Technology with support inter-peripheral interaction and display-over-USB

VGA, DisplayPort, HDMI, and DVI — those are among the video output cable types supported by Microsoft Corp.’s (MSFT) recent builds of Windows. But Windows 10 is expect to add another, far more flexible standard to that list — USB.

The latest additions to the Universal Serial Bus protocol have dramatically expanded the role of this robust I/O protocol. The USB 3.1 protocol is in many ways a watershed moment in advancing the standard towards ubiquity. It adds an envious set of feature improvements including:

Inter-peripheral communication

Imagine your phone is plugged into your computer via microUSB. Now it can access a USB-connected hard drive on another port to directly transfer files back and forth. Or it could access a keyboard plugged into another USB port… or a mouse… the possibilities are exciting.

High speed

USB 3.1 supports data transfer rates of up to 1.25 GBytes/sec (10 GBit/sec). That’s only a little more than half the throughput of HMDI 2.0 (which supports a theoretical max throughput of 2.25 GBytes/sec (18 Gbit/sec) per channel — but it’s more than enough to support a 2K external display.

High power devices — up to 100 Watts

Now it can not only talk to a 2K external display, it can power it, with no extra power cords.

Type-C reversible connectors

The plug can flip and still work the exact the same. As with Intel Corp.’s (INTC) proprietary Thunderbolt standard and Apple, Inc.’s (AAPL) proprietary Lightning standard, this makes it all the easier to plug in devices!

DisplayPort 1.3 support

DisplayPort in a universal cable — ’nuff said.

Read more: DailyTech – Windows 10 Adds USB 3.1 for Dual-Role Peripherals, External Display Support.