How USB 3.2 Remains Serial with Multiple Data Cables

usb-cwiring

This is a very ignorant question, as I am just getting into wiring diagrams and trying to understand them, but look at this picture of usb-C with usb 3.2:

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With 2 high speed data paths, plus the old usb 2.0 data wires still there, how is this still considered a serial device? It seems like it's sending more than one stream of data simultaneously. Are the multiple data streams resolved on the software side?

Best Answer

It seems like it's sending more than one stream of data simultaneously.

Those are still serial data streams, just like in ≥gbit ethernet, etc. There can be multiple serial streams running in parallel to increase the bandwidth, but it's not parallel data transmission by any reasonable definition. The streams are individually equalized, clock recovery is done for each of them individually, etc. They are independent other than participating as transports for a higher level protocol that bonds them for a given application.

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