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FABIEN SANGLARD: Hi, everyone.
My name is Fabien Sanglard.
I'm a software engineer on Android Studio.
I'm part of the Applied Changes team, where
my area of expertise involved the development
pipeline, the deployment pipeline, and installation
speed.
And in this context, I wanted to give you
a few tricks about USB cable and how to pick them wisely.
So before I start, a quick recap on USB speed.
Since the beginning in 1996 with V1,
speed has increased tremendously.
It used to be a few kilobytes per second
and now we are well into the multi-gigabyte era.
So things are getting faster, things are good.
And it's a very simple technology when you look at it
and you don't look too much into the details.
You just grab a USB cable, connect the devices together,
and you have nothing to do.
It gets faster.
And the reason why you want to be on the faster side of things
is because it's 25% faster to use USB 3.0 over USB 2.0
if you're working with an APK, which is 15 megabytes.
So the quality of your USB connection
is directly correlated with your iteration speed.
It's very important to pay attention to that.
The reason of this talk is that there is a small catch.
Starting with USB 3.0, the cables have changed.
And it's kind of deceiving because if you
look at it from the outside, a USB 2.0 cable and a USB 3.0
cables-- they look very similar.
But let's look at what's inside.
With a USB 2.0 cable, you have four wires.
Two are here to provide power to the bus and two
are here to carry the signal.
And they share the bandwidth between
upstream and downstream.
USB 3.0-- things have changed.
A USB 2.0 cable is fully backward compatible
with USB 2.0, but you have one pair
of wires to carry the upstream and one
pair to carry downstream.
The case I want you to avoid is when
you have all expenses devices to run at USB 3.0 speed--
namely, the phone and a laptop.
But because you pick the wrong cable or the wrong hub,
you're denigrating your speed, you're
denigrating your experience to USB 2.0.
So to avoid this mistake, I came up with three simple rules.
Number one is to look for blue, number two
is to understand what USB-C means,
and number three is to be careful when
you chain USB devices together.
And we can look at every single one of them in detail.
And rule number one--
look for blue.
If you're working with a Type-A connector,
in like part of USB 3.0 spec recommends color-coded cables
that is able to carry USB 3.0 speed.
So if you're connected like that, you're good.
And the same goes with Type-B connector.
Which takes me to the second rule
about USB-C. This kind of connector
were released around the same time as the USB 3.1 aspect.
So it's a fair assumption to think
that they are somehow related--
one meeting the other.
But they actually are completely different.
There is no connection.
And the example I take is this cable
which came with the Nexus 6p.
It has a USB-C connector, however,
inside you have only four wires.
And it's a USB-2 cable.
And it's also true with a fairly recent phone.
Like for example, the Pixel 3a--
when I was gathering metric for this presentation,
I could not understand why my Pixel 3a was so slow.
It turned out, it's a USB-2 hub inside.
So when you're dealing with cable like that,
be very careful.
If this is what you have been plugging into your workstation
for years--
because it has a USB-C connector on,
you use it to swap with a Pixel 3 or a Pixel 2,
you're not going at the maximum speed.
So be careful with that.
If you're doing with those type of cables,
look for the super speed symbol.
And if it's a phone, there is no color coding there.
So look for the specs.
Last rule with one minute to finish--
this is my configuration at work.
Everything is plugging in my monitor.
I have my phone, I have keyboard, I have my mouse.
So when I come in the morning, I just plug my laptop
and I'm ready to go.
We've already looked at bad cable
can lower the entire pipeline.
There is no blue on those cable and they are wrong.
But the other case I want to bring your attention on
is the hub that you connect in between.
For example, this monitor--
there is no blue on the connector.
And it's just a USB-2 hub inside.
So be careful when you do that.
If you are in doubt, there is a way to verify at what speed
you are currently operating.
Plug everything, and on your favorite workstation,
you just type those commands.
And you can backtrack from there.
And that's all I had today.
Thank you.
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