, so we’re dropping super speed, but what we don’t know yet is how things like USB 4 play into all of this. Now that we’re dropping the USB for Branding, because usb4 is not really just a new generation of USB, it also has the ability to carry a PCI Express signal which is super different.
That’S how you can connect things like external graphics cards over a USB type-c cable. So we’re gon na have to get a little bit further into this, so that the logos have come out and they’re similar and they’re good okay. Another thing that we’re not really addressing here is USB gets used for more than just connecting your your digital camera yeah. To your computer, these days we charge our devices, sometimes at extremely extremely high power, like charging rates uh with these USB cables, and so it’s a lot more than just what data rates a cable can handle. It’S also what gauge the wires inside it are. That determines how much power that cable can actually carry.
So let’s go. Let’S go on here: usb4 version 1.0. So that’s what we would know as usb4 right now, USB version two. So I guess that would be usb2 USB 3.2 super speed, plus enhanced super speed and super speed with a plus sign, instead of a word plus, are defined in the USB specifications.
However, these terms are not intended to be used in product names, messaging, packaging or any other consumer facing content. This is from Source two. This is from ARS Technica. This was updated in September.
They still recommend that vendors label USB 2 as high-speed USB with no performance indicator uh. Okay, most products using USB 2 spec are peripherals like keyboards and printers. So they don’t think consumers will mistake the tech for being faster than say USB 5 gigabit per second okay. The usbif also feared people confusing USB 480 megabit per second as being faster than USB 5 gigabit per second, due to the larger number, that’s fair enough! So why don’t? We just call it usb2, because that’s what we’ve been calling it since, like 2003 or whatever um, that would be fine, but okay, fine sure for USBC cables. They now recommend packaging and logos that show both maximum data transfer rate and power delivery. That’S excellent! That’S actually! Really good, I’m down with that, but the USB is guidelines. Do not specify other capabilities like Intel, Thunderbolt support, whether a cable is active or passive, or if it allows pcie tunneling, which is, in my opinion, the most differentiating thing about usb4 according to USB.
If president and coo consumer study groups showed that most consumers only care about the highest data performance level, a product can achieve or the highest power level, but that is stupid. No offense, because PCI Express tunneling is something that the average consumer wouldn’t understand. To tell you that they care about that’s your entire job is creating branding and messaging that helps people understand the value of it and just because you’ve been doing this speed-based marketing and branding for so long and people understand it well and tell you that they want To know about it doesn’t mean that there aren’t other important aspects of the specification that must be communicated: yeah, yeah, dumb yep and the usbif never talked to us again. Man have they talked to you at all yeah, but like ah man, Yvonne would tell me to be a lot nicer. I’M sorry I didn’t, I didn’t mean to say it’s dumb and I didn’t mean to say that you were an idiot and that you’re bad at your job or I don’t know, did I say that? No, no, I don’t think you said any of that before the point is. The point is that I disagree respectfully and I’m sure that you’re really good at the other things that you do as president and CEO of USB.
If and I’d love to work together sometime to make better branding – or I don’t know – maybe they could maybe they could show us cool USB. Would you say that this is a move in the right direction? Oh absolutely there we go, we can at least give them a win. It’S a step in the right direction.
What everybody talked about that before? No, I know but you’re you’re doing conclusionary statements, you know and there there is a lot of good here I would say I don’t think it’s completely there, but this is a lot better than it was, and this is going to be a lot more straightforward for Consumers, which is good because that’s kind of the point yeah um I mean I’d – already talked about this – we’ve been working on cables. In the background for a little while and I had already said, yeah we’re just going to completely ignore whatever the usbif says, we’re just going to put the maximum data rate that can handle and the maximum power it can handle so essentially they’ve just they’re doing that. That is good, which is great. That’S really good, yeah, that’s a step in the right direction, good job yeah! I think that’s about it. We’Re also gon na put uh whether it supports pcie tunneling, though, because that’s of course, really important yeah, because you’re we’re trying to make USB cables less confusing. That’S that’s the point right, but you did good you did.
You did pretty good. Pretty good .