Microsoft Supports New USB Standard

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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Microsoft has thrown its support behind a new USB standard named USB PD which is capable of carrying 100 watts of power, eliminating the need for some power cables.

The USB Implementers Forum finalized the USB PD standard in July, which has the support of Microsoft. Other companies that will support USB PD include Intel, Renesas Electronics, ST-Ericsson, and Texas Instruments
 
I like this power over USB idea... I imagine some PC speakers would just plug into the USB port and be powered directly... printers would only need 1 wire... I'm sure various other devices.

What we really need is.. Power over HDMI, so we can save that extra wire hanging around there too.

Maybe I'll live to see the day everything is powered wirelessly, and uses wireless signals to connect... so I can have no wires hanging around my computer.
 
I like this power over USB idea... I imagine some PC speakers would just plug into the USB port and be powered directly... printers would only need 1 wire... I'm sure various other devices.

You apparently are over estimating how much power 100 watts really is.

Tiny PC speakers sure... Inkjet perhaps, Laser printer no way in hell. Not to mention the new overhead on your PC's power supply.

Either way, I imagine the cord thickness is going to be significantly more than your standard USB.
 
You apparently are over estimating how much power 100 watts really is.

Tiny PC speakers sure... Inkjet perhaps, Laser printer no way in hell. Not to mention the new overhead on your PC's power supply.

Either way, I imagine the cord thickness is going to be significantly more than your standard USB.

I can just imagine this requiring larger power supplies, which is bad in some way if you want to keep a power efficient, low powered computer.

A 450W PSU-powered common desktop today will probably be 550W with this if people want to use it.
 
My old Canon LiDE 50 scanner is around 10-12 years old and only needs a single standard USB cable. I find it very handy that it sits on a shelf out of the way until I need it. Then I just put it on my desk plug in the USB and scan. When I am done I unplug it and back on the shelf.
 
My old Canon LiDE 50 scanner is around 10-12 years old and only needs a single standard USB cable. I find it very handy that it sits on a shelf out of the way until I need it. Then I just put it on my desk plug in the USB and scan. When I am done I unplug it and back on the shelf.


yup love my Canon LiDE 200 - one of the reasons as there is no power brick
 
Can your average USB cable even handle 100W? Grabbing a random USB A->B I had lying around, according to what's written on the cable it's 28 AWG (probably aluminum) and rated for up to 30V.
 
*Looks at my laptop....
Only USB 2.0, eSATAp 5v.

*Looks at my USB 3 WD Passport.
*Looks at dwindling eSATAp 5/12v devices.

*Looks at article.....

cmt-medium.gif
 
Can your average USB cable even handle 100W? Grabbing a random USB A->B I had lying around, according to what's written on the cable it's 28 AWG (probably aluminum) and rated for up to 30V.

Well with USB2.0 you can draw a maximum of 500mA (100mA per wire) at 5V so that translates to 2.5 watts of power. If you have that 5V limit as well, then a 100W cable would draw 20 amps, so there'd need to be a lot of little wires stuffed in there for you not to smoke your wire. Now that's assuming 5V, which isn't a bad assumption considering they tend to want these things backwards compatible as much as possible, but probably no more than 12V per wire simply due to computer designs which still puts over 8 amps through your cable which is considerable considering how thick they usually are, don't be surprised if your power cable is thinner than your USB cable, the problem just isn't the thickness but they want to make sure the signals are insulated from the power... however I do concede that the people working on this are probably orders of magnitude wiser in regards to this than I am, so I could just be talking out of my ass :D
 
I've been waiting for this for a long time, so sick of having all those uneeded cables
 
This sounds like a terrible idea to me. If you have 3 or 4 of those ports on your computer your PSU would need to be like 300-400W more powerful and the motherboard would end up being significantly more expensive and there's no way a laptop will ever support such a connection.

It would be nice to reduce the number of cables involved with such devices, but 100W through the motherboard and over USB just seems impractical. Maybe something like PSUs that have 12V outputs on the back and then just have cables that combine a power connector and USB connector in one cable to reduce the number of cables you have to run to a power board (similar to how PSUs used to have power connections for monitors).

Maybe my vision is just too small, it just doesn't seem like a good idea to try and make 100W USB connections a standard.
 
charge my iPhone in minutes with 20amps

More like blow up your phone in minutes with 20 amps. There's a reason why wall chargers typically don't come in higher than 1A. Phone won't take it anyway... but if it were dumb enough to take any amount of charge it could... the battery would explode in fire due to thermal runaway from rapid charging.

You apparently are over estimating how much power 100 watts really is.
Tiny PC speakers sure... Inkjet perhaps, Laser printer no way in hell. Not to mention the new overhead on your PC's power supply.
Either way, I imagine the cord thickness is going to be significantly more than your standard USB.

At 5v, 100 watts would be 20 Amps. Most devices need about 1 or 2 Amps to operate properly and USB (spec) currently gives out (allows) 500mAh.

I can just imagine this requiring larger power supplies, which is bad in some way if you want to keep a power efficient, low powered computer.

A 450W PSU-powered common desktop today will probably be 550W with this if people want to use it.

It would be a nightmare from a power management standpoint. Although it's 12v, most GPU cards don't even require 20Amps (typically 12-16A) ... So this would mean, in the least, needing to have an auxiliary power connector just for the USB bus because 20 Amps fully loaded would fry traces off the motherboard. It's largely why we have PCIe connectors.

Can your average USB cable even handle 100W? Grabbing a random USB A->B I had lying around, according to what's written on the cable it's 28 AWG (probably aluminum) and rated for up to 30V.

Nope. It would require at least a doubling in the thickness of the power lines. Now, what's not clear is if it's 100W per device or 100W total split among the USB bus ports.

FTFA: "USB PD, however, could carry as much as 100 watts, enough to power big PC monitors, laptops or even workstations."

A monitor, at 5v, would need more than 100 Watts if you could get it to run at 5v. Laptops typically require about 20V and 15-20A. Since there's absolutely no mention of voltage changes for higher draw devices... I would consider the idea, as a whole, incredibly fucking retarded. I've had power bricks melt down on me. I don't want to risk that by shoving more current into USB ports on my primary system.

I don't know if it's just a poorly written article or a half baked idea from Microsoft (or both)... but it doesn't seem very well addressed.
 
This sounds like a terrible idea to me. If you have 3 or 4 of those ports on your computer your PSU would need to be like 300-400W more powerful and the motherboard would end up being significantly more expensive and there's no way a laptop will ever support such a connection.

It would be nice to reduce the number of cables involved with such devices, but 100W through the motherboard and over USB just seems impractical. Maybe something like PSUs that have 12V outputs on the back and then just have cables that combine a power connector and USB connector in one cable to reduce the number of cables you have to run to a power board (similar to how PSUs used to have power connections for monitors).

Maybe my vision is just too small, it just doesn't seem like a good idea to try and make 100W USB connections a standard.

your vision is definitely too small. nobody is going to sell a computer with a motherboard that is too expensive, or with 3 ports that cant be powered. and being standardized doesn't mean it will be used at all. you don't know what USB PD is for, and you're opposing progress for no good reason.
 
PS: people said the same things about thunderbolt. what will all that speed be used for? how can anyone afford fiber? and then it launched, and it wasn't that fast, and it wasn't fiber, and it may be dead before it ever evolves that far. we'll see if your imaginations match what USB PD turns into.
 
your vision is definitely too small. nobody is going to sell a computer with a motherboard that is too expensive, or with 3 ports that cant be powered. and being standardized doesn't mean it will be used at all. you don't know what USB PD is for, and you're opposing progress for no good reason.

That's my point, either not going to use them because the motherboards will be more expensive, require 300W more power than was previously needed (more expensive PSU) or they'll just have PCs that shut down as soon as people try and plug in more than 1 device. As it is, most prebuilt machines have PSUs that are only a few hundred watts, they aren't going to drive multiple 100W ports.

I think you've misunderstood my lack of imagination, it's not "what will all that power be used for?", it's "where is all that power going to come from?", unless they just put a bypass wire in the PSU and motherboard so it supplies 120/240V AC straight from the wall to the port, those extra watts need to pass through the PSU transformer and then through the motherboard circuitry. Surely that's going to end up more expensive?
 
your vision is definitely too small. nobody is going to sell a computer with a motherboard that is too expensive, or with 3 ports that cant be powered. and being standardized doesn't mean it will be used at all. you don't know what USB PD is for, and you're opposing progress for no good reason.

This forces the additional power through the motherboard and considerably more than it normally pushes through to peripherals. Its going to add cost to a motherboard and also eat up real estate.

The only device that comes to mind that needs this is the Kinect. Its probably for that or some extra hardware to help make Modern UI work like a tablet on the PC.
 
PS: people said the same things about thunderbolt. what will all that speed be used for? how can anyone afford fiber? and then it launched, and it wasn't that fast, and it wasn't fiber, and it may be dead before it ever evolves that far. we'll see if your imaginations match what USB PD turns into.

Uhm. Hrm. Er.. Well... I'll explain your ignorance.

Speed... is something very different than POWER DRAW.

You can gain speed without running the risk of frying motherboard traces or requiring massively thicker cables to handle the current.
 
running the risk of frying motherboard traces or requiring massively thicker cables to handle the current.

no one is going to make a motherboard that risks frying.

no one cares about a thicker cable, especially when they don't know how or where it will be used.

this is not a big deal. imagine a laptop that plugs into a dock with one cable, and through that cable the laptop drives the mouse, keyboard, speakers, monitor, printer, network, and charges itself. it doesn't need to pull 100W or fry the motherboard. work with me here folks
 
no one is going to make a motherboard that risks frying.

no one cares about a thicker cable, especially when they don't know how or where it will be used.

this is not a big deal. imagine a laptop that plugs into a dock with one cable, and through that cable the laptop drives the mouse, keyboard, speakers, monitor, printer, network, and charges itself. it doesn't need to pull 100W or fry the motherboard. work with me here folks

Assuming that there would be backwards compatibility involved here... you forget that people aren't going to know what they're plugging into and don't care to know.

Look up what can happen to ports when you attempt to draw more current than they will allow. Some don't handle it so well.

You also overestimate the concern which manufacturers put into tolerances in their products. I can't tell you how many times I've seen USB ports get fried on cheap boards. Playing with 100 Watts is playing with fire. Literally. Having that much amperage and current going through one possible plug can cause serious problems if things are not done exactly right.
 
there will never be a plug that shoots 100W into whatever legacy USB device is plugged in. your imagination is running amok!
 
there will never be a plug that shoots 100W into whatever legacy USB device is plugged in. your imagination is running amok!

The fact that you think wattage can be "shot" from a plug demonstrates your lack of understanding when it comes to the fundamentals of electricity.
 
no one is going to make a motherboard that risks frying.

no one cares about a thicker cable, especially when they don't know how or where it will be used.

this is not a big deal. imagine a laptop that plugs into a dock with one cable, and through that cable the laptop drives the mouse, keyboard, speakers, monitor, printer, network, and charges itself. it doesn't need to pull 100W or fry the motherboard. work with me here folks

Maybe my laptop is different but it already powers two keyboards, a mouse, a trackpad, two small sets of speakers (one external), one monitor, a scanner, wired and wireless network AND charges itself.

My monitor doesnt need powering since its not portable. Neither is my laser printer.
 
I can see them doing something like motherboard and power supply-> "usb power box" -> usb ports. I don't see any other way to feasibly run that much power any other way, and for what? are manufacturers going to start producing two sets of power connectors for every device sold?
 
Nice, now external HDd/SSD will be able to be powered by this USB standard. This is what eSATA should have been.
 
I can see them doing something like motherboard and power supply-> "usb power box" -> usb ports. I don't see any other way to feasibly run that much power any other way, and for what? are manufacturers going to start producing two sets of power connectors for every device sold?

The problem is most USB ports are on the motherboard backplane integrated into motherboard. You'd have to add a bunch of connectors on the motherboard. And these connectors would be running between the CPU and the rear exit fan unless you moved them away which would require even more motherboard real estate. And laptops have to put it on the board.

And this available power will be abused. I could see a desk heater grabbing 3 or 4 ports. Why include a power supply with your peripheral when you can offload it on the PC. So every port will need to be capable of the load and/or detect an excessive load and protect itself.

I can see someone sticking a high wattage device in a legacy laptop or desktop and burning out the existing USB system. Which means even if the USB port isn't capable of the draw, it will need extra protection.

I could see makers having no choice but to cut down on the number of USB ports as a consequence. You'll be lucky to have more than 2 USB ports forcing you to use a hub.
 
It's a good idea, only if the following restrictions are in place:
1) separate power supply to drive the voltage rails on the ports.
2) separate power distribution board to handle the ports.
3) Multiplexing of the signal to use as few wires as possible for data, so you can get more power leads per thickness than prior technologies allowed, or thicker leads. Multi-axial cable design may be the best option for this.

Keep in mind that a AC power cord in the US is 110v and 15a, that's 1,650watts. If we use a dual-supply setup, a 400-600w accessories power system isn't terribly unrealistic.

For laptops, it's most likely going to be flat-out unpowered. Let's face it, this shit's for desktops and to get rid of the cable clutter we deal with. One cable per monitor, one cable per speaker, inkjet printer, scanner, etc. Laptops don't deal with all that, unless a docking station is involved (which will likely be powered).

It's a good idea, but it's going to take some care to implement properly. No more using shitty 3rd tier fabs for your products, otherwise burning happens.
 
The problem is most USB ports are on the motherboard backplane integrated into motherboard. You'd have to add a bunch of connectors on the motherboard. And these connectors would be running between the CPU and the rear exit fan unless you moved them away which would require even more motherboard real estate. And laptops have to put it on the board.

And this available power will be abused. I could see a desk heater grabbing 3 or 4 ports. Why include a power supply with your peripheral when you can offload it on the PC. So every port will need to be capable of the load and/or detect an excessive load and protect itself.

I can see someone sticking a high wattage device in a legacy laptop or desktop and burning out the existing USB system. Which means even if the USB port isn't capable of the draw, it will need extra protection.

I could see makers having no choice but to cut down on the number of USB ports as a consequence. You'll be lucky to have more than 2 USB ports forcing you to use a hub.
A good idea to solve the problem of legacy ports would be to mandate that all high power peripherals that don't have their own power supply built in must have a voltage sensor. If voltage on a port is too low, such as a legacy port, then the device wouldn't power up and fry the port. It should also notify the user of this condition and that they need an external power source for the device.
 
I can see someone sticking a high wattage device in a legacy laptop or desktop and burning out the existing USB system. Which means even if the USB port isn't capable of the draw, it will need extra protection.

wrong again. you guys are out of your minds. were you worried about usb 3.0 frying your keyboard too?

usb does not blindly send power, and neither does usb pd. usb pd will negotiate power transfer only if it will work. if you guys had read about usb pd you would know all this and more.
 
Ya, I agree. Making a mother board that can support 100w's via the USB is going to be costly, not to mention generating a shit load more heat and a vast increase in the amount of power draw from the power supply.
 
It's a good idea, only if the following restrictions are in place:
1) separate power supply to drive the voltage rails on the ports.
2) separate power distribution board to handle the ports.
3) Multiplexing of the signal to use as few wires as possible for data, so you can get more power leads per thickness than prior technologies allowed, or thicker leads. Multi-axial cable design may be the best option for this.

Keep in mind that a AC power cord in the US is 110v and 15a, that's 1,650watts. If we use a dual-supply setup, a 400-600w accessories power system isn't terribly unrealistic.

For laptops, it's most likely going to be flat-out unpowered. Let's face it, this shit's for desktops and to get rid of the cable clutter we deal with. One cable per monitor, one cable per speaker, inkjet printer, scanner, etc. Laptops don't deal with all that, unless a docking station is involved (which will likely be powered).

It's a good idea, but it's going to take some care to implement properly. No more using shitty 3rd tier fabs for your products, otherwise burning happens.

Yes, that's what the power is from the wall, but that power then needs to be transformed to a DC voltage to actually run the device. So the options are either just run a bypass from the wall power to the USB port, which will require a significantly more substantial connection (it's very easy to short current USB designs, you wouldn't want to be shorting a connection with 110V going through it) and still require the devices to incorporate a transformer at some point, OR you make a substantially more powerful PSU and motherboard OR as you said a dedicated PSU and board, either of which is expensive and going to turn it into a niche product, not very good for a "standard", so then are devices going to have to be packaged with both a regular power adapter and also a USB power cable?

It just seems like a lot of work to reduce a cable or two from the equation, especially since it's not going to be practical for laptops and such anyway. I prefer my idea of just having PSUs with external power outputs like they used to, and then you can buy cables which combine a power connector and data connector in the one cable (we have some like that at work).
 
wrong again. you guys are out of your minds. were you worried about usb 3.0 frying your keyboard too?

usb does not blindly send power, and neither does usb pd. usb pd will negotiate power transfer only if it will work. if you guys had read about usb pd you would know all this and more.

Again. You do not understand how electricity works. Any live port is 'blindly sending power.' The wording you use, however, makes it clear you're out of your element, Donny.
 
If there wasn't money in it they wouldn't be pushing it and it wouldn't be accepted by some of those companies.

All the negatives we see might be just because we don't know the plan they have. USB really hasn't let us down overall thus far. So I am not to concerned with it. Might be some changes in the future but for the moment business as usual.
 
If there wasn't money in it they wouldn't be pushing it and it wouldn't be accepted by some of those companies.

All the negatives we see might be just because we don't know the plan they have. USB really hasn't let us down overall thus far. So I am not to concerned with it. Might be some changes in the future but for the moment business as usual.
Considering the companies that are part of this, the purpose to allow you to charge your smartphone a little quicker on your PC. In the short run, it saves you a cable. I guess in the long run, it herds you into connecting your phone to a Microsoft PC and they are hoping for some forced synergy that anchors you to a MS PC.

We're talking about the real consequences of coping with this much potential additional power requirement and not MS' business plan.
 
I don't understand all the hate against USB powered arc welders....I thought this was [H]? ;)
 
http://www.usb.org/developers/docs/usb_30_spec_081312.zip

USB_PD_V1_0-20120705-final.pdf in the zip contains the actual USB PD revision 1.0 specification. It's over 300 pages

Few interesting notes:

-Power is going to be negotiated, you can't simply connect a device that doesn't negotiate using a USB 2.0 cable and have it draw 100W.

-Any current over 1.5A or voltage greater than 5V will require a detected cable that supports those specs.

-Power direction can be switched without changing the cable. It'll be nice to power/charge a laptop using a battery pack, then charge that same battery pack using the laptop when it's plugged in to the wall.

Listing of the power profiles in the standard:
 Profile 0 reserved
 Profile 1 capable of supplying 5V @ 2.0A
 Profile 2 ports are capable of supplying 5V@ 2.0A, 12V @ 1.5A.
 Profile 3 ports are capable of supplying 5V @ 2.0A, 12V @ 3A.
 Profile 4 ports are capable of supplying 5V @ 2.0A, 12V and 20V at 3A respectively.
 Profile 5 ports are capable of supplying 5V @ 2.0A, 12V and 20V at 5A respectively.

Their listed rationale for the voltages selected:
5V is the USB default that must be supported to provide interoperability with existing Devices. However, higher voltages are needed to provide more power through USB connectors because of their current carrying capability.

12V was selected because it is very common in PCs and many other systems. The current limitation of the Micro USB Connector family is 3A for the enhanced PD version. The use of 12V with 3A provides sufficient power to charge tablets in the 20-30W range that use the Micro USB Connector.

20V was selected because larger systems, such as notebooks, often have 4 lithium cells in series and require charging voltages in the 18-20V range. A sampling of systems showed that chargers for these systems were typically 19.5-20V. Typical systems had chargers that supplied between 60W and 100W with the exception of a few very high-end performance systems that were well over 100W. The 5A current limit of the PD enhanced Standard-A and Standard-B connectors, with 20V allows up to 100W to be delivered to charge this class of Devices.
 
http://www.usb.org/developers/docs/usb_30_spec_081312.zip

USB_PD_V1_0-20120705-final.pdf in the zip contains the actual USB PD revision 1.0 specification. It's over 300 pages

Few interesting notes:

-Power is going to be negotiated, you can't simply connect a device that doesn't negotiate using a USB 2.0 cable and have it draw 100W.

-Any current over 1.5A or voltage greater than 5V will require a detected cable that supports those specs.

-Power direction can be switched without changing the cable. It'll be nice to power/charge a laptop using a battery pack, then charge that same battery pack using the laptop when it's plugged in to the wall.

Listing of the power profiles in the standard:


Their listed rationale for the voltages selected:

Now THAT is cool....
 
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