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USB 4.0 "USB4" Specification Published

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  • #41
    Originally posted by xfcemint View Post
    What "configurable thunderbolt policies" in UEFI are you takling about? If it consists of "1-enable, 2-disable, 3-fuck off", than it is obviously insufficient.
    By now you should have realized you suffer from a serious lack of information in regards to Thunderbolt. Why don't you go and fix that, instead of bothering other people with your stupidity?

    The default security mode for Thunderbolt is "secure". The controller in the host device does not automatically tunnel any PCIe lanes when you attach a PCIe-capable device to the bus. The user has to authorize the device to make that happen, and the operating system remembers the device so it can re-authorize it automatically in the future. This is also true for all current UEFI implementations I've worked with. All Thunderbolt-capable systems I've seen in the last four years had safe defaults both in the UEFI settings and the operating systems.

    Here's a blog post from someone who actually tried to hack a stock system via Thunderbolt back in 2016 and failed:

    I just got an Intel NUC Skull Canyon that has an USB-C port capable of Thunderbolt 3. Thunderbolt is interesting since it's able to carry PC...

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    • #42
      Originally posted by Marc Driftmeyer View Post

      Yes it does and for those in the creative arts that deal with Soundtracks, Music creation, Film Production, Animation, etc etc., you bet your ass we want PCIe access. We want as much bandwidth as possible.

      See page 66 of the spec and read from there.

      Anyone incapable of securing their work environment is on them. Sorry, but knee capping for the sake of `security' by compromising bandwidth is absurd.
      Isn't that a false dilemma? I mean, nobody's saying external PCIe is necessarily a bad thing? Would it really be so horrible if you had USB not doing PCIe and things like OCuLink that did? Ideally, I think, we would have a few different types of connectors, a user-level connector, an OS-level connector and a hardware-level connector. I mean, PCIe is much more dangerous than USB and USB is much more dangerous than it ought to be for simple things like headphones or simple storage on your keyring.

      In my opinion, separating things by level of danger, is not a stupid idea.

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      • #43
        Originally posted by L_A_G View Post
        I suspect that the idea is to let device makers include both older and USB 4.0+ ports for devices and then eventually just let consumers use cheap "legacy USB hubs" to support their legacy devices. There's only so much legacy cruft that you can have in your standard before it becomes unwieldy and unmanageable.
        Makes sense, that probably is their intent. But it kind of takes the "universal" out of universal serial bus. These devices only work in these USB ports, but these other devices, you have to plug them into those other USB ports over there. Whatever, if there's one thing the USB people are good at, it's creating consumer confusion.

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        • #44
          Originally posted by torsionbar28 View Post
          Makes sense, that probably is their intent. But it kind of takes the "universal" out of universal serial bus. These devices only work in these USB ports, but these other devices, you have to plug them into those other USB ports over there. Whatever, if there's one thing the USB people are good at, it's creating consumer confusion.
          Considering this is the first time the standard is dropping any backwards compatibility in the 23 years the standard has existed I doubt this is going to be something that happens regularly. It's not like you've been able to plug in original SCSI peripherals (the standard being finalized in 1986) without any kind of adapters into modern devices since the early 2000s and you rarely saw people kick up a fuss about that back then.

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          • #45
            The faster they iterate on new versions of protocols & connectors, the less "Universal" the "Universal Serial Bus" becomes.

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            • #46
              It must be becoming increasingly complex and expensive to implement the latest USB standards on modern computers.

              Peripherals can still be kept relatively simple, as they only need to implement the tiny subset of USB that they use.

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              • #47
                Originally posted by cybertraveler View Post
                It must be becoming increasingly complex and expensive to implement the latest USB standards on modern computers.

                Peripherals can still be kept relatively simple, as they only need to implement the tiny subset of USB that they use.
                You would be correct. With the new features baked into USB-C and Thunderbolt, many board makers have simply passed on implementing either one, because the required hardware and design changes to go beyond the physical connection itself adds significant cost to board designs. That's why adoption of both interfaces in hardware beyond storage devices has been very small in comparison to USB 3.0, which is as easy to use as it's predecessor.

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                • #48
                  Does it actually say anywhere that they're dropping USB 1.0 support in the sense of incompatibility with USB 1.0 peripherals? It seems very unlikely since it's a necessary subset of USB 2.0. The USB 2.0 high speed connection process uses low/full speed signaling. I'm pretty sure the press release is just using USB 2.0 as a shorthand for old fashioned 4 wire USB.
                  Last edited by patstew; 06 September 2019, 08:31 PM.

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                  • #49
                    The rage is funny as often on this forum.
                    It's not the first time we have this USB 1.x "issue", USB Type C commits the same sin of not mentioning because it's old fashioned or something so I know how annoying this is .
                    Most people have no idea if their stuff is 1.1 or 2.0.

                    If you scourge the web you can eventually find out that 1.x is supported on Type C 3.0 (afaik).
                    Leaving it out would be completely stupid, e.g. you have a new $1000 laptop with only two ports and plugging in a mouse wouldn't fucking even work. This is unthinkable.

                    Many devices are USB 1.1, and probably Low-Speed for some or many of them
                    - bar code scanner (most likely to be a very simple device that registers as a keyboard)
                    - keyboard
                    - dumb phone
                    - probably anything that uses a USB to RS232 converter (any sort of random peripheral or device or SBC)
                    - peripherals for a cash register, themselves mostly Windows or Linux x86 PCs apparently
                    like the receipts printer. these used to be serial devices and might be internally USB to RS232
                    - gamepad/joystick
                    - audio? consider that people are using bluetooth for this. USB 1.1 seems much better than bluetooth.

                    The issue could be though : are your 1GB/s SSDs slowed by the slow peripherals when sharing the port (avoid computers with only one port then)
                    I bet they didn't fix this, unless USB2 and USB3 can be used simultaneously and separately.. and a vendor would dare put a USB 2.0 port on a break out box.
                    In theory, a Thunderbolt dock/dongle/box can carry multiple USB controllers.

                    Well, get a laptop with at least two USB4 and one USB-A or two USB-A and one USB4. That'll be cheaper that one with two Thunderbolt. Have a HDMI 2.x and an RJ45 (2.5Gbps?) and the laptop will be cheaper still (and can be upgraded to 4TB SSD, 64GB RAM, until bigger SSD capacities are available) because the cheaper they are, the more they do!
                    Last edited by grok; 09 September 2019, 05:34 AM.

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                    • #50
                      Originally posted by ThoreauHD View Post
                      So.. what's changed between this and usb 3.2 protocol? This shit's really confusing. Asrock X570's have thunderbolt 3/usb 3.2 already. What's the 4 do?
                      So the 4 seems to bring a 40 Gbps mode but that is pretty useless as even 10 Gbps peripherals are rare (hosts, even)

                      More interesting would be USB speed / Displayport speed combinations. If it really is "Thunderbolt without PCIe" then that might be good for that specifically (I seemed to understand that USB C alternate mode gives you USB 2.0 data while using the high bandwidth pins for the audio/video)
                      Quote of the small article : "USB 4.0 doubles the maximum aggregate bandwidth and allows for multiple simultaneous data and display protocols."

                      So quite a big deal if using a tablet-like or ultra thin, you can get a goddamn dongle for cheaper, have it actually work and on non-Intel too (Intel will boast about their CPU/chipset lanes on new platform). If cheaper low power 20Gbps is an option that's useful too.

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