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> Why do we need USB 3 and C again? Typical copper ethernet is 1Gb/s, while USB 3 is 5 Gb/s, going on 10/20/40 Gb/s with USB 3.2, USB 4 .. thunderbolt. As ot
by labawi 6y ago
> Why do we need USB 3 and C again?
Typical copper ethernet is 1Gb/s, while USB 3 is 5 Gb/s, going on 10/20/40 Gb/s with USB 3.2, USB 4 .. thunderbolt.
As others have said, 10G ethernet is too power hungry, and even 1G ethernet is inherently more expensive. I resent active cables and do prefer ethernet, but it's not a realistic proposition for most use cases.
- MisterTea 6y ago> Typical copper ethernet is 1Gb/s, while USB 3 is 5 Gb/s, going on 10/20/40 Gb/s with USB 3.2, USB 4 .. thunderbolt. All the bit rates you listed Ethernet also covers. And as for copper - at the speeds you listed thunderbolt and USB3/C are limited to severely short cables, a measly 0.5 meters for 40Gb. Though 20Gb can do 1 or 2m, 2m being the longest thunderbolt cable you can use. As for power, that devil is in the interface details. I see no reason why multi-gigabit Ethernet can't be pushed over a similarly designed low power differential copper serial transceiver. As far as I'm concerned, Ethernet is more mature than USB could ever dream of being.
- labawi 6y agoEthernet is more mature, I like it. But to compete in most USB use-cases it would have to re-engineered so much, it wouldn't really be ethernet any more.
- MisterTea 6y agoYou don't think we need to change ethernet so much as to augment it with a co-processor that handles the "bus" aspect such as detecting when devices are plugged/unplugged and interrupt handling. Ethernet is just another serial port with higher level mechanisms which handles framing of the data. We just need a little more brains to handle the bus aspect and a simple protocol to talk to devices with as little overhead as possible.