[HN Gopher] MSI reveals first USB4 expansion card, delivering 10...
___________________________________________________________________
MSI reveals first USB4 expansion card, delivering 100W through
USB-C
Author : CharlesW
Score : 93 points
Date : 2023-06-03 16:03 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.techspot.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.techspot.com)
| tiernano wrote:
| Wonder is this locked to MSI boards or could it work on any
| board?
| leipie wrote:
| These kinds of boards always require proprietary connectors
| directly to a supporting motherboard and the image shows some
| extra pins next the power connector. So I suspect this card
| isn't any different
| brigade wrote:
| There was some hope that someone would make a USB4 expansion
| card that _didn 't_ support PCIe tunneling, which wouldn't
| need those extra pins. If this card isn't it, then literally
| the only interesting thing about it is that it doesn't use an
| Intel controller. Which really is a negative.
| chx wrote:
| Alpine Ridge didn't work without the proprietary header at all.
|
| Titan Ridge worked to an extent -- but usually it couldn't add
| PCIe buses so the number of PCIe devices connected to your
| desktop TB3 card at boot defined the limited until the next
| reboot. You could remove and add different devices as long as
| they didn't need extra PCIe buses compared to what got reserved
| at boot.
|
| Can't see why Maple Ridge would work differently.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| The photos of this card show a header JU4_1 which has a
| different pinout than all MSI motherboards' Thunderbolt headers
| I know so far, so I think it won't even work in current MSI
| motherboards, just future ones.
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| Not an EE but 100w, that gives me The Fear. It reeks of trouble.
| Someone please set my mind to rest.
| jsheard wrote:
| In what sense? Putting that much power down a USB cable? USB-PD
| keeps the potentially cable-melting amperage capped at 3A or 5A
| (the latter only if the cable is explicitly marked as 5A
| capable) and moves more power by increasing the not-cable-
| melting voltage instead, so 100W is 5A at 20V. There's already
| laptops which charge at 140W over USB-C, it's fine.
| rootw0rm wrote:
| yep, exactly. there's voltage negotiation up to 48v going on.
| though in practice probably not quite that high yet
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| It's a lot of energy. And close to signalling wires.
| Controlled by computers (What you describe is done by a CPU,
| not some simple foolproof system, I guess?) which can go
| wrong. In a small plug that can get yanked out easily and
| damaged.
|
| That kind of thing. Am I being paranoid? It just smells like
| a house fire in the offing.
| hengheng wrote:
| No worse than an Apple power cable, and have those ever
| gone up in flames
| lxgr wrote:
| Given that Apple users have been charging their laptops
| this way [1] for more than five years, maybe you are :)
|
| [1] To be fair, it's more like 60-80 Watt for most models,
| but these days it can be up to 140 Watt, as far as I know.
| rootw0rm wrote:
| higher voltage makes it a lot more sane, imo. if anything
| increasing the voltage a long time ago would've probably
| helped us avoid the plague of all these shitty under spec
| USB cables. the cynic in me says they would've just shifted
| to even thinner gauge wires, but hey, a guy can dream,
| right?
| jsheard wrote:
| There's a lot of moving parts yes, but in practice it's
| proven to be pretty safe. Issues usually manifest as
| charging being too slow, rather than going too fast and
| causing a fire.
|
| Whenever you charge a device you're already trusting a
| complex computer-controlled system not to turn the lithium
| ion pack into an incendiary device, trusting a computer not
| to overload a copper cable is small stakes relatively
| speaking.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| The size of the pins they're running this over is what makes it
| scary.
|
| I've had high-end devices (Macbook Air I'm typing this on) give
| me unreliable connections for basic USB _1.1_ , and now they're
| planning to run _amps_ over similarly-sized pins?
|
| My experience with USB-C on laptops has been nothing but
| terrible.
| lxgr wrote:
| > now they're planning to run amps over similarly-sized pins?
|
| Now? Between 2016-ish and the re-introduction of MagSafe,
| MacBooks have been using USB-C charging exclusively!
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Do laptop power supplies scare you?
| usernew wrote:
| [dead]
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| I guess they don't but here remixing a power supply with
| other things and I don't like the complexity. See my other
| answer above if that helps explain my concern.
| lxgr wrote:
| GPUs are arguably much more complex and have been using
| much more than 100 W for a while now.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| It's already ubiquitous, most new laptops have these as primary
| power plug
| londons_explore wrote:
| Many Watts means some combination of Amps and Volts - power is
| Amps times Volts.
|
| The main risks from each are different though. Simplified
| explanation for the non-physicist:
|
| Lots of Amps make wires get hot, make connections melt, etc. In
| general, thin wires (eg headphone wires) are good for 1 or 2
| amps safely, and chunky wires (eg. AC cords) are good for 10 or
| 20 amps safely. The exact amount depends on how much cooling
| they get - which is why you should never put blankets over
| power cords. If you screw this up, the outcome is probably a
| fire, which maybe kills you.
|
| Lots of volts causes electrocution. Thats because your skin is
| pretty decent at blocking electricity, but when you have enough
| volts, some can sneak through your skin, freezing up your
| muscles, stopping your heart which probably kills you.
|
| So - amps and volts have totally different mechanisms of death.
| USB-C @ 100W is 20 volts at 4.5 amps. The voltage is well below
| dangerous levels, and the current is pretty safe in the cables
| specced, but I can totally imagine a few fires.
|
| It's worth noting that about 10x as many people die from amps
| (electrical fires) than volts (direct electrocution).
| redox99 wrote:
| > USB-C @ 100W is 20 volts at 4.5 amps
|
| Clearly one of those numbers is wrong
| londons_explore wrote:
| By the way... The USB-C standard goes up to 240 Watts.
|
| Thats 48 volts (fairly safe IMO) at 5 amps (only marginally
| safe IMO, on that connector design).
|
| There are laws in many countries capping voltages, but not on
| currents - which is why the standard is pushing the safety
| envelope there!
|
| The standard has no way to detect damaged cables (ie. baby
| chewing through the cable), nor connections getting hot (ie.
| an old dirty connection heating up and catching fire). But I
| suspect a future revision will allow both more volts and more
| amps, and will add those safety features - I'm hoping on the
| next version being 500 volts and 8 amps, allowing it to
| replace all household outlets.
| cduzz wrote:
| Hopefully they come with auto-update firmware where if I
| plug a gen 15 cable into a gen 14 device and a gen 12 local
| power delivery unit the cpu in the cable will update the
| key in the PDU and get key material from the device to
| ensure that everyone's up-to-date on their licenses.
| endgame wrote:
| That would enable a new generation of USB worms.
| cduzz wrote:
| "It would unleash an entire new generation of recurring
| revenue generation opportunities as innovators could
| develop exciting new technologies and industry leadership
| while protecting intellectual property rights holders"
|
| "blah blah blah worm security blah blah"
|
| -- same sentence different language.
|
| (and -- I'm entirely trying to be tongue-in-cheek -- the
| notion of little dynamically updated microcontrollers
| everywhere in my house, getting bricked or asking me for
| a micropayment to turn a light on is a pkd story come to
| life)
| andix wrote:
| USB power delivery works very reliable. Much better than those
| 10W USB-A chargers/devices operating outside the USB spec and
| sometimes shutting down your old Laptop when connecting it,
| because of too high power consumption.
| George83728 wrote:
| >USB4 uses USB-C
|
| That's a relief I guess, I was afraid we were getting a new
| connector _again._ How do normal people keep all this USB crap
| straight? I consider myself something of a nerd but I find all of
| this cable /port diversity utterly bewildering.
| recursive wrote:
| > How do normal people keep all this USB crap straight?
|
| We just have a drawer full of various USB things. If something
| doesn't fit/work, just try another one. If none work, or the
| drawer is running low, buy some more. You might have to buy
| multiple times if the new ones don't work.
|
| At least, this is what works for me.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| USB is 27 years old and 99% of USB devices I've seen used one
| of just three different ports, two of which are still in wide
| use. I'd say the fact I can plug a 15 years old harddrive into
| a brand new PC and it'll just work without any adapter is
| amazing. Bewildering diversity? Where?
| George83728 wrote:
| Within about 5 meters of me I have devices with sockets or
| cables for USB 2 Type A and Type B, USB 2 Mini (not sure if
| Type A, B, or AB...), USB 2 Micro (Type AB?), USB 3 Type A,
| USB 3 Micro (Type B? not sure...) and finally USB 3 Type C.
|
| That's seven at least by my count. I probably have some USB
| 1.1 Type A peripherals in my closet but those might be USB 2,
| they look the same so I'm not sure. The only devices I
| counted were: phone, kindle, laptop, PC, mouse/keyboard,
| printer, portable HDD, and a GPS nav unit. Maybe I'm weird
| for still using the last one, but otherwise I don't think any
| of this is particularly unusual.
| singpolyma3 wrote:
| All the type A are compatible though? I think most people
| consider that one.
|
| There have been several common B (B, miniB, microB, appleB)
| but it was mostly all microB for quite a few years before C
| happened.
| camtarn wrote:
| USB 3 type A has extra pins. It is backwards compatible
| with pre-3, but you don't get the USB 3 features.
| refulgentis wrote:
| USB4's been out for quite some time, USB3 is usb you're used to
| / we cut our teeth on if you're over 25.
|
| There's a vocal subset that argues *USB4 itself is confusing*,
| but 95% of the time they're referring to either:
|
| A) power (the crappy $5 Amazon cable from 3 years ago will not
| carry 100W for your M2 Pro Apple Silicon Apple MacBook Pro
|
| B) crappy 3rd party cables you can't trust because you can't
| trust crappy 3rd party cables, ever
| jeroenhd wrote:
| For what it's worth, I've tried to find a Thunderbolt/USB4
| C-to-C cable that can also carry 100W. The only cables I've
| found (that weren't obviously lying in the ad) were Apple's
| cables.
|
| Even other laptop manufacturers have cables for charging and
| cables for high speed data transfer. Samsung's official
| cables seem to do either USB3 or high-speed charging, but not
| both at the same time. Lenovo has a Thunderbolt 4 cable (with
| no details on the power capabilities) or a USB 3.2 2x2 cable
| that can carry up to 100W. Dell Europe doesn't seem to be
| selling C-to-C cables. HP seems to sell a competent cable for
| one of their docks, but that's out of stock. Asus' cable is
| USB2 only. Acer doesn't seem to sell any cables as far as I
| can tell, except for a USB 3.1 cable for Chromebooks.
|
| If you want a fully-featured USB4 cable, your only options
| are either buying a cable from Apple or going for third
| parties and with the prevalent scams on online web stores and
| the risk of burning your house down if the cable turns out
| not to be up to spec, getting good cables can be a real
| challenge.
|
| Apple sells their cables for a ridiculous price (EUR150) but
| I wouldn't expect the average consumer to know where to
| reliably spend their EUR30-EUR50 for a charge cable. Device
| manufacturers really need to step up and sell some kind of
| certified cable that doesn't cut any corners.
| lxgr wrote:
| > [...] either USB3 or high-speed charging, but not both at
| the same time [...]
|
| That seems implausible/unlikely to be the cable's fault:
| Since different wire pairs are used for power supply and
| data, why would the two be mutually exclusive?
|
| > I wouldn't expect the average consumer to know where to
| reliably spend their EUR30-EUR50 for a charge cable
|
| The situation was tricky for a while, but these days, even
| on Amazon.com's search results (which are frequently
| swamped with spam/uncertified products), searching for
| "Thunderbolt 4 cable" yields products by trustworthy-
| looking vendors supporting 100W charging in the first 5
| results.
| justincormack wrote:
| Caldigit sells them
| https://www.caldigit.com/thunderbolt-4-usb-4-cable/
| including 2m active ones.
| derefr wrote:
| I think you've confused "first USB4 expansion card" with "first
| device that has a USB4 socket." Laptops have had USB4 for a
| couple of years now.
| londons_explore wrote:
| When you plug a monitor into this, where does the framebuffer
| live?
|
| Is it in GPU RAM of another GPU in your system, with pixel data
| being DMA'ed over the PCIE bus? Does that mean my screen goes
| blank if I ever get contention on the bus?
|
| Could I put loads of these cards into a machine and run 20
| independent displays, all with one GPU?
| dist-epoch wrote:
| > Does that mean my screen goes blank if I ever get contention
| on the bus?
|
| The monitor has a framebuffer of it's own.
|
| Otherwise how could it display the OSD (On Screen Display)?
| userbinator wrote:
| It's not really a framebuffer, but a tiny bit of RAM that
| just gets scanned out on the applicable parts of lines when
| the OSD is active --- certainly not the whole screen.
| jsheard wrote:
| The two DisplayPorts on the card are inputs, you run a loopback
| cable (or two) from the GPU to the USB4 card and it muxes the
| video into one (or both) of the USB4 outputs.
|
| Loopback cables are a bit clunky, but it does mean there's no
| pressure on the PCI-E bus from moving the pixels from the GPU
| to the USB4 card.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Thats kinda lame... I was hoping there was software support
| for the GPU to share the framebuffer RAM with the USB4
| controller, and there being some way for the OS to prioritize
| some fixed bandwidth to make sure it doesn't get starved.
|
| Apple kinda has this in their M1/M2 SoC's where the GPU is
| entirely separate from the stream-data-from-ram-to-the-
| display logic.
| lxgr wrote:
| Sounds like something that would be a pain to get broad
| OS/driver support for - and all just for the sake of
| avoiding a small external loopback cable?
| mikepurvis wrote:
| I bet if they put the displayport inputs on the inside with
| an optional passthru bracket in the box to get them out of
| the case as needed, we'd start to see GPUs offered with
| internal displayport outputs too.
|
| Basically the CD-ROM analog audio cable all over again.
| distances wrote:
| What's the use case for this kind of setup?
| sampa wrote:
| connecting usb-c-only external monitor / vr goggles
|
| so you need to have video signal and power on one usb-c
| output.
| amelius wrote:
| The only thing I want from USB4 is ECC.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| ASUS has the same thing (since last year at least), so dunno why
| the propaganda https://www.asus.com/motherboards-
| components/motherboards/ac...
| jeffbee wrote:
| Just FYI for anyone tempted to buy this card: it does not work.
| There are multiple revisions and none of them work right. It
| stands a 50/50 chance of becoming terminally confused after a
| peer disconnect, will thereafter not work and hang the BIOS on
| reboot, only fixable by _unplugging_ the machine. Absolute
| garbage. If you want TB4 I strongly recommend a machine with
| TB4 ports integrated, preferably from a major brand like Intel
| or Apple.
| rootw0rm wrote:
| it's too bad AMD doesn't have first class TB4 support yet, at
| least not on the consumer hardware i've been looking at
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| That's literally the same experience I have with the MSI TB3
| card. You were talking about the ASUS one, I guess?
|
| The level of BIOS bugginess on recent motherboards is
| reaching astronomic levels. The MSI motherboard I was trying
| that on will literally _duplicate_ the entire ACPI DSDT
| whenever you enable TBT (Linux shows a hundred warnings when
| booting up, which MSI claims is fine)...
| jeffbee wrote:
| Yes. I never tried the MSI one. The add-in cards are an
| opportunity for some chronic underperformer from a 3rd-tier
| BIOS developer team to put bad code between you and an
| Intel thunderbolt chip. Just say no.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| > Just FYI for anyone tempted to buy this card: it does not
| work. There are multiple revisions and none of them work
| right.
|
| Ah, the ASMedia experience! Glad AMD picked such an
| experienced and well-regarded company to do their chipsets /s
|
| edit: Okay, the linked part actually uses an Intel chip,
| though the point still stands. ASMedia has so many other
| chips and bridges (including the mentioned AMD chipsets) and
| they're all pretty notorious for weird "huh that was supposed
| to work" kind of problems. Problems that generally don't
| happen on Intel platforms.
| brigade wrote:
| The fractal brokenness of the Thunderbolt ecosystem in
| Windows is... something. I was hoping that USB4 would at
| least make it a little nicer by confining failure modes to
| PCIe not working while the USB tree worked as normal since
| the USB tree was native, but my Asus motherboard with built-
| in USB4 not infrequently manages to get itself into a state
| where DisplayPort and downstream PCIe devices work while USB
| devices plugged into a USB4 hub _don 't_.
|
| (also an older Asus with its TB3 expansion card only worked
| at all in Windows if you disabled the "enable Windows
| support" option in the BIOS, which is an interesting choice)
| dist-epoch wrote:
| How can 100W be delivered through those tiny USB-C connector
| landings, especially since only a few of them are used for power?
| jeffbee wrote:
| The cable must report itself as being capable of 5A, which
| requires it to use 20-gauge wire for the VBUS.
|
| ETA: I guess your question was specifically about the connector
| interface, which is less of a problem because there are 4 power
| and 4 ground pins. 1.25A per pin is no issue.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| The bigger issue with this is not the steady state but what
| happens when the cable is janked out carrying that current.
| Spark erosion of the contacts etc., the spec goes into quite
| some detail there.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Or just makes a poor connection to begin with due to out-
| of-spec cables or connector wear/damage, which is likely
| considering the much tighter tolerance than old-school,
| reliable, battle-tested connectors such as barrel jacks.
| dist-epoch wrote:
| 20 gauge wire is 0.9 mm diameter.
|
| A USB-C contact is much smaller (seems to be around 0.5 mm).
|
| This is the part I don't understand. If you require a 0.9 mm
| diameter wire, how can you have it connect to a 0.5 mm
| landing strip?
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| The electricity is going through the plug for only a few
| millimeters, and is going through the rest of the cable for
| 500-2000 millimeters. It's okay for the plug to have more
| ohms per meter. It's going to have a very tiny voltage drop
| and emit a very tiny amount of heat.
| [deleted]
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Resistance is the function of conductivity of the material,
| cross section area of the conductor, and length. In the
| case of wires the length is long, so they need more cross
| sectional area to keep the resistance down, in the contacts
| the length is very short, so they need less cross sectional
| area to achieve the same Resistance. Often, they make the
| contacts from an even more conductive material than copper
| like gold or silver, so that helps even more.
| dheera wrote:
| It negotiates and then switches to 20V to deliver 100W, so it
| only needs to run 5A through the cables.
|
| Wire gauge requirements are related to current, not power;
| that's why high-speed trains usually operate at 25000V or
| 50000V to allow their megawatts of power to be delivered
| through a ~1cm diameter overhead line.
|
| That said, I still hate USB-C as a power standard. I would have
| much preferred 2 connectors just supplying 20VDC, no questions
| asked, with a standard connector, just like 120VAC power works.
| Pick another connector for the USA low-voltage standard, none
| of this negotiation fuss, none of this complicated power
| circuitry, and much harder to get cables wrong. With the
| complexity of USB-C there are just way too many substandard
| cables flooding the market, and average Joes don't understand
| the difference between a 100W-capable cable and a 60W-capable
| cable and one that is charging-only, one that is USB 3.0, one
| that is USB 3.2, one that is USB 3.2 + 100W charging and all of
| that. People just buy "5-star" rated cables online that often
| don't meet the standard and it's a shitshow.
| userbinator wrote:
| There's also the added failure mode of a PSU deciding it
| needs to supply 20V to a device that can only withstand 5V.
| userbinator wrote:
| Care to add any counterarguments?
| booberbinator wrote:
| Sure. Since you asked so nicely, here's a datasheet that
| illustrates a device which integrates overvoltage
| protection. Plug a malfunctioning 20V USB-C power supply
| into your phone, and the phone will internally disconnect
| the USB-C connection to protect itself.
|
| https://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/tps65987d.pdf
|
| I incinerated 250 seconds of my time, or about a
| billionth of my life for this answer for you - for free!
| Hope the little dopamine hit was enough for you today. I
| won't be back.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| A PSU "deciding" to do that is an ultra rare case, and
| probably dwarfed by PSUs that simply break internally and
| deliver the wrong voltage, which can happen to any PSU.
|
| The closest thing I've heard of was a cable that
| pretended it was a device, making it so that unplug
| events didn't register properly.
| lxgr wrote:
| That would force all power adapters to support a fixed
| maximum current, which in many cases would mean either wasted
| materials (consider e.g. shipping a 100W adapter with a
| smartphone) or unsafe conditions (with a device attempting to
| pull 5A from an adapter supporting only much less than that).
|
| I'm really happy with being able to plug my laptop into my
| tiny 5V, 2A power adapter and slowly charging it, yet being
| able to fast-charge it at home at 100W using the same cable
| on a larger power adapter.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| (Relatively) high voltage, so lowish current. I think 20 volts
| at 5 amps or so.
| xg15 wrote:
| Why the DisplayPort outputs? I could understand if the card took
| an existing video signal and spliced it into the USB-C ports via
| alt-mode, but just outputting it in a separate socket doesn't
| seem very useful.
|
| Also, where is the video signal coming from? I assume the card
| doesn't have a GPU, but I don't see any internal ports either.
|
| Or did the article get it wrong and the DP sockets are really
| _inputs_ that are then spliced into the USB-C outputs?
| danhon wrote:
| The photograpgh of the card in the article shows the
| DisplayPort sockets labeled as _in_ fwiw.
| xg15 wrote:
| Ah, I see it now. That makes more sense.
| rektide wrote:
| USB4 mandates every port have DisplayPort capability. I think
| it's quite likely indeed DisplayPort input we see here.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| I'm amazed how the report could get it utterly wrong
| considering it is literally spelled out in the only photo of
| the device they have. It has also been exactly the same in the
| previous MSI TB3 add-in card which has exactly the same port
| layout.
|
| Ah, and the source article
| https://www.techpowerup.com/309532/msi-first-motherboard-mak...
| got it right.
| [deleted]
| arghwhat wrote:
| Thunderbolt add-in cards have generally had DisplayPort
| _inputs_ on the back to feed into the thunderbolt ports. It is
| a hack, but a side-effect of the adapter not having a GPU, and
| this becomes the most convenient solution (especially as GPUs
| puts their outputs in a similar location).
| dylan604 wrote:
| I always loved having a cable coming out of the GPU and
| connecting to another card. There have been many versions of
| this throughout my use of various expansion cards. This is
| excluding the SLI type of internal connections.
| fb03 wrote:
| This made me remember of my first 3d accelerator card, the
| Diamond Monster 3D. It was exactly like that, a 3D-only
| card, that took over the 2D signal of your default video
| card when you activated it by daisy chaining the 2D
| videocard to the 3D via a short vga cable between both :-)
| Good times when 640x480x16bpp was enough to make me wow at
| something like GLQuake
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