All About USB Type-C

Type-C is the latest development of the USB connector and it was introduced in 2014 officially. Nowadays on the devices this USB just appears and you can buy and use it. It was firstly supported by MacBook of Apple in 2015, but later it was supported by all kinds of smartphones, Windows PCs, docking stations, monitors, storage peripherals and many more. The USB Type-C is reversible as you can do in Lightning connecter of Apple, which means it can be plugged in any orientation.

apple-usb-type-c-macbook-700x337USB version 3.1 is associated with USB Type-C, even though it is officially different from USB Type-C. Transfer rates of 10 Gb/sec is supported by this and the 1996-era USB 1.0 spec is improved by 1,000x and at 12Mb/sec it was topped out.

Several alternative modes are supported by USB Type-C such as, it has the ability to carry power up to 100W and at 60Hz refresh rate it can drive up to two 4K displays. The great advantage of this is, along with the data transfer it allows a single connector to deliver power, video and data over a single line.

However there is a big difference between theory and practice. The main problem which arises is; all the USB Type-C connecters will not support all different capabilities. For an average person, it is impossible to figure out what all the things can be supported by USB Type-C equipped device.

Intel has developed a new technology called Thunderbolt 3.0. It uses the same connectors of USB Type-C and has different interface standards when compared to USB 3.1.

There are two previous versions of Thunderbolt (version 1 and 2), which uses the same connectors. But next to the connector, Thunderbolt 3.0 is marked by a lightning bolt that makes you to identify anyone easily.

The advantage of the Thunderbolt 3.0 is, it is a superset of USB 3.1, because a full USB 3.1 signals at 10 Gb/sec can be carried out and also it can carry 100W of power, PCIe 3.0, HDMI 2.0, Thunderbolt data connections at up to 40 Gb/sec, DisplayPort 1.2 video signals, all over a single connection of USB Type-C.

The only drawback in Thunderbolt 3 is you need a Thunderbolt controller chip; in order to support any device and it will cost more. Also, it requires active electronics inside the cables so you need to purchase full-bandwidth Thunderbolt 3 cables which are again expensive.