From PC World: Until now, USB4 matched Thunderbolt in terms of bandwidth. Now, it’s leapt ahead, with USB4 Version 2.0.
The USB Promoter Group announced USB4 Version 2.0 on Thursday, a specification that will allow for up to 80Gbps to be transferred over the USB-C connector that is commonly in use on PCs and smartphones. The standard will be backwards compatible with USB4 Version 1.0, USB 3.2, USB 2.0, and Thunderbolt 3 — but not USB 1.0 or Thunderbolt 4.
The USB Promoter Group said that the new standard will be published in November, meaning the first products should debut sometime thereafter.
Until now, USB and Thunderbolt have basically co-existed in parallel worlds. Because of somewhat murky licensing issues, Intel-based laptops have used a Thunderbolt 3 or Thunderbolt 4 port and laptops powered by AMD’s Ryzen have used USB4. As we discussed in our USB4 explainer, Thunderbolt 4, Thunderbolt 3, and USB4 1.0 were roughly equivalent. Now, with the increase in bandwidth, Ryzen platforms may have a sudden dramatic increase in I/O bandwidth.
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