How does my computer transmit so much data over USB?

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A few years ago, you would plug in your mouse, keyboard, speakers, monitor, etc. into separate ports on a computer. Now, I have a dock that all my peripherals connect to, and my laptop is just connected to that dock through a single USB-C cable. There’s never any noticeable lag, either. What improvements have been made so that this is now possible?

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5 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

in general, about a decade ago, USB 3 hardware started coming out, allowing 5gbps of data transfer each way through a pair of twisted pairs instead of 480mbps unidrrectional over a single paid. (and this added 5 extra pins to the USB connector).

USB C adds a few extra pins and wires that can either be used for a second superspeed pair, or assigned for other purposes such as carrying video, and with hardware designed for it, that 5gbps limit was raised in some situations to 10gbps per lane (USB 3.x gen2) or higher for some alternative uses.

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