Thunderbolt 4 has just begun to be widely used in the consumer field, but the people behind this technology are already looking forward to the next generation technology Thunderbolt 5; its bidirectional bandwidth is twice that of Thunderbolt 4, reaching 80Gbps. With the bandwidth enhancement function (Bandwidth Boost), it can be flexibly adjusted according to usage, supporting up to 120Gbps of video bandwidth, and at the same time doubling PCIe data transmission. According to the test results released by Intel, the sequential read and write speeds of external storage reached 6200MB/s and 5300MB/s respectively. When performing Thunderbolt point-to-point networking (Thunderbolt Networking), the bandwidth is doubled compared to Thunderbolt 4, and the data transmission speed between PCs is faster and more efficient.
The maximum bandwidth of Thunderbolt 4 is 40 Gbps, which allows support for up to two 4K resolution monitors (with a refresh rate of 60Hz), or one 8K monitor with a refresh rate of 60Hz. Increasing bandwidth means support for higher resolutions, more monitors, and refresh rates. Thunderbolt 5 can support multiple 8K or three 4K@144Hz monitors, and the FHD game screen refresh rate can reach 540Hz. In terms of scalability, you can also get a better experience when connecting an external graphics card (supporting the latest RTX 40 series graphics cards) and an external AI accelerator, improving the efficiency of tasks such as video creation and AI reasoning.
Thunderbolt 5 supports PD3.1 and has a charging power of up to 240W, which is significantly higher than the 100W of Thunderbolt 4. It not only allows more devices to be connected at the same time, but also allows high-performance PCs such as game laptops and workstations to unlock a new cable to achieve full expansion. experience.
In terms of compatibility, Thunderbolt 5 supports industry standards including USB4 V2, and is fully compatible with the previous generation of Thunderbolt and previous versions of USB. Intel said that computers and accessories based on the Thunderbolt 5 controller (code-named Barlow Ridge) are expected to be available in 2024, and plans to release technical information and development resources to Thunderbolt developers in the fourth quarter of this year.
Thunderbolt interface unified trend
In the past, whether it was a notebook or a PC, there were many types of interfaces, and users also needed to pay attention to different specifications of the same interface, which was not user-friendly. In 2011, Intel launched the first generation of Thunderbolt interface, which can realize video and data transmission with one interface. In 2015, Intel launched Thunderbolt 3, which uses standard USB C as the interface, supports video and data transmission and charging at the same time, and the bandwidth reaches 40Gbps, allowing Thunderbolt to enter the vision of more users. There are still several important nodes for Thunderbolt to be truly popularized on a large scale. In 2019, Intel opened the Thunderbolt 4 technical specifications to the USB Promoter Group, allowing more PCs and expansion devices to be compatible with Thunderbolt standard chips royalty-free, allowing Thunderbolt to be increasingly adopted in the form of a "strongest interface". At the same time, Intel's Evo platform standard uses Thunderbolt as a performance indicator, making Thunderbolt a "standard configuration" for Evo-certified PCs, further bringing Thunderbolt to consumers, and allowing more and more users to understand and use this advanced connection technology. According to reports, Windows, Linux, macOS, and ChromeOS all support Thunderbolt. Currently, more than 1,500 PCs and more than 1,000 accessories have completed Thunderbolt certification. Moreover, driven by Intel, 90% of the SKUs in the 13th generation of Core have Thunderbolt designs. Although price is a major drawback of Thunderbolt accessories, fortunately Intel has also taken it into consideration. The current standard price of a PC equipped with Thunderbolt 4 has dropped to $379. It is also hoped that in the future, more and more limited consumers will be able to purchase Thunderbolt certified products.
It can also be seen from the development of Thunderbolt in the past 12 years that Intel has been continuously extending the upper limit and boundaries of products and technologies on the one hand, and on the other hand, it has also held a big picture view as a leader in the PC industry, committed to promoting the development of the industry, improving standards, and optimizing user experience. Although Intel is known to almost every PC user, what is reflected in the eyes of users may be just the "tip of the iceberg" of Intel. On the PC, many of the functions, configurations, and applications that we use every day actually have the participation of Intel. Fu Bin, general manager of sales in China for Intel's Client Computing Division, mentioned that in the past few decades, Intel has explored and transformed from a single chip company to a platform-based company that integrates software, hardware, and services. Not only the newly upgraded Thunderbolt technology, Intel, as the setter of many industry standards, has promoted the development of more than 700 industry standards. For example, in terms of connection, Intel has also achieved rich results in the fields of wireless and wired connection technologies such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. There is also Intel's "core" competitiveness, Core and other computing platforms. While Intel is innovating to accelerate performance upgrades and feature extensions, it has also taken the lead in realizing the popularization of AI on the PC side, allowing today's notebooks and other PC products to provide a more intelligent and personalized user experience. In terms of software, Intel and its partners have worked together to promote the integration of Windows and Android platforms, unlocking the mobile application ecosystem experience on the PC side.
The launch of Thunderbolt 5 has made this "most versatile" and one of the mainstream PC interfaces more powerful, simplifying the connection threshold while improving the user experience in high data throughput scenarios. For the continuously growing content creators and heavy players, there is an additional solution for data transmission and device expansion. More importantly, Intel, as one of the industry leaders, will continue to promote I/O innovation. From the ever-expanding scale of Thunderbolt certified devices, it can be foreseen that as Intel cooperates with partners such as PCs, accessories, and cables, Thunderbolt will have a wider range of application scenarios and provide users with higher performance and richer function connection solutions. As Intel contributes Thunderbolt technology to the USB Association and has become the underlying technology of USB, Intel stated that it will work with the USB Association to develop new products and technologies.
