USB Type C is simply a connector or a port which basically is a physical computer interface that provides input/output operations for computer peripherals like flash disk, external hard drive, smartphone, camcorder, projector etc. But if you understand computer connectors and cables, it shouldn’t be. Now it can be confusing at first when you mention Thunderbolt 3.0 and USB type C in the same sentence. Thunderbolt’s latest standard 3.0 is cable of a whooping 40 Gbits/s, twice as fast as as USB 3.2 - the latest USB standard.īut here’s the thing Thunderbolt isn’t yet as popular as USB unless you use a Mac. MacBook Pro (2016 and later) and iMac (2017) support Thunderbolt 3.0 with USB type C connector. ThunderboltĮven though USB tries to get faster, it’s still no match to thunderbolt. USB 3.1 Gen 2 pushed the speeds to 10 Gbits/s but that’s exactly what Thunderbolt 2 was capable of. More PCs are expected to support the standard through Intel’s Tiger Lake processor. The first major laptops to support USB 4.0 were Apple’s Mac Mini (M1, 2020) (2 controllers), MacBook Air (M1, 2020), and MacBook Pro (13-inch, M1, 2020). Backward compatibility with USB 3.2, USB 2.0 and Thunderbolt 3.USB4 requires USB Power Delivery (USB PD) which can deliver power up to 100W.Allows tunneling of DisplayPort and PCI Express.Multiple data and display protocols to efficiently share the maximum aggregate bandwidth over the bus.Two-lane operation using existing USB Type-C cables and up to 40 Gbps operation over 40 Gbps certified cables.Key features of the USB4 solution include: So there’s really no point of increasing USB speeds until hard drives become faster. Even super fast SSDs read/write speeds max at roughly 6 Gbps like the Samsung 850 Pro or SanDisk Extreme Pro. Right now, even the fastest hard drives are not even able to max out USB 3.X speeds. That’s about 5 times faster than USB 3.2. It handles data transfer speeds of up to 100 Gb/s. Unlike the other earlier standards, it’s the only USB protocol that requires USB Type C connector.
USB 4.0 was released on 29, Aug 2019 by the USB Implementers Forum. Similarly 10Gbits/s USB 3.1 Gen 2, got renamed to USB 3.2 Gen 2. For instance USB 3.0 with 5Gbits/s got renamed to USB 3.1 Gen 1 and then renamed again to USB 3.2 Gen 1. Updates: There’s been a lot of confusion on the 3.x spec because of a lot renaming of old standards.