Passive, active, and distance. While it sounds like it's connected to wattage ratings for a cable, passive and active don't relate to that aspect at all. Instead, it's entirely dealing with data.

A passive Thunderbolt 3 cable supported USB 3.1 at up to 10 Gbps, but an active Thunderbolt 3 cable shunted USB to separate wires in the port and cable, limiting the data rate to USB 2.0’s measly 480 ...

Up to 80 Gbps data transfer, based on a new physical layer architecture, using existing 40 Gbps USB Type-C passive cables and newly-defined 80 Gbps USB Type-C active cables.

According to MaxLinear, the 5-nm PAM4 DSP can yield up to a 40% power savings over competitor solutions when used in active electrical cable (AEC) applications. Unlike passive cables, active ...

If you’ve just bought a new 4K TV, you might be wondering if you need to buy a new HDMI cable to go with it. If you already have an HDMI cable, the quick answer is: Probably not.

As a result, the DisplayPort 2.1b update will provide for up to 3X the cable length for UHBR20 GPU-to-display connections compared to existing VESA certified DP80 passive cables.

Up to 80 Gbps operation, based on a new physical layer architecture, using existing 40 Gbps USB Type-C passive cables and newly-defined 80 Gbps USB Type-C active cables.