The USB Promoter Group has announced the forthcoming specification of USB 4 Version 2.0. The biggest innovation is said to be support for data transfer rates of up to 80 Gbps over existing USB-C cables and ports.
The key feature of this update is speed. To achieve 80 Gbps, the USB-IF ensures that a ” new physical layer architecture ” will be used with “existing 40 Gbps USB Type-C passive cables and newly-defined 80 Gbps USB Type-C active cables.” The new standard will be backward compatible with the initial version of USB4 and also USB 3.2, USB 2.0 and Thunderbolt 3.
The jump in the bandwidth of USB4 version 2.0 — which is faster than Thunderbolt 4, which reaches a maximum transfer speed of 40 Gbps — will open the door to the use of peripherals with higher performance. For example, more powerful external graphics cards and high-resolution screens with high refresh rates — a delight for gamers.
Apart from that, the USB standard is to be adapted to the current display port and PCIe standards. This should be Displayport 2.0, which also transmits 80 GBit/s, which can already be possible with a USB-C cable. In addition, there is probably PCI Express 5.0, which theoretically enables transfer rates of up to 128 GB per second when using 16 lanes. With USB4 Version 2.0, of course, this cannot be achieved.
It should be noted that the new specification has not yet been released. The consortium will continue working on getting it ready for November of this year. It is expected that this month all the technical details will be published, and manufacturers will have a clear reference framework to certify their devices and consumers also to buy them.
