Synopsys Demonstrates USB 3.2 with 20Gbps Speeds

World’s First USB 3.2 Speed Demonstration

The folks over at Synopsys have uploaded an interesting video on YouTube over the weekend. This one in particular is the world’s first demonstration of USB 3.2 performance with 20Gbps speeds. USB 3.1 Gen 1 of course reaches 5Gbps and USB 3.1 Gen 2 reaches 10Gbps. So that means USB 3.2 promises to deliver twice that much throughput.

The demonstration uses a standard USB Type-C cable on a Windows 10 host system running existing USB drivers. The target device however, is a Linux system configured as a mass storage device. They show a prototype hardware with the USB PHYs built on FinFET process with 10Gbps per lane. Through lane-bonding, Synopsys is able to achieve the 20Gbps USB 3.2 speeds. Watch the video below for yourself.

When Can We See USB 3.2 Devices Hit The Market?

This is merely an early tech demo and actual USB 3.2 devices are not expected to hit the market until late 2019. Thankfully, these are using standard USB type-C connectors and in fact, they used off-the-shelf Belkin USB 3.1 Type-C cables for the video demo. Which means when these do arrive, there are no changes necessary with the cables we use now.