Intel Thunderbolt 5 Could Boast Speeds of Up to 80 Gbps

Tsing

The FPS Review
Staff member
Joined
May 6, 2019
Messages
12,222
Points
113
intel-thunderbolt-3-connector-close-1024x576.jpg
Image: Intel



Intel’s next revision of Thunderbolt, its high-speed interface combining SuperSpeed USB, DisplayPort, PCIe, and DC power into one cable, could boast a massive increase in data transfer speeds. The improvement was teased this week by Intel’s director of I/O strategy in the Client Connectivity Division, Ben Hacker, who spoke to Tom’s Hardware and told its editors to expect a rough “doubling” of the current specification. Thunderbolt 4, the latest revision, features a maximum performance throughput of 40 Gbps.



“What I think we’re pretty confident of is for at least another speed bump somewhere, and who knows exactly what that is, but call it roughly a doubling,” Hacker said on The Tom’s Hardware Show. “Today our data path bandwidth within Thunderbolt 4 is kind of aligned...
Click to expand...

Continue reading...


 
I honestly can't see Apple jumping on a next gen TB so I don't see this taking off unless it becomes open.
 
kcthebrewer said:
I honestly can't see Apple jumping on a next gen TB so I don't see this taking off unless it becomes open.
Click to expand...
I agree about Apple but Thunderbolt continues to gain in adoption if for nothing else because it's offering a way to get more display features out there. I've already noticed how there are quite a few recent laptop releases that only have HDMI 2.0b instead of 2.1 but they do have a thunderbolt connection that can exceed it. Even if it isn't royalty-free like DP the incentive to have an all-in-one port is hard to pass up, especially in the mobile market. What they lose in fees can easily be recouped with less hardware.
 
This would be great for external SSD but will we ever see TB in the wild other than mac?
 
Brian_B said:
TB 3 is now royalty free (it wasn’t initially), and during the TB4 reveal Intel has said moving forward that will continue to apply to future versions.
Click to expand...
I doubt we'll see this overpower the stranglehold HDMI has the rest of the market but on the PC front, this is a recipe for success.
 
Burticus said:
This would be great for external SSD but will we ever see TB in the wild other than mac?
Click to expand...
Well, it's out there. Many laptops have TB for the same reasons Macs do. My Dell XPS 15 from last year has at least two, if not three; and a XPS13 from 2017 had two.

Where it's difficult to get TB is in consumer desktops, since most of the benefits aren't needed, especially in the non-premium space. Further, the need to pipe video over TB as part of the TB spec complicates things. We basically need AMD and Nvidia (and Intel...) to put TB ports on their discrete GPUs. And these ports also need to be able to supply power to the spec, which means even more power availability needed to be added to GPUs.

And I'm not really interested in the alternative, with display output data from the GPU data being routed back through the board and muxed with other data streams to be run out TB. Too many 'moving parts' involved that could break things like VRR and HDR, limit maximum refresh rates, and so on.

Still, if discrete GPUs were to grow TB ports, I think that'd be a step in the right direction!


Now for SSDs though, I don't see an overwhelming benefit. Many are just now getting to the point of using NVMe to USB controllers inside, which can enable up to 1GB/s transfer speeds. Obviously straight PCIe, which is what Thunderbolt is, would be faster and could allow up to 3.5GB/s today and ~7GB/s with the announced TB5. There's just a cost involved that seems somewhat prohibitive at the moment, and when you consider where speeds greater than 1GB/s would be really needed for an external drive, it's easy to see that these drives wouldn't be produced in mass quantities until the pricing comes down.

Which it will! NVMe controllers are already simpler than SATA SSD controllers, and controllers that integrate TB functionality should be simpler still. More power hungry perhaps, but there'd be no need for a protocol conversion since the data path is all PCIe all the way.

Peter_Brosdahl said:
I doubt we'll see this overpower the stranglehold HDMI has the rest of the market but on the PC front, this is a recipe for success.
Click to expand...
I'm not sure how the licensing works, but HDMI does definitely run across TB now. Case in point would be the 'dumb' TB to HDMI cables available on the market, of which I have a few myself. There are USB-C to HDMI cables as well, and I don't really know the details of how they're different. I assume that the difference has something to do with bandwidth on top of the protocols supported.

And yeah, sadly, HDMI isn't going away. It's the 'warm and fuzzy' solution for the media license holders.
 
LazyGamer said:
I'm not sure how the licensing works, but HDMI does definitely run across TB now.
Click to expand...
For sure but I meant having the actual ports on televisions. Just think how many years people have pushed for DP and that never really happened outside a couple of mythical models most people never saw. We are seeing integration on monitors though but that's always been where HDMI has a lesser presence.
 
Peter_Brosdahl said:
For sure but I meant having the actual ports on televisions. Just think how many years people have pushed for DP and that never really happened outside a couple of mythical models most people never saw. We are seeing integration on monitors though but that's always been where HDMI has a lesser presence.
Click to expand...
Yup. What's left of physical media and everyone that serves streaming media is invested in HDMI and HDCP.

No reason there can't be DP / TB ports on TVs, technically of course.

Peter_Brosdahl said:
I always get a grin when I read the disclaimers on devices stipulating "may not reach advertised speeds depending on . . . "
Click to expand...
I'm always surprised when I do!
 
Tons of docking stations or lort replicator. They charge the laptop give you severak USB ports, 3 display ports.. and are super convenient. More power to them.. for laptops. But if I can build out a external raid 5 setup populated with high capacity ssd drives.. why wouldn't I?
 
LazyGamer said:
Well, it's out there. Many laptops have TB for the same reasons Macs do. My Dell XPS 15 from last year has at least two, if not three; and a XPS13 from 2017 had two.
Click to expand...

Man I have like 5 laptops in my house right now of various ages, and have been getting work laptops every 3 years for the last....25 years? I've never seen a TB on them. Maybe it's exclusive to the high end stuff.
 
Burticus said:
Man I have like 5 laptops in my house right now of various ages, and have been getting work laptops every 3 years for the last....25 years? I've never seen a TB on them. Maybe it's exclusive to the high end stuff.
Click to expand...
I just retired a laptop over the weekend. I'll hold on to it because it's a bit of a novelty device but it's now found its way to the closet. A Toshiba Qosimo that had a 120 Hz 3D 1080p, plus 3D camera and a GTX 560M. It was pretty cool back in the day. One of my first USB 3.0/SATA III devices as well. Also has what I still consider the best speakers I've ever heard on a laptop. Meanwhile, getting my MSI GT80 Titan ready to give my wife as I wait for an ASUS ROG with the 115W variation of the RTX 3070, 17.3" 300 Hz 1080p screen, and Ryzen 8C/16T cpu to arrive sometime around June. It has TB on it with display connectivity over TB.
 
Burticus said:
Maybe it's exclusive to the high end stuff.
Click to expand...
It's not uncommon for a USB 3.2 or some-such but only certain models get the full package with display connectivity options. I've got 3.2c on my X570 motherboard but it doesn't support all the features. They really made a mess of the specification branding, and there's a lot of articles about it out there, once things got beyond 3.0.
 
Burticus said:
Man I have like 5 laptops in my house right now of various ages, and have been getting work laptops every 3 years for the last....25 years? I've never seen a TB on them. Maybe it's exclusive to the high end stuff.
Click to expand...
TB3 and USB C can share the same connector/port, and a lot of laptops do this.
 
Burticus said:
Man I have like 5 laptops in my house right now of various ages, and have been getting work laptops every 3 years for the last....25 years? I've never seen a TB on them. Maybe it's exclusive to the high end stuff.
Click to expand...
That's definitely part of it.

TB up until TB3 is 'extra', with a separate chipset and so on required. And also Intel, pretty much, for a number of reasons. AMD support is on the uptick, but as you note that it's not necessarily that common, they're a fraction of a fraction of the market.

Biggest thing is that USB4 = TB3, and it's open. Hopefully that means more adoption in more market segments!

Peter_Brosdahl said:
It's not uncommon for a USB 3.2 or some-such but only certain models get the full package with display connectivity options. I've got 3.2c on my X570 motherboard but it doesn't support all the features. They really made a mess of the specification branding, and there's a lot of articles about it out there, once things got beyond 3.0.
Click to expand...
USB is... a nightmare of Intel's creation. Divergent signaling standards, power standards, connector standards, cable quality standards... Intel left 'interpretations' up to the market about the same way AMD did Freesync.

Theoretically, USB4 will be a bit of a 'convergence' of all that. Thunderbolt ports still have to support all legacy USB standards, so USB4 will as well, along with all the new stuff.

Biggest boost is the PCIe-based signalling, not so much for bandwidth itself, but for the lower overhead and latency for devices that need or at least can make use of higher than USB performance.

Biggest drawback is that security for TB / external PCIe is still a bit of an unknown. USB had its own issues over the years, and still does I believe, and it remains to be seen how well Intel secured TB. Like Skylake, as market penetration increases, so does the scrutiny!
 
Grimlakin said:
Tons of docking stations or lort replicator. They charge the laptop give you severak USB ports, 3 display ports.. and are super convenient. More power to them.. for laptops. But if I can build out a external raid 5 setup populated with high capacity ssd drives.. why wouldn't I?
Click to expand...
And if your laptop is even just 'better equipped', those docks are going to cost.

$200 to $300 for a decent dock that can power a mid-range spec easily.

I just bought one for my XPS 15...

Grimlakin said:
But if I can build out a external raid 5 setup populated with high capacity ssd drives.. why wouldn't I?
Click to expand...
Mostly because there's a latency penalty to moving storage outside. No matter what, internal is going to be faster.

Obviously this may not matter for many applications. I can attest to doing all sorts of sordid things with external drives.

But if you're going external, you're almost certainly doing it more for convenience than speed. That convenience may be having a smaller main enclosure, including having a laptop, or may simply be a lack of internal connectivity, or the desire to move the storage between hosts and / or locations, and I absolutely get all those!
 
I thought docks were largely replaced by those USB C hubs?

Are you a human?

www.newegg.com www.newegg.com

I've not used a dock in ... ever, I have to admit though
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Become a Patron!
Back
Top