this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2023
531 points (97.8% liked)
Technology
59377 readers
4666 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I just wish they didn't come with chips inside our cables.
You need that for power regulation. One of the reasons that you can use a USB-C lead with anything is because all of the devices that require different power will just tell the cable that and the chip inside the cable deals with it. Otherwise there would have to be different cables for different voltage requirements.
You can do cable detection with just a few resistors. Why make everyone use active cables just for basic functionality? Aside from exceptional rare circumstances, consumer grade cables should be passive devices IMO.
They don’t use cable ICs for basic power use. The IC in the cable (different ICs for different capabilities) is used for high power negotiation (ie the cheap thin cable won’t be able to do 100W, and the lack of chip ensures this safety requirement) and also for active equalization do you can get 40Gbps.
It’s a good thing, and cheap cables don’t need it at all. The system falls back safely.
Pull up resistors have solved the same problem much more simply for decades. Even with ICs, manufacturers can still make weak cables that lie about their capacity then burst into flames. The IC is not what making the cable safe, it's the manufacturer. And if all else fails, the host can still directly measure cable resistance with some help from the client.
I mentioned this in another post, but yes, resistor dividers are useful and have been used for ages. However things like component aging/damage and simply having enough headroom between different options limits the number of discrete states you can convey with a resistor divider.
I’m usually not a fan of overcomplicated solutions, but these identity chips aren’t that.