A few hours ago we commented that Lisa Su, the CEO of AMD was in Taiwan to meet with several companies there and assess the future of hers. Among the things that were discussed was AI, one of the key points for the following years, however, some of the company’s upcoming developments were also discussed.
Among them was a next-gen update from AMD that will finally include USB 4.0 support, something users have been eagerly awaiting.
AMD with USB4 support
This would come thanks to a collaboration with Asmedia, a leading company in Taiwan in this type of broadband connection technology.
The agreement would have been executed in such a way that the next generation of AMD already had this new support and therefore a desired and important advance for users.
What is USB 4.0?
The first thing we need to know is what this novelty is all about. And it is that the norm of USB 4.0 was announced 4 years ago, in 2019, and it wasn’t until 2021 that it started reaching devices in a more real way. However, AMD did not yet support this standard and we had to settle for using USB3.
This new version would come in the form of USB-C, leaving aside the known standard. So far, with the latest 3.2 maximum transfer speeds achieved reached up to 20 Gbps (2.5 GB/s), however, 4.0 would manage to offer up to 40 Gbit/s (5 GB/s), double its predecessor, which already worked with the USB-C port. If we upgraded to 3.0 (with the typical connection we all know and many of us still have), that would only give us speeds of 600MB/s, so the difference would be abysmal.
As so far, this version is compatible with previous ones, so you will be able to use, for example, a flash drive with USB4 technology in a USB3 or older port, however, it will only reach the speeds of this standard to which you connect, of course.
What we know so far about the AMD CEO’s trip to Taiwan is that apparently future AM5 motherboards will be those that support USB4, and which could launch next year in conjunction with the Ryzen 8000 “Zen 5” series of processors. Cards based on the current A620, B650 and X670 chipsets can also be updated to include the latest USB connectivity standard.
While this is all just a rumor, however, it seems pretty reliable, and the dates will be around that. That’s partly good news, although having to wait until next year isn’t quite what we’d like. So for now we’ll have to settle for 3.2 while waiting to see how these new AMD chipsets behave and see at what real speed we can transfer data to them.
Any news or information they bring to us from Taiwan, where they still meet, we will offer it to you at this time. Let’s see if they continue to give us more joy these days.
