USB Type-C is a physical connector type that is symmetric across the x-axis and y-axis, meaning that there are two orientations of the cable that can be plugged into a receptacle. A USB device is required to function normally regardless of cable orientation; for this reason, the USB Type-C pinout includes a duplicate of each. The duplicate pins in a USB-C receptacle are shown in Figure 1-2.

Pins A5 and B5 of a Type-C receptacle are Configuration Channel (CC) pins. The USB Type-C specification implemented the CC channels on the connector to detect the orientation of the cable. After detecting the cable orientation, a mux is used to route the data signals to the appropriate pins.