All new USB 4 gives faster speeds and supports 100W charging.
The USB 4 spec brings faster speeds with it. It was Announced earlier this year, the USB_IF has signed off on the latest standard. Of course, USB 3.2 is far from installing in every day computer so it is going to be a while before you see USB 4 compatible products.
Whats is USB 4?
USB 4 doubles the data transfer rate from 20Gbps to 40Gbps. It uses the same dual lane architecture as USB 3.2 but doubles individual lane transfer speeds to 20 Gbps to reach a cumulative 40 Gbps. We will need USB 4 certified cables to take advantage of these speeds. Yes, Thunderbolt 3 has supported 40Gbps transfer for a while now, and that brings us to the next bit.
It will have backward compatibility all the way to USB 2.0, but it will even support Thunderbolt 3 now thats crazy. USB 4 is currently being built on top of Intel’s Thunderbolt 3, future hardware should be able to make use of those higher speeds on older Thunderbolt-compatible devices.
We have already seen, that it is possible to use a single cable for sending data and video since the first USB 3 was rolled out, the implementation has been fairly low. The USB 4 spec is trying to solve this through smarter and more efficient routing. In USB 4 we will get greater and more sustained transfer speeds even while using a high resolution external display with your laptop.
When is USB 4 hardware expected.
After looking at the USB 3.2, We shouldn’t expect USB 4 hardware any time soon. Even the latest Snapdragon 855 chipset still doesn’t support USB 3.2. SO our estimates is, the earliest you should expect hardware supporting the new standard would be in the second half of 2020.
