Ugh: USB 3.2 is going to make the USB naming mess even worse

“USB 3.2, which doubles the maximum speed of a USB connection to 20Gb/s, is likely to materialize in systems later this year,” Peter Bright writes for Ars Technica. “In preparation for this, the USB-IF — the industry group that together develops the various USB specifications — has announced the branding and naming that the new revision is going to use, and… it’s awful.”
“USB 3.0 was straightforward enough. A USB 3.0 connection ran at 5Gb/s, and slower connections were USB 2 or even USB 1.1,” Bright writes. “But then USB 3.1 came along and muddied the waters. Its big new feature was doubling the data rate to 10Gb/s. The logical thing would have been to identify existing 5Gb/s devices as ‘USB 3.0’ and new 10Gb/s devices as ‘USB 3.1.’ But that’s not what the USB-IF did. For reasons that remain hard to understand, the decision was made to retroactively rebrand USB 3.0: 5Gb/s 3.0 connections became ‘USB 3.1 Gen 1,’ with the 10Gb/s connections being ‘USB 3.1 Gen 2.’ The consumer branding is ‘SuperSpeed USB 10Gbps.'”
Bright writes, “USB 3.2 doubles down on this confusion. 5Gb/s devices are now “USB 3.2 Gen 1.” 10Gb/s devices become “USB 3.2 Gen 2.” And 20Gb/s devices will be… “USB 3.2 Gen 2×2.””
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Hey, we didn’t know Phil Schiller was moonlighting at the USB-IF!
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