USB-C head-to-head comparison

https://www.lumafield.com/article/usb-c-cable-charger-head-to-head-comparison-apple-thunderbolt-amazon-basics

by eucalyptuseye • 3 years ago

389 218 3 years ago

gregmac• 3 years ago

This manufacturer claims the cable transmits data at up to 10 Gbps – a speed that corresponds to USB 3.1 Gen 2 – but it only has enough pins and wires to support USB 2.0 at up to 480 Mbps. In any case, this cable accumulated 29 one-star reviews on Amazon and was discontinued the day after we bought it.

Pretty much sums up the experience of buying cables in the past couple years.

londons_explore3• 3 years ago

I really want my computer to have a built in cable tester. Just plug both ends of the same cable into two different ports of a computer, and it has a little popup saying "This cable can support charging at this rate and data at that rate, and is fully functional". Or "This cable has 1 bad pin, and that may affect video/audio/charging/whatever functionality"

Ideally, the computer would test every pin in the cable, and also test the resistance/voltage drop of the cable to detect thinner-than-spec conductors.

I'm pretty sure USB-C hardware in a typical laptop can already do most of this, if only the firmware added support for such testing.

joombaga• 3 years ago

My old motherboard had 2 NICs, and was able to test Ethernet cables this way.

izacus5• 3 years ago

It's really strange that even getting a separate testing device is really hard. There are some that test pins and some that can read the emarker, but none affordable that can do both.

aalimov_4• 3 years ago

I really want my computer to have a built in cable tester. Just plug both ends of the same cable into two different ports of a computer … If you have a Mac you might be able to try the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test app. It would require you to also have a drive that* can handle the read/write speeds of the cable you are testing… but you’ll only get accurate numbers if your drive can handle read/write that’s above what the cable can handle. Hopefully someone else knows of a better way.

colanderman• 3 years ago

Mikrotik routers have something like this for Ethernet cables. They can detect how far down a cable break is and on what twisted pair. (They don't test cable bandwidth though.)

agapon• 3 years ago

Something like this? https://hackaday.com/2023/08/11/usb-c-cable-tester-is-compac... https://www.tindie.com/products/petl/usb-c-cable-tester-c2c-...

galangalalgol2• 3 years ago

It seems like a niche for someone to step in and provide a service for QC.

killjoywashere• 3 years ago

Benson Leung was doing this for a while. It does seem like something Consumer Reports might take on, but they'd have to sub to Benson or someone like him: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benson_Leung

Outside the consumer space, I suspect any serious business relying on USB is going to have an EE or 10 who are happy to inform the buying decisions.

floatrock• 3 years ago

accumulated 29 one-star reviews on Amazon and was discontinued the day after we bought it.

They forgot to say how it re-appeared the next day under some other manufacturer name that's a random assortment of words and letters slightly different than "NiceTQ"

kridsdale1• 3 years ago

I swear, there must be software to make pseudo English phoneme strings for Chinese resellers to register as “companies” on amazon. 95% of them are ridiculous and I can’t believe a human made them.

bee_rider• 3 years ago

It is annoying that these sellers do this, but it is a pretty obvious thing to do, it is economically incentivized, and so it is totally unsurprising.

The weird thing, IMO, is that Amazon doesn’t see this as a big problem that they need to solve.

I mean if I was to give somebody advice as to which cables they should buy on Amazon, it would have to be: use a brand you know and make sure you buy it directly from their account, and if there’s no such brand, don’t buy a cable from Amazon… but then I guess nobody asks.

bloopernova2• 3 years ago

I wish these were more widely available:

https://caberqu.com/home/20-42-c2c-caberqu-746052578813.html...

I have one from the kickstarter, and every new USB-C cable gets tested and labeled. Most are USB 2.0. A few will have the power delivery pins. It's such a crapshoot on any shopping site.

It should be mandatory that these cables are correctly spec'd and labeled.

izacus5• 3 years ago

Unfortunately it doesn't check for the last piece of the puzzle - the USB-C cable e-marker which has to be present to signal advanced capabilities for charging and thunderbolt. So it's not sufficient to test for high performance cables :/

masto• 3 years ago

For that, I use an FNB58 (which I got from AliExpress - https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804478930060.html).

kalleboo3• 3 years ago

Yeah for that you need one of the POWER-Z (or I'm sure there are other brands now) USB-C cable testers on AliExpress. Will even tell you the brand of the chipset in the cable https://kalleboo.com/microblog/posts/109391700632886806.html

mardifoufs5• 3 years ago

There are tons of them on AliExpress! Some can even test resistance, emarkers, etc.

larschdk• 3 years ago

Tons of 4-pin cable testers, no 24-pin testers that I can find.

mensetmanusman3• 3 years ago

Just purchase apple’s $100 cables for everything and you will never wonder! /s

criddell3• 3 years ago

It should be mandatory that these cables are correctly spec’s and labeled

Why doesn’t the USB standards group mandate labeling of some type? Probably not words, but symbols would be good enough.

colejohnson66• 3 years ago

Because the USB Consortium is partially made up of the same companies that make garbage cables.

duped2• 3 years ago

Why stop a labeling? You could design the connectors to only terminate at another connector that supports the same features, preventing anyone from confusing one cable for another.

And the reason we don't do that is because it would expose the lie that there can be a universal data and power connector for all devices, and rather than live in a world where everything can connect perfectly fine with the right cables, we have chosen to live in one where the market can be flooded with garbage cables that don't work for your devices. And rather than blame the device manufacturer for choosing a shoddy cable, or the government for forcing them to, we can happily blame the cable manufacturer instead.

If you just slap a label on it, it's not going to fix the problem. No one is going to read them, and people are going to lie.

MBCook4• 3 years ago

Isn’t that how we got USB 3 Gen 2 PD 130w Muffin-Spec?

Their names are terrible.

Besides. If companies are going to make non-conforming cables, they can put fake labels on them too. No normal person is going to check for the right labels.

They need a “USB C 4 cable”. They type that into Amazon and buy the thing with a low price and 4 stars.

The exact markings on the cable don’t make a difference.

nrp• 3 years ago

You’re getting a lot of “hot take” and sarcastic responses, but the actual answer is that they do. To use any of the USB-IF logos (including the official ones that clarify power and signal compatibility) a product has to go through the certification process: https://www.usb.org/logo-license

USB-IF also maintains a list of products that are certified: https://www.usb.org/products

The question then is, “Why is this still confusing?”. The answer is probably that the popular retail and e-commerce channels are flooded with products that aren’t certified, and consumers don’t realize that a certification process even exists.

sleepybrett• 3 years ago

There used to be a thing where cables that supported usb-3 had blue interiors to their connectors. But then some jackasses started shipping crap cables with blue connectors at inflated prices...

I don't think the usb standards body can realisticly police the labeling in any real way.

Also apple's usb-c cables w/ thunderbolt has the little thunderbolt icon on it, so at least they are labeling it (https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MN713AM/A/thunderbolt-4-u...)

moonfern• 3 years ago

"USB-IF strongly discourages its members and the industry at-large from using specification names/terminology in consumer-facing branding, packaging, advertisements, and other marketing materials."

They recommend the following naming: XYZ's USB 40Gbps 60W USB Type-C® Cable or USB 40Gbps 60W USB Type-C® Cable

USB 40Gbps... correspond to the USB4 Gen 3×2 mode Hi-Speed USB is USB 2.0 (High-Speed).

A tip usb cable and a number in the logo = not USB2. A usb c cable and black/white in the logo = not USB2

Sometimes the marketing name and a logo specify a certain mode like USB 10Gbps the marketing name is only used for USB 3.2 Gen 2×1 mode, the black/white logo with 10 Gbps always correspond to USB 3.2 Gen 2×1 mode.

If you see USB in blue and 10 Gbps in red than it's either USB 3.2 Gen 2x1 or USB4 Gen 2×1 ( those modes have different encodings )

fireflash38• 3 years ago

What a clusterfuck of branding. The inability to easily differentiate between capabilities makes everything the same as the lowest common denominator - the shittiest USB-C cable from wish.

alvarop• 3 years ago

Shameless plug: I made a version of this you can order yourself from JLCPCB (with some bonus connectors.)

https://alvarop.com/2023/07/usb-cable-tester

Github project: https://github.com/alvarop/usb_c_cable_tester

asicsarecool• 3 years ago

That is freaking awesome.

Feels like every nerd should have one.

Would be cool to have a version where it measures the resistance of the power wires too

eqvinox• 3 years ago

I think your tester would actually break that active Apple cable (because an active cable essentially behaves as a "device" since it has active circuitry on the high-speed lines.)

joshstrange2• 3 years ago

Maybe I'm just stupid but I want one of these that just prints out (or lights up next to text) something like:

and

    480mbps
    5gbps
    10gbps
    20gbps
    40gbps

and maybe

    USB2
    USB3.0
    USB3.1
    USB3.2 gen 1
    USB3.2 gen 2
    Thunderbolt 3
    Thunderbolt 4

Or something like that. At least once I month I go searching for USB cable testers for this exact purpose and within 10min my eyes are crossed and I just close all the tabs giving up.

bloopernova2• 3 years ago

I think I recall the designer of the tester I got was unable to reliably ascertain the different types of cable, so pin testing was the next best thing. I agree, it would be great to have a smarter cable tester.

XIVMagnus• 3 years ago

Insane difference between thunderbolt vs competitors.

Clearly we are paying for quality here, the question is LTV

how quickly does the thunderbolt break

CharlesW• 3 years ago

Anecdotally, I haven't yet had a Thunderbolt cable break. The caveat is that I haven't used TB cables in high-abuse scenarios (field work, etc.).

izacus5• 3 years ago

Based on my experience - much more quickly than the "normal" USB-C cables. Those cables are also short and rather thick in most cases (and cost like 50$+).

But that's also because TB has significantly lesser margins for errors than USB 3.1/3.2.

troupo• 3 years ago

Insane difference between thunderbolt vs competitors.
Clearly we are paying for quality here

It's not just quality. It's because Intel did the sensible thing and made a bunch of things that are optional in USB-C mandatory in Thunderbolt certification. So you always know what you're getting.

keep_reading3• 3 years ago

That's why I prefer to pay the premium for Thunderbolt cables. You know exactly what you're getting.

Dylan168075• 3 years ago

The problem is that cables are not clearly marked by speed. Being able to get a $5 slow cable is a good thing.

keep_reading3• 3 years ago

Why would it break if the same type of wiring is used? Unless you mean the active chipset breaking somehow, rendering that cable useless?

stinos• 3 years ago

Insane difference between thunderbolt vs competitors.

Well, yes, because the competitors are functionally a completely different cable. One of them is just for charging, that is obviously going to be very different. So kinda hard to tell what you are really paying for. As another comment says: would be rather interesting to see differences in cables which claim to do the same.

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK• 3 years ago

My $10 USB-C cable carries 4k/60hz video + audio just fine, why should I overpay?

crote8• 3 years ago

Insane difference between thunderbolt vs competitors. Clearly we are paying for quality here

Not really. It's an apples-to-oranges comparison. The Apple cable is a relatively long 40Gbps cable, with active redriver/retimer due to its length. The competitors are bargain-bin 0.48Gbps cables, intended primarily for charging.

In fact, the NiceTQ cable violates the spec so badly it won't even work in most scenarios. The ATYFUER one is part of an A-to-C cable and is pretty much a textbook example of what such a connector should look like. The AmazonBasics one is also a decent example of a pretty standard low-speed C-C cable.

ilyt7• 3 years ago

We didn't had any actual competition to Apple cables in comparison tho. It's literally apple(s)-to-oranges comparison

culopatin• 3 years ago

I wish they had compared to off brand thunderbolt cables to see if Apple’s is worth the premium

aalimov_4• 3 years ago

You could get a 1m Belkin Thunderbolt 4 cable for about $40. Afaik Intel controls/certifies Thunderbolt cables and Apple just has free use of name or something.

bigstrat2003• 3 years ago

So should any Thunderbolt branded cable have similar performance and build quality to the Apple cable, then? Cause I wanted to know the same thing - I came away honestly impressed and thinking maybe I should buy an Apple cable even though I don't own an iPhone. But the real question is whether other vendors have the same quality at a lower price point, because I don't feel the desire to pay the Apple price if they aren't better than the competition.

m463• 3 years ago

I think steve jobs really liked the idea of a one-cable connection and worked with intel to create it.

keep_reading3• 3 years ago

The thunderbolt licensing is pretty strict, so I'm not sure anyone is selling knock off thunderbolt cables that underperform the rated specs.

yonatan8070• 3 years ago

Oh you'll be surprised at the kind of cheaping out products on AliExpress can achieve

cmiller1• 3 years ago

In my experience having bought cheap, middle of the road, and high end USB-C cables and adaptors, Apple's have been the only ones that have lasted me more than a year.

artursapek• 3 years ago

Caldigit's Thunderbolt cable which comes with their dock has lasted much longer than that.

oaiey2• 3 years ago

Yeah, this article is Apple favoring FUD. There are tons of high quality USB-C cables. You just need to pick the right one.

simondotau2• 3 years ago

It's true that there are many high quality USB-C cables, but they are utterly swamped by an order of magnitude more low quality USB-C cables. A particularly tech savvy person might be able to wade through the muck, but most normal people won't even know to.

theshrike793• 3 years ago

Can you give me even 100 grams of brand names for the high quality ones from the tons you know?

laurensr• 3 years ago

I can't help but dislike chips in cables

agloe_dreams• 3 years ago

Thunderbolt is an Active spec, chips are required.

sheepshear• 3 years ago

You would probably dislike troubleshooting your connections more. In-cable redrivers are the electrical analogue of an API. They decouple the two devices and the cable from each other's bullshit.

brightball• 3 years ago

This stuff is what worries me about the whole EU standards body issue. I'd rather Apple be able to innovate and create a better connector than locking them into this mismatched and inconsistent reality.

kalleboo3• 3 years ago

Apple created a better connector it's called USB-C, they adopted it among all their other devices aside from the iPhone (Mac and iPad) in fact they were the pioneers in adopting it on computers.

The worst USB-C to C cable is still no worse than the best Lightning cable

aalimov_4• 3 years ago

Personally I wish that usbc cables were more like lightning cables in terms of form factor (both sides being lightning would have been neat). They fit snugly and it is easier to clean the ports that receive them imo... Anyway thats all in some other timeline >:V

avianlyric4• 3 years ago

Better is relative. The EU goals is standardisation to reduce e-waste. Unless Apple are going to innovate a way make every phone manufacturer adopt their fancy new connector, it’s never going to “better” than USB-C. If you’re evaluating connectors from the perspective of reducing e-waste.

scarface_742• 3 years ago

“We are going to put all of our effort on standardizing cables so when Android users have to throw away their phones every year because they don’t get updates at least they won’t have to throw away the cable”

somedude895• 3 years ago

As shown in TFA, Apple can still design beautiful technology even with the constraints of a standard. You hate inconsistency, you can buy Apple. But now you have the choice to also charge it at your Android-using friends house.

xp842• 3 years ago

Apple are the ones who decided to wait at least 7 years to adopt USB-C after it was available. If they could have “innovated” - maybe USB 3.0 support could have been added to Lightning? But they showed zero interest in innovating over all that time, so I think that’s fantasy.

The EU wouldn’t have forced their hand if they were innovative instead of being greedy, lazy, and rent-seeking.

upon_drumhead• 3 years ago

I wish they imaged other premium third party cables like cablematters or anker.

CivBase2• 3 years ago

Anker, Cable Matters, Spigen, Satechi, Belkin, CalDigit, StarTech.com, OWC, Wavlink, UGreen, or literally any brand anyone has ever heard of would be nice.

MBCook4• 3 years ago

Not a fan of GALKZ or FRELP?

Gotta love those random 5 letter “brands” amazon is covered in these days.

Krasnol4• 3 years ago

Their choice is remarkably ridiculous.

It looks like they start at a 10 and then continue with 4, 3, 2.

I wonder who paid for this...how is this even getting so many upvotes? It's pretty much useless.

SV_BubbleTime2• 3 years ago

I try to find the humor that our global manufacturing is so absolutely broken and encouraged by our politicians that Chinese crapware makers don't need to do anything but slam the keyboard for their "company name"... And the world lines up to buy it.

ErneX5• 3 years ago

It’s not useless and they said on X they will buy more cables and scan those too.

wronglebowski• 3 years ago

My guess is they don't want to bite the hand that feeds them. Seems like the products they sell would be very useful to said companies. Wouldn't want to air any of their dirty laundry, it's PR not a reporting/review perspective.

s3p2• 3 years ago

The author of the article said on Twitter that their team plans on testing more cables in the future-- this was just a first run of it.

arecurrence• 3 years ago

Very cool site. Their 3d models are fascinating to look at. I've often wondered what all goes into the construction of these and while I've seen one off scans in the past... being able to click and scroll around through the slices and whatnot is really cool.

Would be awesome if these were donated somewhere like Wikipedia some day.

mastax• 3 years ago

Why does this cable have all 24 pins when only half of them are connected? The extra pins could help the plug sit more securely in its socket. Another guess: the same factory makes Thunderbolt cables, and it’s cheaper to maintain just one design, even though that means wasted material and effort.

The highest volume manufacturers may be fully integrated. Usually how it works, especially for these relatively low volume no-name brands, is they buy connectors from one vendor, PCBs from another, cables from another, plastic moldings from another, and then assemble them together (which may also be subcontracted). The assembly process doesn't have to be sophisticated: a small warehouse with a few workers with soldering irons and some jigs. Even some medium-volume assemblies like the USB-C front panel cables for major computer case brands are soldered by hand by a handful of workers in a small building.

Almost all of the USB-C connectors which are available off the shelf have all of their pins populated. Pins are very cheap. You need to be moving a whole lot of volume before it makes sense to go to your connector manufacturer and ask for a custom one with missing pins.

LeanderK• 3 years ago

are they really hand-soldered? They look so small! Isn't there a machine that is cheaper for high volume soldering of those small connections?

freedomben• 3 years ago

are they really hand-soldered?

Probably not, at least not in the way most people think of hand-soldered. There are hybrids where a human drives the soldering iron electronically rather than holding it in their hands, although even this the rate of defects would be so high it would make it impractical at even a small scale.

atoav• 3 years ago

Soldering small stuff can sometimes be easier, because at that level surface tension will do the job for you. So hand soldering 14 pins on a small size TSSOP package can be faster than soldering a SOIC (through hole) package (google drag soldering — just be careful with that in certain parts of the US \s)

The hardest part with cables is to prepare the strands and keep them in place. For this you can build fixtures.

crote8• 3 years ago

There's a pretty decent chance it is a mix of both.

USB-C connectors with pre-attached PCBs ("paddle cards") are widely available[0], and are created by a machine. Aligning the cables with the paddle card is quite tricky to automate, so humans are still used for that.

[0] https://www.lcsc.com/product-detail/C62322.html

fxtentacle• 3 years ago

Typically you have a stencil that you squeeze the solder paste through and then you put the IC on top with a tweezer and bake the whole thing with something like a hair drier. It's not that difficult to get good results without using an expensive pick&place robot.

1970-01-01• 3 years ago

   406 Not Acceptable

Something is broken.

Tempest1981• 3 years ago

I'm curious about the 9-layer PCBA -- is it an amplifier or signal conditioner, to achieve 40 Gb/s? Or does it implement some protocol?

Or for power delivery? I see what might be resistors or capacitors. Not sure what else.

avianlyric4• 3 years ago

It’s most likely 9-layers because that what you need to correctly route the traces from one set of 12 pins, to the other set of 12 pins (to make up the 24 total in USB-C), which is needed to make the connector fully reversible. There will also be a e-mark chip in there that tells any connected device what the cable is capable of doing, so you don’t accidentally send 240w down a cable only capable of carrying 100w.

9 layers might sounds like a lot. But reversible connectors are a bit of a logistical nightmare from a PCB routing perspective. Made even more complicated by the very tight signalling requirements needed to hit Thunderbolt 4 transfer speeds. The end result is what looks like a significant over-engineering, but is really just an expression of how difficult it is to transport high data rate signals around PCBs and cables.

Dylan168075• 3 years ago

Only 2 data pins per side are reversible that way, and it's the low speed ones.

The high speed pins (4 per side) should be going directly into a multiplexer or driver, the CC pins (1 per side) detect orientation, the sideband pins (1 per side) are only used dual-sided, and the power and ground pins (4 per side) aren't fussy at all.

crote8• 3 years ago

That's not how USB-C works.

Unlike Apple's late Lightning connector, USB-C isn't two sets of mirrored pins. The power pins are simply shorted together on both sides, four pins each for VBUS and GND. USB2 and CC (connection detection) are connected only on one side. The remaining pins are four high-speed lanes, two per side.

With rare exceptions, a USB-C cable does not do anything about reversibility. It simply connects the pins straight-trough to its partner on the other plug. The lane swapping needed for the high-speed lanes is done by the devices, not the cable.

The Apple cable is so complicated because it is a 40Gbps cable over 100cm long. This means it requires a redriver to guarantee signal integrity. That's what the big chip is for. Doing that in the small space available in a plug means your routing gets complicated.

ilyt7• 3 years ago

The end result is what looks like a significant over-engineering, but is really just an expression of how difficult it is to transport high data rate signals around PCBs and cables.

It's not just that. If it was just data speeds that's way easier, passive 10/40GBit DAC cables have been there for long time, they just use twinax (2 wire coax cable instead of differential pairs IIRC) and can go up to 7m passive, but that makes for not so bendy cable.

But USB-C so much more than few data lines, high power, legacy USB2, power negotiation and various alternate functions all in same connection.

stn8188• 3 years ago

The sibling reply is certainly correct - all those high speed signals need room, plus adjacent reference planes for good signal integrity. The power distribution also probably needs a lot of copper for the relatively high current the board sees.

That being said, an odd number of metal layers is very unlikely. It's physically possible but due to the lamination process, PCBs are basically always built in an even number of layers. It's a bit tough to tell with the resolution of the scan, but it looks like the dielectric layers were counted as 9, giving 10 total metal layers.

jacquesm2• 3 years ago

Cables with chipsets in them... the possibilities for data exfiltration are endless.

avianlyric4• 3 years ago

Yeah, and that 40G/s transfer rate. Makes exfiltration super fast as well.

kingnothing• 3 years ago

And commercially available for cheap.

https://shop.hak5.org/products/omg-cable

This cable has a built in keylogger and Wifi among other things.

jacquesm2• 3 years ago

Interesting how that page references a post that I did a few days ago that didn't get much traction.

ilyt7• 3 years ago

I've seen usb-c cables with OLED displays... displaying current power...

WestCoastJustin• 3 years ago

Hold on a sec.. I need to update the firmware on my USB-C cable. Crazy how miniature and advanced things are becoming.

manxman• 3 years ago

Update the malware too perhaps?

magnat• 3 years ago

Don't forget you have to do it for chips at both ends.

jonhohle• 3 years ago

Let me introduce you to the Lightning Digital AV Adapter - https://panic.com/blog/the-lightning-digital-av-adapter-surp...

If an anonymous comment[0] is to be believed, the adapter runs XNU (the macOS kernel) on an ARM SOC with 2GB of RAM. The OS for the adapter is pushed down when the device connects.

0 - https://panic.com/blog/the-lightning-digital-av-adapter-surp...

radicality2• 3 years ago

Right, don’t forget to update your USB-C to MagSafe 3 cable firmware!

https://www.macworld.com/article/1514105/macbook-air-pro-mag...

mensetmanusman3• 3 years ago

“ Another curiosity hidden in the circuit board is this wiggle on one of the traces. It contains a tiny detour to make sure it’s the same length as its paired trace, which is especially important when dealing with extra-high-speed data transmission.”

A wiggle that small is adding picosecond delays. I’m surprised that’s necessary. Cool!

addaon• 3 years ago

This comes up all the time in the context of DRAM routing. See e.g. the first image at https://resources.altium.com/p/pcb-routing-guidelines-ddr4-m....

mensetmanusman3• 3 years ago

Okay in this case impedance matching is more important than the time delay. Thanks for the link :)

ivanjermakov• 3 years ago

Today I learned! I'm curious to see approaches to solving optimal pathing of traces to keep them equal length.

_moof• 3 years ago

There's not much to it. You route them without worrying about equal length, and then your EDA tool adds serpentine tracks to the shorter one to match its length to the longer one.

simondotau2• 3 years ago

My (deeply uninformed) guess is that it probably wasn't absolutely necessary, but would be one among a hundred tiny details which improves resilience. There was space for it. And it has a $0.00 unit cost. It'd be more surprising if they didn't do it.

For Apple, perhaps the most economically exposed to customer problems of any major tech company, and has enough scar tissue from past failures, it's not surprising that their products tend to feature first class electrical engineering. Their DC chargers are widely regarded as among the best in the industry.

PumpkinSpice• 3 years ago

This is how you do advertising on HN...

The page is a very explicit plug (pun intended?) for their industrial CT products, and it was clearly done for marketing purposes, not because it reveals anything interesting. It is an apples-to-oranges comparison of several cables, basically showing that they're doing what they're supposed to and are constructed as expected. It was even submitted by an account that is clearly tied to the company.

I'm not upset with them - I think it's a better ad than most - but it's a pretty solid case study of how clever "covert" marketing is being done.

hhh• 3 years ago

This has been becoming more common, and honestly i’m all for it.

colonwqbang• 3 years ago

I found it interesting. Why not market your product by demoing what it can do? I'm not going to buy a CT scanner but if someone else does I don't mind it.

digging2• 3 years ago

I'm quite okay with that. A detailed capabilities demo is all I actually want from advertisements. I only wish it were more honest about its purpose, because the article is not useful to consumers of USB-C cables.

xp842• 3 years ago

Yes, I was deeply disappointed that they didn’t test any reputable cable advertised as equivalent to the Apple one. So it didn’t answer the interesting question of whether there’s any point in buying Apple vs say, Anker.

krooj• 3 years ago

Their 3D reconstruction viewer has some neat examples - there's a carbon fiber bicycle saddle where you can absolutely see voids in the layup process and step through the sagittal slices to see the propagation characteristics.

londons_explore3• 3 years ago

On the apple cable... That circuit looks like a lot more than an e-marker. Why do we have a massive 105 pin BGA chip in there?

Does this cable run iOS or something?

floxy2• 3 years ago

Yes, this is the question I was going to ask. Is that an Apple ASIC? Or something off-the-shelf? Crazy if it was an FPGA inside a cable, but maybe not with the price tag. We need to have someone dissect one of these to see if there are any markings on that. I supposed something this tiny is a wafer level chip-scale package. I can't seem to find any 105 pin BGAs at Octopart or Digikey, but it isn't easy to shop by pin count alone.

floxy2• 3 years ago

Here's the teardown:

https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/04/23/teardown-of-apple...

artimaeis2• 3 years ago

It's an Intel Thunderbolt ReTimer chip.

https://youtu.be/LBWnb0ZIlEA?si=hgLg_TOa9zr42wpU&t=304

I can't find the 7040 specifically, but here's a similar 9040R chip: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/211299/...

londons_explore3• 3 years ago

I understand having retimer (ie. active signal booster) chips midway along a long cable... But at the end of a cable a mere 2 inches from the place the signal is going to end up seems superfluous...

Is it because the thunderbolt spec inherits timing parameters from PciE and it was hard to meet those with a long cable?

lxgr6• 3 years ago

Speaking of USB-C 10 Gbit/s cables, I've noticed something odd about the iPhone 15 Pro:

I have a USB-C cable that has been yielding 10 Gbit/s speeds (i.e. USB 3 Gen 2x1 or possibly but very unlikely 1x2) when used at my Mac with various devices (mostly SSDs).

However, that same cable only gets USB 2 speeds when connecting the iPhone to my Mac. The iPhone itself also seems to only get USB 2 speeds using the SSD and that cable. Yet with another, newer USB-C 10 Gbit/s cable, I get 10 Gbit/s throughout all scenarios.

What's going on here? Is the iPhone overly strict about supporting USB 3 speeds over USB-C cables, i.e. is my old cable possibly not electronically marked properly, and the Mac is just more tolerant of that?

And something else I've noticed: The iPhone also does not get 10 Gbit/s using a somewhat monstrous adapter construction (USB-C to USB-A adapter, USB-A to USB-C cable) that should however be fully standards-compliant without any active e-markers (i.e. a resistor-marked A-to-C cable and a resistor-marked C-to-A adapter).

I really wish there was an easy way to dump the cable's SOP' communication on macOS and look into whether a given cable is actually e-marked, and if so, with what capabilities. Alternatively, just showing this in "System Information" would really help, i.e. indicating whether a connection is only using USB 2 speeds due to the cable or the device not supporting more.

c-linkage• 3 years ago

I figure the reason the Apple USB-C cable has a complex PCB embedded in the head-end of the cable is to detect Apple-certified devices and ensure top speed only when paired with an Apple-certified cable. Both the device and the cable have to recognize each other as properly licensed devices, otherwise you get sub-standard performance.

AceJohnny2• 3 years ago

Apple has denied this.

From their support page https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213839

The USB-C cable that comes with your iPhone supports charging and USB 2 speeds. If you want to use a USB 3 device, use a compliant USB 3 cable that supports 10Gbit/s.

Note that this is only the 15 Pro. The "vanilla" 15 uses last year's A16 SoC and doesn't have a USB 3.x-capable PHY.

lxgr6• 3 years ago

If that were true, my fairly cheap ($10) newer cable also shouldn't work at 10 GBit/s, but it does.

crote8• 3 years ago

No.

Doing 40Gbps data is really hard because physics. Once you get beyond about 100cm, the signal loss basically requires you to add a repeater or retimer. This has been part of the USB-C specification since the very beginning, and any cable of this length doing 40Gbps will feature a similar PCB.

radicality2• 3 years ago

I think a good step in debugging this would be to download Apple’s “Additional Tools for Xcode 15”, and then open up IO Registry Explorer. There’s a lot more info to see there about attached devices than the standard system profiler.

lxgr6• 3 years ago

I'll give that a try, thank you!

There are already some SOP-related messages in the system debug logs (although almost completely redacted), so I'm at least optimistic that this is handled by the OS, and not e.g. purely in firmware in the USB-C controller.

MBCook4• 3 years ago

Apple tends to be very picky about spec compliance in some things.

I wonder: is your Mac an Intel model or an Apple Silicon model? Perhaps the Intel powered ports are more lenient?

It would be interesting to know of a high quality cable tester showed some other difference in capabilities between the cables that may explain it.

lxgr6• 3 years ago

Both my current M1 Mac and my previous Intel Mac were fine with the cable!

It would be interesting to know of a high quality cable tester showed some other difference in capabilities between the cables that may explain it.

I'm fairly certain that the cable itself is perfectly fine, but that the iPhone insists on a specific bit being set on the e-marker chip insider the cable, while Macs are more tolerant and will just attempt a USB 3 connection anyway, especially since they need to support unmarked USB 3 for use with USB-A adapters anyway.

ilyt7• 3 years ago

You mean malicious on purpose so people buy Apple branded ones when something that should work doesn't

scarface_742• 3 years ago

There is no such thing as a compliant USB A to USB C adapter and some combination may fry your device.

https://hackaday.com/2022/12/27/all-about-usb-c-illegal-adap...

ac29• 3 years ago

Your article says USB A male to USB C female is noncompliant.

It doesnt say USB A female to USB C male is noncompliant. These are reasonably common and I had one included with both my current laptop and my current smartphone, for example.

ksec• 3 years ago

iPhone 15 USB 10Gbps support seems to be picky about USB-PD version. Although I dont have time to test out this theory.

gkfasdfasdf• 3 years ago

This really highlights one of the disadvantages of everything going to the same physical port - it's not easy to tell what the capabilities of the port and cable are.

oaiey2• 3 years ago

It is a weakness of the USB consortia paper process to not enforce labeling on their hardware, cables and ports. Same physical port does not really matter. Also operating systems could help with clarifying the ports without special tools. Would be so easy.

crote8• 3 years ago

The USB-IF already has labeling guidelines[0], pretty much all manufacturers just chose to completely ignore them.

[0] https://www.usb.org/sites/default/files/usb-if_usb_type-c_ca...

ilyt7• 3 years ago

The problem is that there are options to not carry all thru the cable.

Feature matrix of port is less of a problem (althought can still be confusing) but fact that one feature can work with one cable but not other is massive mess.

And power direction too, it's utter mess

jandrese• 3 years ago

I'm a bit annoyed that the only comparisons in the article are Apple's gold plated cable and then three random Amazon fly by night cables. I wish they had tested a more reputable cable that was maybe only 1/4 of the price of the Apple cable.

digging2• 3 years ago

This is why I scan comments before reading the article... I'm more interested in comparison of high quality brands than junk, since I'm already not going to buy junk.

kube-system• 3 years ago

I think the idea here was to demonstrate contrast between products with the x-ray machine they sell, not to be a buyers guide of USB-C cables.

andmarios• 3 years ago

The article still is quite interesting to understand the technology and work that can go into a USB cable and why there are huge price differences.

Of course I would prefer too a comparison between reputable manufacturers. :)

Analemma_• 3 years ago

There really aren't any, at least for genuine Thunderbolt 4 cables. Anker's 2.3-foot TB4 cable is $40, or about $17.40/foot, while Apple's 1-meter TB4 cable is $70, or $21.30/foot. Not a huge difference.

Apple certainly gouges people a lot of the time, but I don't think their Thunderbolt cables are an example of this; they're genuinely complicated pieces of engineering.

Dylan168075• 3 years ago

Cable Matters has a 2 meter certified TB4 cable that's $54. That's a pretty big difference from $129.

I don't know a lot about intermediate quality cables, but I'd at least want to see a thunderbolt 4 fly by night cable, one of these $20-$30 ones.

pipeline_peak3• 3 years ago

I love the fact they call the lightening cable an “11 year reign”.

There’s a part of Apple that capitalized on hidden reservoirs of tech and talent.

Then there’s a part of Apple capitalizes on its own reputation and history.

Lightening cable feels newton era.

namtab002• 3 years ago

"lightening" as in pocket-lightening?

pipeline_peak3• 3 years ago

Umm what?

CivBase2• 3 years ago

The scans and analysis were cool, but comparing one quality cable from Apple to one budget offering from Amazon and two e-waste options from completely unknown brands isn't enough to answer the leading question "Does Apple’s Thunderbolt 4 cable really warrant its $129 price tag?" Especially considering none of those cables even advertised feature parity with Apple's cable.

sowbug• 3 years ago

Agreed -- the summary of this article could be "cables with different specs perform differently."

weinzierl• 3 years ago

PCB = Printed Circuit Board, what is a PCBA?

kolencherry• 3 years ago

Printed Circuit Board Assembly. i.e. a PCB with all the components mounted.

yborg• 3 years ago

Printed Circuit Board Assembly. Proper nomenclature for a populated printed circuit board.

iameli• 3 years ago

Now do 5000 more.

AYBABTME• 3 years ago

For a second I thought this was an ad for a democratized CT scan machine, but alas it's a 75k$/y subscription machine? This makes a convincing case for having CT scanners available in one's hobby workshop, but the prices would have to come down quite a lot.

selfhoster69• 3 years ago

Can someone please explain why the site downloads 600MB+ assets every time the page is reloaded?

miyuru• 3 years ago

its the 3D models

MrOxiMoron• 3 years ago

This demonstrates the biggest problem with usb-c: the connectors are the same, but the capabilities are very different and not visible to the naked eye.

3pm• 3 years ago

For those interested, there is a book with cross-section pictures of various circuits: https://opencircuitsbook.com/#oc-gallery

kibwen• 3 years ago

This is the only cable we scanned that contains no PCBA; the pins just connect directly to the wires.

What is the PCB for if it's technically possible to omit it?

ComputerGuru• 3 years ago

Structural integrity. The pins might move around or push back without it, over time?

crote8• 3 years ago

Signal integrity and ease of assembly. There's a lot of very high-speed connections really close together, which means they are going to interfere with each other. The "paddle card" allows you to maintain signal quality while you are spacing them out a bit for the wire connection.

This isn't nearly as important with USB-2-only cables, which makes the direct soldering possible. It's going to require making a custom connector, so it's not really surprising a lot of manufacturers just reuse the high-speed ones and stick with a paddle card.

chmod600• 3 years ago

I wish there was some easy way on either the cable or the port to just disable data. 90% of the time I just want power.

chmod775• 3 years ago

FYI: The first "picture" for each cable is a 3D model you can rotate.

yalogin• 3 years ago

Great! So usb-c is worse than the standard it replaces?

USB-C head-to-head comparison

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