huh. apparently usb 4 exists
-F
@Siph It just kinda feels excessive
-F
@Siph A roadmap is one thing, saying like "version 3 will have X features and Y speed, and version 4 will have W features and Z speed", but I dunno usb 3 seemed more than adequate to us
-F
@Siph I guess it also feels like overkill because USB is still used for tons of things that don't even need usb 2 speeds
-F
@Felthry It does! It's more or less USB 3.1 with the power delivery extension and the entity formerly known as Intel Thunderbolt baked into the base protocol, plus some other odds and ends.
Or, in other words, "all this other stuff we were already doing is official now."
@terrana USB seems to have gone a little off the rails since usb C.
-F
@Felthry They've decided to become the One Port To Rule Them All.
@terrana Which isn't really great considering that half the things you might want to use it for are optional extensions and half of *those* require special cables
-F
@Felthry I admit that I do like the idea, even if the implementation of that idea is more than a little chaotic. It's nice being able to set my laptop down, plug in one cable, and have my screens and all the peripherals on my desk connect up.
@terrana Oh, the idea is nice! I kind of feel like having a separate connector specifically for that, like how old laptop docks worked, would be better though. Though it would *need* to be a standardized connector that's reasonably easy to use, not the bespoke things that laptop docks of the time used. Something similar, but not identical, to USB. Or at least color code the cables and connectors or something based on capabilities!
-F
@Felthry norms and protocols evolve pretty fast these days, afaik PCI Express 6.0 is already ready for production but there isn’t even a single board with 5.0 released yet