USB4 is a Glorious Mess 

Once again reminded of the XKCD comic. Situation: There are 14 competing standards. "14?! This is ridiculous! We need to develop one universal standard that covers everyone's use cases." "Yeah!" *Situation: There are 15 competing standards.*

Remember how USB-C was supposed to make everything simple and straight forward...

You can absolutely guarantee that not one device or computer manufacturer will label or even document their ports to state which USB / thunderbolt standard they meet. Nor will selllers on store product listings.

Love that you used the monitor Apple intended, you either spend a 1000 on a stand, or hire someone to hold the monitor for you.

A small note, Intel developed the Thunderbolt with Apple, so they don’t need to label their port as USB4, it is officially Thunderbolt. Thanks for your content!

The problem is that a lot of the features of USB4 are OPTIONAL, that's the biggest issue and you never know which of the features is disabled due to that.

Linus being surprised at fancy new tech actually working how it's supposed to work for once is a big mood

It'd be really awesome if Labs made a compendium of (at least the most popular) devices and the USB4 features they implement. That would be a godsend for informing purchase decisions.

USB-C is going into a dangerous situation, all the specs on the ports, transfer protocols and cables are all over the place. At this stage I would rather go (a little bit) back to the old days where if I pick up a cable I would definitely know if it would work depending on what the connector looks like.

The people at the USB consortium really went: "Fuck, one person finally figured out how the naming scheme of USB 3 works, we need to come up with something more confusing ASAP!"

Linus: "Watch how easily I can break things." Everyone: "We watch you do that on a daily basis, Linus."

USB never should have added optional components of the standard in any version. The entire point of USB originally, was "a USB port is a USB port". It is also extremely annoying for so many things like alt mode to exist which use USB connectors for things which aren't USB. Defacto now, it is impossible to know ahead of time if a specific device will work with a specific port without reading spec sheets, and even then it isn't clear (Thunderbolt products will often work with non certified implementations even if it isn't hinted at anywhere in the spec sheet)

I fail to see how the organization that made 5 usb 3s didn't think to make a USB 4.0M for mobile devices instead of making the biggest features into optionals.

The true irony is that USB was originally developed back when every device had its own connector and even things which could theoretically all be supported by the same computer wouldn't actually work together because the connectors were wrong, etc. USB was _supposed_ to unify all of the different communication standards and connectors together, so that any USB device could work with any USB port. Now, we've reached exactly the opposite state, where even through everything is now using the same connector, you can't know whether any given device will work with any given port because they're all doing different things over the same connector and there's absolutely no standardization of feature sets or functionality. In a way, the USB-IF have become the evil they sought to destroy...

I really liked someone's comment of standard resistor-style colored stripes on the USB connector that indicate the supported features. Could embed a current rating, data rate, and signal quality with just 3 colored stripes.

USB is such a freaking mess. At this point I wish there was just a "everything or nothing" take on it. Either having all features, or not existing. Would definitely help with the mess...

The only thing universal with USB now is confusion about what cables, devices, ports, etc. supports what parts and combinations of the optional specs. Good job!

I've been using computers for 30 years now. Always building my own desktop PCs, programming, even some light electronic projects... I understood USB pretty well up to version 3.1. I gave up after that. I connect one thing to another never knowing what will happen. Will it charge as fast as needed? Am I getting all the transfer speed I can? Can I attach a monitor? If not, even though the plug is the right one, and both ends do agree about having a monitor output / being a monitor... then why not? I just never know. I don't want to have to read the entire standard to find out. They really messed this up amazingly.

If a big part of the issue is because of smartphone USB C implementation, then there should be two standards. USB 4 and USB 4m (mobile). Standard USB 4 should support everything as standard. USB 4m could have the optional parts (or remove them all together). This would simplify everything.

12:26 The ant joke really made me smile. I love how you guys at LTT are so professional and you still feel like normal people.

I would love to see this in a future steam deck 2. It would be pretty cool to have a beefed up CPU, a GPU whose target is the smaller and lower resolution display of the deck, but a way to easily transition to a docking station with an external GPU. That way, the dream of steam deck as your only computer dream that we’ve been talking about isn’t only available for more budget oriented folk, but rather can offer a comparable experience to an actual moderately expensive desktop.

The editors notes on any farts had me laughing a great deal. Great job guys!

Daisy chaining makes me think of the "good old days" when a basic desktop PC(and I mean basic, not even a hard drive or colour video output in a lot of cases) cost as much as a small car and home users all had microcomputers(computer and keyboard in one unit) that just connected to a regular TV via composite. If you're unfamiliar, look up the C64, Tandy 1000EX/HX, Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, and Amiga 500. Mine was an Amiga 1200(still works, even the hard disk) and I had an external SCSI connector hooked up via the expansion slot on the side. It was a nightmarish sprawl of cables and crap all over my desk with devices just daisy chained taking over half my bedroom. A CD ROM, 56k modem and extra floppy drive come to mind, but I had others that I can't remember, 'cause damnit it's been almost 30 years. This old man's brain barely goes back a week. So yeah, maybe it's for the best we can't daisy chain too much.

The solution to this is to have multiple tiers (such as A, B and C) with different standards. And for this tier to be clearly labeled next to the port and on the cable

Thanks so much for covering this! It's frustrating how unclear USB4 has been. I would love for you to cover why Ryzen 6000 systems have USB4 by default while Ryzen 7000 systems do not.

Maybe the right way to do the logo/branding licensing deal is: in order to display a full size USB4 compatibility symbol on its own, it *must* implement the optional modes; and if it doesn't, it has to list the limitations alongside the compatibility symbol.

Linus: "You just don't expect tech to work that well out of the gate" Engineers who had sleepless nights fixing integration bugs: "Are we a joke to you?"

I am so glad my Aokzoe handheld has full featured, everything implemented versions on BOTH of its USB4 ports. It's an absolute game changer.

This is all part of the reason I have been bugging Amazon to require full specs on USB devices and cables. You can get a beautiful looking USB-C cable that cannot handle much power (5v, 1A anyone?) and sports USB-2 speeds. There needs to be a requirement for clarity on supported specs and recourse when they aren't met.

USB-IF made the same mistake with USB4 that Intel did with Thunderbolt 3, by making certain features optional. The unfortunate part is what makes USB4 unique from previous standards are what were left out as options. Thunderbolt is also implemented differently by Intel across it’s CPUs. Some mobile SOCs have it integrated directly into the monolithic design of their CPUs, some are on-die but on different I/O chiplet, while others are in an external PCH on the motherboard. The performance varies with the best performance with the integrated designs. USB4 v2, DisplayPort 2.1 and Thunderbolt Next all seem to offer the same maximum features but again only Thunderbolt offers the full features specifications as default while the rest leave the best bits as options. Rumour has it the next iPhone Pro Max will feature Thunderbolt with its USB-C. I can’t wait for Thunderbolt Next

Gave me some joy seeing the MagStor drive again. I used to work for them. Good times, cool to see it get some screen time again.

11:32 This is why I love this channel. I always want to know how far you can push tech before it starts showing!

You know the apple pro display stand is overpriced when it's cheaper to pay an employee to stand there and hold the display for you. (also props to Tanner dudes steadier than a stand!)

Okay, that last point with phones makes sense. So don't require PCI-E tunneling and daisy chaining. But what they should require is that all manufacturers transparently communicate what their device supports and what not. And please don't bury it under 15 clicks and one PDF download on your website.

All USB-IF needed to do was break the spec between something like USB4 Go for phones and USB4 for laptops, etc, something in those lines, instead of making a mess between required and optional. Plus, interoperability should be required (and that I'm talking not only about USB-IF, but also Intel), it's outrageous that a damn thunderbolt display is not compatible with DisplayPort, since the inner display protocol in thunderbolt IS DisplayPort, but they "cheap out" on the controller on a multi thousand dollar monitor

Please do more coverage on this. I don't know if I am more confused or less confused. The more I learn about this the more I realize how much I don't know.

If the optional parts of USB4 were to allow mobile devices to benefit over some aspects of TB3 then it should've been specific designation for the subset vs the whole TB3 spec e.g. USB4M for mobile, USB4⚡ for full TB3

I originally thought the point of USB type C connectors was that we wouldn't need so many different types of ports and cables, just one that you could use for anything. Instead we now have even MORE different types of cables and connectors, but they all LOOK EXACTLY THE SAME. In short, things have just gotten worse. The only way to guarantee that a type C cable you get will work with any host and device combination is to get a passive thunderbolt 4 cable of 1 meter or less. That's all I buy, even just for phone charging, because otherwise you will have no idea which cables are capable of what when they start moving around and getting mixed up.

subtle conversation while in a conversation, nice, i like that subtlety

Congrats on 15mil Subscribers!!😊

Linus: "Watch how easily I can break things." Us: Yep, we know.

Would be really awesome if Labs did cable testing for thunderbolt/usb4 compatibility

Expectation -> all cables have same connectors, all devices use same cable Reality -> No one can tells which cable works with which device and which feature

13:14 "watch how easily I can break things" We know Linus, we know

Should have colour codes like resistors to help with this. Remember when black was slow and blue was fast on USB A?.

5 seconds in... Riley in the background in a fedora reading a book... I already know I'm going to enjoy this video!

Very informative video about this hot mess and great writing Tanner!

finnaly good background music for everyone. thank you!!!

My grandparents never could get to grips with modern technology, and I remember a time my granny asked me if I thought there would come a time when technology became too complex for me to understand. Obviously I said no and put it down to living in a different time. USB naming conventions have me worried for my future in which I can't figure out if the charger in my hand is USB GEN 3 PD 6.0.3 third edition GaN backwards compatible 240v AC 4K Pro is the one for my electric toothbrush, or the other one over there which looks the same but might blow my house up.

My takeaway from this: only buy USB 4 if you have unlimited hardware choices and unlimited time (or a team of staffers) so you can try every single configuration until you get one that works - then never change anything or it might break. TLDR: USB 4 is only for Linus

I remember the first time I experienced transferring a huge file over thunderbolt 3 (40gbps). Copying from my Zephyrus M to my skull canyon NUC I was so blown away with the speeds, even with gen 3 NVMe SSD's. Crazy fast.

Dealing with USB specifications has made me fully understand how my parents/grandparents feel when they have to deal with tech. UTTER CONFUSION

Honestly, USB-IF has outlived their usefulness. USB was created because there were too many incompatible/competing standards (parallel, serial, din, ps/2, ext). Now, almost 30 years later, they've decided it would be a good idea to create incompatible/competing standards. Someone else needs to step up and make a new SINGLE universal connector/cable for *all* devices....and write the standards/requirements in stone.

If the USB-IF wants to undermine the very thing that brought USB prominence then we should just embrace Thunderbolt 4 which seems to be open just like USB4 except with all the nice optional features built in.

Need more of pedantic Riley. Also happy to confirm that USB4 in my Thinkpad Z16 (AMD 6850H) works fine with thunderbolt 3 docking station, but complains about low power delivery (65W provided by dock)

12:25 No but I have smelled ants or places where there were ants. I can detect the acid by smell for whatever reason.

Gotta love my drawer full of C to C cables with absolutely no labeling to know what they might or might not be able to do reliably.

You would think that the USB committee would be trying to do a fresh start with the USB 4.0 standard after the whole USB 3.0 mess.

This is great to know. I would love to see some various cables tested in the lab for various features, especially since the quality of cables matters so much with the new...standard (can we even really call it that if there's so many options? Feels wrong lol)

This feels like something for the Lab!

I really appreciate these kind of videos. Helps keep you aware before the problem becomes systemic.

I love a 17 minute explainer on how USB works :D

Great info thanks as always!

I have a 1m active 100w TB3 cable from cable matters and it works with ASUS external GPU which shipped with a 0.3m passive TB3 cable, the latency was slightly worse with the active cable. Disabling the iGPU can help with eGPU latency. This is especially true with the Skull Canyon NUC as the 6770hq has 128mb on-package level 4 cache split 64mb/64mb iGPU and CPU. When iGPU is disabled, this large L4 cache gets reallocated entirely to the CPU. The larger the Cache, the better for latency when it comes to eGPU's.

It's no surprise the Optical USB-C cable didn't work - i suspect the external GPU needed a small kick of power from the cable to get it started, even with an external power source, and optical can only send data. USB is by far the hardest thing to explain and get right, as not even computer manufacturers can tell us sometimes what their laptop has. And cord manufacturers are no different. I knw I find it hard, and every person I've talked to in the local tech industry feels the same.

Elgato Steam Deck, eh? I don't think Valve co-developed that with Corsair. :p Also, if having USB4 support on phones was such a necessity without the need for other features, they should have just made a USB4 Light or similar standard and required USB4 devices support all features while USB4 Light doesn't. This was so easily solvable, but they didn't care.

Thanks for sharing this❗👍🤙

Linus this should be a perfect segway into a video where you test DESKTOP AM5 MOTHERBOARDS that claim to come with USB4. Which features they support, which they don't? Is there a desktop motherboard supporting PCIe tunneling? This has huge implications for workstation use-case and choosing AMD over Intel platform that comes with certified Thunderbolt 4.

Had to do a bit of tech support for my mom earlier this year cause her second screen wouldn't work. Turns out she'd plugged it into the thunderbolt port instead of normal usb-c and it worked instantly once switched. Lots of head-on-desk moments preceded this discovery. I couldn't even explain to her why it didn't work in the thunderbolt port, just that it was that way.

very informative, thank you

"Pedantic Riley" was great, loved that bit!

Explaining how USB devices are still not interoperable despite sharing the same connector these days to my customers sounds like great fun 😍💀

Riley is so good at that character hahaha

7:46 - lol, I love the cheaper monitor stand option. seems to have a lot more range of motion!

10/10 editing/captioning

Wait for USB 5 Gen 1x 2 Pro Version 2.1 which can optionally support dual 8k monitors. Great as Always. 👍😄

Thank you for keeping us up to date on this stuff!

That "integrated Stream Deck" seems suspiciously like a few capacitive touch buttons with some rgb backlighting.

Thanks for your sharing

Isn't it more frustrating? If previously we could see that "they have different plugs, so they won't work together" but now they have same plugs and messed up names "now we can only connect everything together, and hope that we didn't forgot to turn switch on" and only then it might or might not work.

It seams like the easy solution for USB's nonsense naming scheme is to just separate them into 2 tiers. "USB 4" for the required set of capabilities, and something like "USB+" or "Ultra USB" for the set of required AND optional capabilities. That way there's no confusion as to how any of this works for the consumer, and there's only two naming schemes you have to know.

Hey Linus, did you told him to hold it you're fired. 8:00 😂

Something to note is that the PCIe lanes from intel's OG TB3 chips were connected through the chipset, to my knowledge that has changed since Intel finally changed their architecture from Skylake.

If features are most likely optional for USB4 because of mobile, they should have just made USB4-standard and USB4-mobile with the mobile version not having any of the optional features that mobile devices can't utilize. That then keeps things easy and simple for the consumer, as they know if they are buying USB4-standard it's got all the optional features and of course works with mobile devices as well. But if they just need a USB4 cable for their phone they can buy the slightly cheaper "USB4-mobile" cable.

I hate the usb "standard", they should have just made a list of required features and then required that ALL cables have ALL of those features

Fantastic video. Any chance of an overview of how to interpret different cable marketing and if they include a signal stabiliser?

That LTT sweater is so cool. I can't wait until I can order one

what I love the most about thunderbolt is that it allows me to use my 15 years old firewire sound interface. ah the wonder of technology.

With all those "optional" standards basically, USB4 is USB 2 with the dice roll of a chance of being possibly better in some way that may or may not be relevant to you

Linus, a small remark about the cables USB4, I use mine Dell XPS 13 9370 with an external graphics card Aorus Gaming Box 1070, My original wire from the kit after 2 years of use fell into disrepair. I bought a VCOM CU540M cord for $ 15 and it works great with an external graphics card through the Thunderbolt 3 connector.

There is now the Laser Serial Bus (LSB) optical standard (October 1, 2022) which has TWO single mode PLASTIC or GLASS fibres that supports DENSE WAVE MULTIPLEXING (DWMP) which has multiple frequencies of laser light going through two fibres at the same time in full bi-directional mode for network connectivity (i.e where laser have pulses at different wavelength/frequencies that go to and from a device in both directions at the same time for networking!) AND has THREE copper electrical lines that are THICKER than the USB-3/4 copper wires so as to support 24 Volts at up to 15 amps for up to 480 watts of available power to drive and charge connected devices such as laptops, tablets, cameras and sensors directly from the LSB connection itself. This means the Laser Serial Bus (LSB) standard has TWO optical fibre lines each supporting multi-wavelength laser-based coonectivity at Terabit+ data transfer rates on each fibre and has THREE copper lines for DC (Direct Current) electrical power mode with extra grounding and power signal noise reduction plus a fail-safe switching and pass-through mode for advanced power-up and charging capabilities at cable lengths up to 100 metres or 328 feet for point-to-point connections which is the same as CAT-6 Ethernet cable but at a much higher data transfer rate (i.e. Terabits+)! This standard was DESIGNED from the get-go for plug-and-play home, office, automotive, marine, aerospace, industrial and severe cold/severe heat environments network-connectivity and multi-device-powering/charging! This type of 480 watts power supply in a wired-communications specification allows for charging and/or supplying power to small industrial smart-tools, plus household, kitchen and mobile smart-appliances, portable 2D/3D printers, multiple cameras and media recorder/players and in-series connected devices such as portable RAID SSD drive arrays, 2D/3D displays and small form-factor workstations and computer-servers. Peak power spikes upon connected device startup is monitored, modelled and allowed-for so that other devices can protect themselves from power spikes, surges and sags for best device protection ability. There is a ruggedized IP-68 and Mil-Spec EMF/RFI/EMP shielding rating THAT MUST be adhered-to for the connectors that offer continuous dust and water ingress protection and a multi-directional swiveling connector that allows for protection against high-rates of vibration, twist/torsion protection plus high cable flexion and extension rates. An anti-corrosion system that prevents bi-metallic/galvanic electrical-based connector corrosion and degradation plus a high level of protection against cracks and chaffing of the cable itself is also defined. These Laser Serial Bus (LSB) cables are actually CHEAPER to produce than regular USB-3/4 Type A and Type C cables due to much thought being put into the manufacturability and Quality Assurance-testing requirements of the cable standard itself while offering SUPERIOR shielding, much better anti-wear specifications, superior data transfer rates and SUPERIOR power-up/charging/power pass-through capabilities over USB-3/4! The KEY point is the LSB (Laser Serial Bus) standard uses a burst of regularly timed and digitally-numbered low-voltage/low-amperage signals in order to wake-up a specific single device or a grouped-together-series of connected devices which accept/receive just enough power to switch over to higher-voltage/higher-amperage input/output modes that lets devices negotiate via optically-delivered packets to start the process of connecting-to, drawing-from and/or sending more power to ever larger and more power-hungry devices! This allows for up to 65,535 connected devices on the SAME line and 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 total devices on the entire physical network! To faciliate this, the system uses two 64-bit identifiers with one 64-bit ID being the device-type (32 bits) and manufacturer/seller code (32 bits) and the other 64 bit ID being the physical device ID similar to a MAC address. The device-type code and seller code lets devices figure out WHAT is being connected that has a specific known set of available capabilities and HOW to connect to it. The 2nd 64-bit code is an internal-LAN/WAN-only MAC-address-like device identifier. The data transfer rates are so high that multiple streams of DCI-16k (16,384 by 10,922 pixels) up to 240 frames per second video with 7.1 channel Surround Sound can be sent to connected recording devices and displays. The physical layer has a timing pulse and location identifier pulse built-in to support low-latency asynchronous and synchronous communications and physical-location-awareness capabilities. The standard lets devices ANNOUNCE and NEGOTIATE their power-draw, their packet latency-rates and required multi-channel/multi-stream bandwidth needs so that a minimum-required set of devices OR ALL connected devices can get enough power to work and communicate reliably at the highest communications speeds possible. If not enough power is available, PROTECTED SETS of devices can be kept running and all other devices can then be gracefully shut down or powered to less power-hungry modes of operation in order to protect the electrical needs of the pre-specified sets of connected devices! Power and Light Pass-through is also supported so that devices can be hooked-up in series BUT do not have to be powered-on in order send electrical power or light pulses to the next connected device! AND the LSB standard SUPPORTS low-latency/fast-connection hot-plugging of devices for 24/7/365 operations AND powering a connected device using the pulsed laser light stream itself so that if necessary, small-power-draw devices can use only incoming light pulses to power themselves. These NEW standards far exceed what USB-3/4 can do and is CHEAPER TO MAKE so it looks like USB is about to be superceded by the new 2022-era optical-based communications standard of Laser Serial Bus (LSB) for serial sub communications AND for Ethernet LAN/WAN connectivity using much more ruggedized and well-shielded TEMPEST-rated connectors and cabling! Now You Know! V

USB group: what do we call our new standard? Also USB group: yes

Drinking game: Take a shot everytime Linus says "Your Mileage May Vary"!

so its great because you can still do the stuff you can already do such an advancement amazing.

8:05 why you gotta do him like that 💀

It has an integrated steamdeck?! Amazing.

good on you microsoft, great to hear that your partners are required to include pcie tunneling

Yay! Pedantic Riley! nicely done

For laptops this might a great solution if you want to upgrade your graphics card or something, but most of those features are not used a lot by "normal" PC users, and as far I can see it's also very expensive. I guess I would have the opportunity to add a PCIe card with USB4, but I can't use my second PCIe slot anymore because my graphics card is so huge that it stands in its way, and my graphics card is way more important for me than USB4 slots

Ahh yes, I love the Elgato Steam Deck 4:15