Ask HN: Why doesn't USB C need many pins?

2 pointswbsun3 comments

I’ve seen com/serial ports, parallel ports, DVI, SCSI ports, etc. All have many many pins, but now USB C (and USB in general) can do everything those ports did with simpler physical interface and fewer pins. How does USB do that? What has been changed or advanced to make those ports look so dumb and silly? :D

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Much higher signal frequencies allow more data per wire.

Yep, specifically serdes technology allows multi-gigahertz serial signaling instead of megahertz parallel signaling that was used in older standards. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SerDes

I'm not sure what you mean by "many pins". USB C has 24 pins in it. HDMI has 19 pins, DVI has up to 31, old parallel scsi has a lot, but modern SAS is 31. USB C seems to be comparable to others that carry similar signaling. If you're looking at a small number of pins for power and bandwidth 10gb poe is 8 pins and the range is much farther than most of these others are rated for.

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