The specifications for USB 4 have been shared with the industry, and USB 4 ports are expected to start appearing in devices in the coming months.
"The USB4 architecture is based on the Thunderbolt protocol specification recently contributed by Intel Corporation to the USB Promoter Group," said the Forum.
USB 4 will increase transfer speeds compared to USB 3.0, and use the USB-C physical interface. Its key metrics are:
Two-lane operation using existing USB Type-C cables – up to 40Gbps operation.
Multiple data and display protocols that efficiently share the maximum aggregate bandwidth.
Backward compatibility with USB 3.2, USB 2.0, and Thunderbolt 3.
It must be noted that Thunderbolt 3 also offers up to 40Gbps transfer rates.
More information on the new standard will be shared at upcoming developer days in September and November.
