USB devices have been around since the early 90s, whether you had a computer from Packard Bell or a cool iMac, USB was around to offer blisteringly fast data transfer speeds at the time. 1.0 offered up to around 12Mb/s, a revision of the spec would come out a couple of years after. With a new millennium, the next jump in data transfer speeds would see its introduction in the appropriately named USB 2.0, pushing speeds to increase by around four times faster. This was sufficiently fast for the current data requirements of society, including transfer of applications, documents, videos and everything else. Interfacing with portable devices was also important during this period, it would also see the wide adoption of USB flash drives. Goodbye floppy disks. I can still remember my very first flash drive that carried just a few megabytes of memory that would flash its green LED during activity. Tech has come a long way since then and it would appear that yet another new standard is ready to make an appearance for the somewhat turbulent start of 2020.
USB 3.0 technology has been a great jump in speeds and utility over the last few years. Greater speeds don’t stop there either, USB-C has brought around improved power capability and transfer rates along with interfacing with other devices to allow even display data to be transferred to display panels. So what’s next in the world of Universal Serial Bus Controllers?
While many of my current data requirements are sufficiently met with current standards, tech companies are looking to the future with roadmaps that will be integrating new standards of components to raise the performance bar. AMD have staged a great come back over the years and will continue to develop their forthcoming products to support the next generation of USB 4.0 and DDR5 memory. This new generation is simply going to be faster, better and hopefully more efficient. With a major player in the computing market looking at adoption as early as 2022, it will be interesting to see how pricing will fluctuate in the next couple of years. Especially post pandemic.
USB 4 will of course offer blisteringly fast 40Gbps data transfer rates. To fully utilize this local transfer avenue, powering and connecting to high resolution screen will be important. Interestingly, a 40Gbps connection will offer simultaneous speeds both ways and other technologies such as DisplayPort 2.0 will tailor their specs to take full advantage of this capability. The next generation of computing power seems to be on the horizon with new storage solutions, CPU power, memory and graphics. There is currently some life left in current architecture, and personally I have not seen a great need to upgrade my computer for a number of years now. There will undoubtedly be a time in the future however, where standard computing needs will require new tiers of components. I can’t help but think that with the price to performance being seen across industry currently, the next couple of years will be used to on-board a generation of users that will see immediate attraction to the forthcoming lines in computing technology. A delicate game of appropriate pricing, consumer education and essential software that will make life that much better.
https://www.engadget.com/usb-4-displayport2-8k-hdr-133040492.html
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-ddr5-usb-4-next-gen-cpus-2022
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB
Lockhart Tech Blogs
