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#1
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Asus Implementation of USB 3.1 and USB Type C Connection?
Apparently, at CES 2015 MSI announced a Z97 motherboard with a
USB Type C connector and demonstrated an X99 motherboard that implemented USB 3.1 through a Type A connector. The latter is reportedly planned to be available in mid-February. Would anyone care to venture an opinion as to when Asus might have an X99 offering with USB 3.1 and/or a Type C connection onboard? I was just about to place an order for a bunch of components with Amazon and Newegg, but am willing to wait as much as 6 months or so for either of these capabilities to be available on something equivalent to the X99 Deluxe or possibly the X99 Workstation. Regards, Dan |
#2
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Asus Implementation of USB 3.1 and USB Type C Connection?
Dan Schumacher wrote:
Apparently, at CES 2015 MSI announced a Z97 motherboard with a USB Type C connector and demonstrated an X99 motherboard that implemented USB 3.1 through a Type A connector. The latter is reportedly planned to be available in mid-February. Would anyone care to venture an opinion as to when Asus might have an X99 offering with USB 3.1 and/or a Type C connection onboard? I was just about to place an order for a bunch of components with Amazon and Newegg, but am willing to wait as much as 6 months or so for either of these capabilities to be available on something equivalent to the X99 Deluxe or possibly the X99 Workstation. Regards, Dan Z97 is volume and X99 is niche. Unless a competitor has the resources to keep engineering new X99 designs with bells and whistles on them, there's really no need to spin new ones. So if MSI doesn't make a new ("cheapest") X99, Asus has no need to counter their effort. They may already have their own "cheapest" entry. If you only sell 10,000 of a motherboard, maybe there isn't enough profit to pay for the engineering team that built it. When a new chipset comes out, that is an "impetus to enter the market". You have to make something, for each new chipset. And that is an opportunity to see what bells and whistles for Z97 sold well, and then see whether the "workstation fraternity" would be interested. Not every "silly feature", like remote control dongle for turning a PC on and off, is needed in the workstation market. So not everything invented to sell Z97, need migrate to the niche boards. All of this behavior is controlled by economics (volume boards pay the bills), as well as tightly defined marketing niches. The motherboard makers are relatively conservative, risk wise. You can also see the level of interest, by counting how many BIOS releases a Z97 board gets, versus an X99. For Asus, perhaps five BIOS releases is a minimum for them. A workstation board may receive that few. The Z97 might receive a dozen BIOS releases, many of which will include new CPU microcode for any new CPU models introduced by Intel. The same level of interest just doesn't exist for the low-volume boards. Looking at the history of effort put into the different markets, should tell you how the company will behave in future. ******* The number of threads in the Asus forum for each board, gives some idea of the interest level. Sometimes, there aren't enough posts here to form an opinion on a motherboard purchase, but you might still data mine enough info, to help with purchase decisions. That, and Newegg or Amazon customer reviews. X99-Deluxe (76 discussion threads) http://vip.asus.com/forum/topic.aspx...Language=en-us The forum is slow, so be patient. It took almost a minute before the server responded today. Paul |
#3
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Asus Implementation of USB 3.1 and USB Type C Connection?
"Paul" wrote in message ... Dan Schumacher wrote: Apparently, at CES 2015 MSI announced a Z97 motherboard with a USB Type C connector and demonstrated an X99 motherboard that implemented USB 3.1 through a Type A connector. The latter is reportedly planned to be available in mid-February. Would anyone care to venture an opinion as to when Asus might have an X99 offering with USB 3.1 and/or a Type C connection onboard? I was just about to place an order for a bunch of components with Amazon and Newegg, but am willing to wait as much as 6 months or so for either of these capabilities to be available on something equivalent to the X99 Deluxe or possibly the X99 Workstation. Regards, Dan Z97 is volume and X99 is niche. Unless a competitor has the resources to keep engineering new X99 designs with bells and whistles on them, there's really no need to spin new ones. So if MSI doesn't make a new ("cheapest") X99, Asus has no need to counter their effort. They may already have their own "cheapest" entry. If you only sell 10,000 of a motherboard, maybe there isn't enough profit to pay for the engineering team that built it. When a new chipset comes out, that is an "impetus to enter the market". You have to make something, for each new chipset. And that is an opportunity to see what bells and whistles for Z97 sold well, and then see whether the "workstation fraternity" would be interested. Not every "silly feature", like remote control dongle for turning a PC on and off, is needed in the workstation market. So not everything invented to sell Z97, need migrate to the niche boards. All of this behavior is controlled by economics (volume boards pay the bills), as well as tightly defined marketing niches. The motherboard makers are relatively conservative, risk wise. You can also see the level of interest, by counting how many BIOS releases a Z97 board gets, versus an X99. For Asus, perhaps five BIOS releases is a minimum for them. A workstation board may receive that few. The Z97 might receive a dozen BIOS releases, many of which will include new CPU microcode for any new CPU models introduced by Intel. The same level of interest just doesn't exist for the low-volume boards. Looking at the history of effort put into the different markets, should tell you how the company will behave in future. ******* The number of threads in the Asus forum for each board, gives some idea of the interest level. Sometimes, there aren't enough posts here to form an opinion on a motherboard purchase, but you might still data mine enough info, to help with purchase decisions. That, and Newegg or Amazon customer reviews. X99-Deluxe (76 discussion threads) http://vip.asus.com/forum/topic.aspx...Language=en-us The forum is slow, so be patient. It took almost a minute before the server responded today. Paul Paul, Thanks for the reply. I would not categorize the number of posts to the Asus Forums as an indicator of which chipset is "volume" and which is "niche". Given that Z97 chipset motherboards came out in May 2014 and X99 didn't come out until August 2014 (hope my dates are correct), there is a natural delta in posting volumes. I look at X99 chipset motherboards, with their support for DDR4, Thunderbolt 2 Ready, and more cores per CPU, among other things, as the next generation while the Z97 motherboards are the tail/end of the previous DDR3 generation products. Given that I recently turned 70, I am looking to build a new system (to replace my old X58 P6T-Deluxe) that may last longer than me. Something based on the latest and greatest standards is where I am coming from, and the reason for my original query. So, should I wait for Asus or go with an MSI board next month? Regards, Dan P.S. Thanks for the Forum link; for some reason my Favorites links couldn't get there anymore even though I am registered. |
#4
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Asus Implementation of USB 3.1 and USB Type C Connection?
Dan Schumacher wrote:
"Paul" wrote in message ... Dan Schumacher wrote: Apparently, at CES 2015 MSI announced a Z97 motherboard with a USB Type C connector and demonstrated an X99 motherboard that implemented USB 3.1 through a Type A connector. The latter is reportedly planned to be available in mid-February. Would anyone care to venture an opinion as to when Asus might have an X99 offering with USB 3.1 and/or a Type C connection onboard? I was just about to place an order for a bunch of components with Amazon and Newegg, but am willing to wait as much as 6 months or so for either of these capabilities to be available on something equivalent to the X99 Deluxe or possibly the X99 Workstation. Regards, Dan Z97 is volume and X99 is niche. Unless a competitor has the resources to keep engineering new X99 designs with bells and whistles on them, there's really no need to spin new ones. So if MSI doesn't make a new ("cheapest") X99, Asus has no need to counter their effort. They may already have their own "cheapest" entry. If you only sell 10,000 of a motherboard, maybe there isn't enough profit to pay for the engineering team that built it. When a new chipset comes out, that is an "impetus to enter the market". You have to make something, for each new chipset. And that is an opportunity to see what bells and whistles for Z97 sold well, and then see whether the "workstation fraternity" would be interested. Not every "silly feature", like remote control dongle for turning a PC on and off, is needed in the workstation market. So not everything invented to sell Z97, need migrate to the niche boards. All of this behavior is controlled by economics (volume boards pay the bills), as well as tightly defined marketing niches. The motherboard makers are relatively conservative, risk wise. You can also see the level of interest, by counting how many BIOS releases a Z97 board gets, versus an X99. For Asus, perhaps five BIOS releases is a minimum for them. A workstation board may receive that few. The Z97 might receive a dozen BIOS releases, many of which will include new CPU microcode for any new CPU models introduced by Intel. The same level of interest just doesn't exist for the low-volume boards. Looking at the history of effort put into the different markets, should tell you how the company will behave in future. ******* The number of threads in the Asus forum for each board, gives some idea of the interest level. Sometimes, there aren't enough posts here to form an opinion on a motherboard purchase, but you might still data mine enough info, to help with purchase decisions. That, and Newegg or Amazon customer reviews. X99-Deluxe (76 discussion threads) http://vip.asus.com/forum/topic.aspx...Language=en-us The forum is slow, so be patient. It took almost a minute before the server responded today. Paul Paul, Thanks for the reply. I would not categorize the number of posts to the Asus Forums as an indicator of which chipset is "volume" and which is "niche". Given that Z97 chipset motherboards came out in May 2014 and X99 didn't come out until August 2014 (hope my dates are correct), there is a natural delta in posting volumes. I look at X99 chipset motherboards, with their support for DDR4, Thunderbolt 2 Ready, and more cores per CPU, among other things, as the next generation while the Z97 motherboards are the tail/end of the previous DDR3 generation products. Given that I recently turned 70, I am looking to build a new system (to replace my old X58 P6T-Deluxe) that may last longer than me. Something based on the latest and greatest standards is where I am coming from, and the reason for my original query. So, should I wait for Asus or go with an MSI board next month? Regards, Dan P.S. Thanks for the Forum link; for some reason my Favorites links couldn't get there anymore even though I am registered. If there's a "signal" out there in the noise concerning propagation of Type C and USB 3.1, I can't find it. It's "mid year 2015" introduction, but exactly what will be available, the CES isn't showing a strong signal. The fact that the MSI CES presentation covered up the USB 3.1 chip, says the chip demonstrated is pre-release. The company making the chip hasn't made it public. You can be assured though, that every motherboard company has that pre-release USB 3.1 chip in their lab. MSI doesn't have the only copy. The other companies are making sure the pre-release chip isn't a dud. And they'll need USB 3.1 peripherals (Interwork testing) to be absolutely sure. Looking at a logic analyzer isn't enough. You can count on both Intel and AMD to be slow on release of USB 3.1. This tech doc comparison shows 3.1 introduces more than just PHY changes, so it means messing with the logic block. Intel will take their sweet time putting this inside the Southbridge. And AMD, their last USB was done by buying third party IP (which is a clever way to do it), but it will take time for a third party IP provider to write and prove that code is correct. A typical way to do IP you can trust, is if a company makes a USB 3.1 chip, then sells the IP block to third parties for inclusion in their own designs. And that takes time. http://www.arrowdevices.com/blog/usb...al-comparison/ My guesses would be: 1) Expect to see more motherboards with Type C connectors by mid 2015. It doesn't matter as much, what interface standard is connected to the connector. USB 3.0 is good enough for this generation of Type C. You want the Type C for interface flexibility - the ability to plug in that type C when a type C to type C cable is all it came with. That avoids using Type C to xxx adapter cables. 2) Don't expect really good USB 3.1 implementations at first. With some luck, they'll write BIOS code so we can boot from the connector, but that's not guaranteed. I have a motherboard here, where the UEFI BIOS includes INT 0x13 support for a separate Asmedia chip, so it can be done. 3) A USB 3.1 separate chip could be every bit as good as a Southbridge implementation, *if* they put the right PCI Express interface on it. If they use x1 lane Rev3, maybe that'll be a tight fit. Just as x1 lane Rev2 for USB3 was a tight fit, and the Southbridge port could do a better job. I would say your first order of acquisition, would be anything that can give you a Type C connector. Even if the implementation is USB 3.0 behind it. I don't see a pressing need for USB 3.1 silicon at this point. It will take a while before peripherals catch up, and in terms of applications, the only application for it would be a disk enclosure with a SATA III SSD. And it'll only squeeze a bit more performance from it. Peripheral makers could make a RAID 0 multi-SSD chassis to "stretch" the interface. And I suppose eventually there could be USB3.1 to HDMI or USB3.1 to some other video standard, uncompressed, to look forward to. So there may be some reason to justify USB 3.1 as a "need". But as of today, we aren't there yet. Would it be good if the motherboard had it for sure ? Of course. But if you had a Type C with USB 3.0 on it, that covers lots of practical situations. Is there a pressing need for USB GPUs ? Not really. It is used occasionally on non-expandable devices like laptops (to drive projectors perhaps), but a USB3.1 cabled display device could just as easily be surpassed by some flavor of DisplayPort from a regular video card. Your desktop can have cards fitted to cover new interfaces. Now, if Asus were to spin such a motherboard for mid-year, would they spin an entire wave of X99 boards with new connectors on the back ? Or would it be one or two boards ? They may not cover your needs with whatever they ship. The price points of the LGA2011-V3 processors, one of them is only 28 lane PCI Express, while the more expensive ones are 40 lane PCI Express. And since the stated objective of LGA2011-V3 is as a "multi-card SLI video" implementation, the lane count is all-important to that market. The 28 lane processor is an anomaly, situated between the Z97 market and the X99. So even if you use a "cheap" X99 motherboard and a "cheap" LGA2011-V3 processor, that doesn't align perfectly with using lots of video cards. And perhaps that's what you'd need to drive a 4K or 5K display properly at gaming rates. Asus used to make a magazine (available as a PDF), with glossy announcements in it. But I don't know if they bother with that any more or not (the link below shows they stopped making PDF magazines in 2007). And if they were going to announce something, CES would be the opportunity for that. With the three boards in a release cycle, if they were really ready for mid-summer release, they should have had a prototype board for CES. https://web.archive.org/web/20090208.../emagazine.htm And something shown at CES, doesn't *have* to ship. If there are problems with the thing, detected before launch, the board might disappear from view. Paul |
#5
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Asus Implementation of USB 3.1 and USB Type C Connection?
"Paul" wrote in message ... Dan Schumacher wrote: "Paul" wrote in message ... Dan Schumacher wrote: Apparently, at CES 2015 MSI announced a Z97 motherboard with a USB Type C connector and demonstrated an X99 motherboard that implemented USB 3.1 through a Type A connector. The latter is reportedly planned to be available in mid-February. Would anyone care to venture an opinion as to when Asus might have an X99 offering with USB 3.1 and/or a Type C connection onboard? I was just about to place an order for a bunch of components with Amazon and Newegg, but am willing to wait as much as 6 months or so for either of these capabilities to be available on something equivalent to the X99 Deluxe or possibly the X99 Workstation. Regards, Dan Z97 is volume and X99 is niche. Unless a competitor has the resources to keep engineering new X99 designs with bells and whistles on them, there's really no need to spin new ones. So if MSI doesn't make a new ("cheapest") X99, Asus has no need to counter their effort. They may already have their own "cheapest" entry. If you only sell 10,000 of a motherboard, maybe there isn't enough profit to pay for the engineering team that built it. When a new chipset comes out, that is an "impetus to enter the market". You have to make something, for each new chipset. And that is an opportunity to see what bells and whistles for Z97 sold well, and then see whether the "workstation fraternity" would be interested. Not every "silly feature", like remote control dongle for turning a PC on and off, is needed in the workstation market. So not everything invented to sell Z97, need migrate to the niche boards. All of this behavior is controlled by economics (volume boards pay the bills), as well as tightly defined marketing niches. The motherboard makers are relatively conservative, risk wise. You can also see the level of interest, by counting how many BIOS releases a Z97 board gets, versus an X99. For Asus, perhaps five BIOS releases is a minimum for them. A workstation board may receive that few. The Z97 might receive a dozen BIOS releases, many of which will include new CPU microcode for any new CPU models introduced by Intel. The same level of interest just doesn't exist for the low-volume boards. Looking at the history of effort put into the different markets, should tell you how the company will behave in future. ******* The number of threads in the Asus forum for each board, gives some idea of the interest level. Sometimes, there aren't enough posts here to form an opinion on a motherboard purchase, but you might still data mine enough info, to help with purchase decisions. That, and Newegg or Amazon customer reviews. X99-Deluxe (76 discussion threads) http://vip.asus.com/forum/topic.aspx...Language=en-us The forum is slow, so be patient. It took almost a minute before the server responded today. Paul Paul, Thanks for the reply. I would not categorize the number of posts to the Asus Forums as an indicator of which chipset is "volume" and which is "niche". Given that Z97 chipset motherboards came out in May 2014 and X99 didn't come out until August 2014 (hope my dates are correct), there is a natural delta in posting volumes. I look at X99 chipset motherboards, with their support for DDR4, Thunderbolt 2 Ready, and more cores per CPU, among other things, as the next generation while the Z97 motherboards are the tail/end of the previous DDR3 generation products. Given that I recently turned 70, I am looking to build a new system (to replace my old X58 P6T-Deluxe) that may last longer than me. Something based on the latest and greatest standards is where I am coming from, and the reason for my original query. So, should I wait for Asus or go with an MSI board next month? Regards, Dan P.S. Thanks for the Forum link; for some reason my Favorites links couldn't get there anymore even though I am registered. If there's a "signal" out there in the noise concerning propagation of Type C and USB 3.1, I can't find it. It's "mid year 2015" introduction, but exactly what will be available, the CES isn't showing a strong signal. The fact that the MSI CES presentation covered up the USB 3.1 chip, says the chip demonstrated is pre-release. The company making the chip hasn't made it public. You can be assured though, that every motherboard company has that pre-release USB 3.1 chip in their lab. MSI doesn't have the only copy. The other companies are making sure the pre-release chip isn't a dud. And they'll need USB 3.1 peripherals (Interwork testing) to be absolutely sure. Looking at a logic analyzer isn't enough. You can count on both Intel and AMD to be slow on release of USB 3.1. This tech doc comparison shows 3.1 introduces more than just PHY changes, so it means messing with the logic block. Intel will take their sweet time putting this inside the Southbridge. And AMD, their last USB was done by buying third party IP (which is a clever way to do it), but it will take time for a third party IP provider to write and prove that code is correct. A typical way to do IP you can trust, is if a company makes a USB 3.1 chip, then sells the IP block to third parties for inclusion in their own designs. And that takes time. http://www.arrowdevices.com/blog/usb...al-comparison/ My guesses would be: 1) Expect to see more motherboards with Type C connectors by mid 2015. It doesn't matter as much, what interface standard is connected to the connector. USB 3.0 is good enough for this generation of Type C. You want the Type C for interface flexibility - the ability to plug in that type C when a type C to type C cable is all it came with. That avoids using Type C to xxx adapter cables. 2) Don't expect really good USB 3.1 implementations at first. With some luck, they'll write BIOS code so we can boot from the connector, but that's not guaranteed. I have a motherboard here, where the UEFI BIOS includes INT 0x13 support for a separate Asmedia chip, so it can be done. 3) A USB 3.1 separate chip could be every bit as good as a Southbridge implementation, *if* they put the right PCI Express interface on it. If they use x1 lane Rev3, maybe that'll be a tight fit. Just as x1 lane Rev2 for USB3 was a tight fit, and the Southbridge port could do a better job. I would say your first order of acquisition, would be anything that can give you a Type C connector. Even if the implementation is USB 3.0 behind it. I don't see a pressing need for USB 3.1 silicon at this point. It will take a while before peripherals catch up, and in terms of applications, the only application for it would be a disk enclosure with a SATA III SSD. And it'll only squeeze a bit more performance from it. Peripheral makers could make a RAID 0 multi-SSD chassis to "stretch" the interface. And I suppose eventually there could be USB3.1 to HDMI or USB3.1 to some other video standard, uncompressed, to look forward to. So there may be some reason to justify USB 3.1 as a "need". But as of today, we aren't there yet. Would it be good if the motherboard had it for sure ? Of course. But if you had a Type C with USB 3.0 on it, that covers lots of practical situations. Is there a pressing need for USB GPUs ? Not really. It is used occasionally on non-expandable devices like laptops (to drive projectors perhaps), but a USB3.1 cabled display device could just as easily be surpassed by some flavor of DisplayPort from a regular video card. Your desktop can have cards fitted to cover new interfaces. Now, if Asus were to spin such a motherboard for mid-year, would they spin an entire wave of X99 boards with new connectors on the back ? Or would it be one or two boards ? They may not cover your needs with whatever they ship. The price points of the LGA2011-V3 processors, one of them is only 28 lane PCI Express, while the more expensive ones are 40 lane PCI Express. And since the stated objective of LGA2011-V3 is as a "multi-card SLI video" implementation, the lane count is all-important to that market. The 28 lane processor is an anomaly, situated between the Z97 market and the X99. So even if you use a "cheap" X99 motherboard and a "cheap" LGA2011-V3 processor, that doesn't align perfectly with using lots of video cards. And perhaps that's what you'd need to drive a 4K or 5K display properly at gaming rates. Asus used to make a magazine (available as a PDF), with glossy announcements in it. But I don't know if they bother with that any more or not (the link below shows they stopped making PDF magazines in 2007). And if they were going to announce something, CES would be the opportunity for that. With the three boards in a release cycle, if they were really ready for mid-summer release, they should have had a prototype board for CES. https://web.archive.org/web/20090208.../emagazine.htm And something shown at CES, doesn't *have* to ship. If there are problems with the thing, detected before launch, the board might disappear from view. Paul Paul, Good thoughts. I would agree with you that the physical Type C connector will probably come first because it is independent of the USB version and for the reasons you lay out about Intel being slow. I am sure that there will be a number of manufacturers that will have add in USB 3.1 controller cards for a PCI-E slot. My hope is that Asus soon provides the connector as a mod to the X99 Deluxe board, or possibly as a feature on a new X99 board (not sure how they would differentiate a new board from the four they already have, but this is probably probably most likely). If nothing meets my timeframes, I will just go the add-in controller route when they become available. Time will tell. Regards, Dan P.S. This is all a far cry from my first computer, a Zenith Z-100 that had both 8085 and 8086 processors so it could run both CPM and DOS. |
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