News USB Power Delivery Specification finalised

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2012/07/19/usb-power-delivery/1

 

100W, pretty impressive

 

Yep, it's 10x what Thunderbolt can do. Though USB power delivery cables are bound to be thicker since they'll be pushing 20A at assuming 5V.

 

I'm sure it'll take a number of years to filter through but I'm looking forward to it. Being able to cut down on the number of different sockets can only be a bonus even if you still need micro, mini and regular usb cables thats a huge step up from the huge number of different round, proprietary and different voltage connectors we have now.

 

100w - should only take a few hours to charge a future smartphone. I cant wait for this to be implemented into laptops.

 

A few hours to charge a smartphone? A few minutes! Assuming it doesn't explode. Compared the current, what, 3 Amps on the USB? I am curious, though. Would make USB3 portable harddrives even better.

 

900mA for USB 3, 500mA for USB 2, both at 5V.

And yes, it would mean you could use possibly use 3.5" drives, although they need 12V as well as 5V, compared to the current 2.5" drives that need 1 cable for USB 3 or 2 if using USB 2.

 

I was under the impression that iPhones would charge using 1amp from certain computers - and certainly from the wall?

 

100w is stupid because most laptops won't be able to handle that, so if a device (such as a HDD) is designed to work with the 100w ports, it won't work on many mobile platforms.

 

Presumably the host and device negotiate how much power is available before allowing the device to draw anything. That's how the system works at the moment.

Also, the USB-IF says that they achieve 100W by "using higher voltages and currents", so don't worry about it drawing 20A at 5V!

 

So now we'll be charging phones faster. And Laptops!

Actually most chargers are ~100w these days. Not to mention that this specification does not mean it's constantly firing 100w worth of electricity (or 20A @ 5V) all the time at a product. I'm pretty sure they'd figure out a way to ensure that it would only output the maximum on certain devices.

Plus this at least allows for more powerful chargers. Tablet owners would like this I'm sure.

 

Since charging goes both ways, this is designed to power laptops too. They're really trying to use this as a logic compatible DC socket. Connect these sockets to a central computer and now you have a smart house! Larger devices can be outfitted with wifi/bluetooth support cheaply, but that wouldn't be efficient with light bulbs or similar devices.

 

my laptop (hp-compaq) has a 90W charger, some has 65W
but currently they are all different (all my laptops and those of my friends)
USB 3.0+
[LIKE]

 

Good to know there's a handshake first - my first thought was that I'm pretty sure I don't always have 100w available to draw from my PSU...not that I foresee actually powering anything that would draw 100w from my desktop.

Not sure about actual power figures, but yes. At least, it's been fairly common for Asus and a few other manufacturers to have a high-power USB port for fast charging of devices that support it, including iDevices.

 

They just charge slower from standard USB ports, although iPads dont charge at all, and power bricks are usually higher non-USB spec ampages.

The spec amps are just those provided as a maximum from a computer port, not the maximum you can safely conduct over a cable.

 

Charge the laptop battery over USB! This sounds cool.
In my family - of the 3, now broken, laptops 2 of them broke because the power input got wrecked with people yanking on the power lead and generally mistreating them.

If we could charge via USB3 then a broken USB port is a pain, but at least your PC isn't an expensive paperweight afterwards. You just switch to another of the USB's.

 

Like that would happen, you just know that only one of the USB ports will be wired to the battery.

 

I believe that at the moment USB ports supply .5A along the power lines unless the device/charger states that it can take/deliver more, this is done by shorting the data lines which in turn tells the device it can draw what it wishes, this is how the USB wall chargers work telling the device that it can draw as much power as it wants. Believe this is true for most devices bar apple who do something else to inform the device how much power it can pull.

 

We're gonna need bigger 5V rails cap'n!

 

I'd imagine this is going to mean an added 12v wire or something as drawing 20a @5V is going to require a heavy bit of wire...