Next-Gen Thunderbolt: Twice as Fast, But a Different Connector

Details have leaked about the next iteration of Intel's Thunderbolt connector. The good news: bandwidth will double, going up to about 40Gbps from its current 20. Power usage will drop by half, and it'll support PCI-e 3.0. The bad news: it uses a redesigned connector, and will rely on adapters for backward compatibility. From the article: "Doubling the available bandwidth will enable next-generation Thunderbolt controllers to drive two 4K displays simultaneously, where current controllers can only drive one. The new controllers will allegedly be compatible with a variety of other protocols as well, including DisplayPort 1.2, USB 3.0, and HDMI 2.0. Intel will offer two different versions of the controller—a version that uses four PCI Express lanes to drive two Thunderbolt ports and an "LP" (presumably "Low Power") version that uses two PCI Express lanes to drive one port."

Comments

Thunderbolt: The TIFF of cables

[ffkom]

Thunderbolt always reminds me of the TIFF "standard" for image files: Theoretically you can put anything in it, theoretically it supports every imaginable feature - but in practice, it's of little use - because there's almost no common denominator of what different implementations actually can deal with.

Plus, the idea of defining a "cabling" for the consumer market where every cable is on its own with regards to how it implements the physical layer is a very bad idea. It renders cables terribly expensive and you cannot be sure that the cable from vendor A will work well with the socket from vendor B.

Thunderbolt does USB, so no. (Also PCIe and HDMI)

[raymorris]

> I'm not sure there's anything that USB does that Thunderbolt can't do

Thunderbolt does PCIe and USB, so there is nothing USB can do that Thunderbolt can't. If there were, Thunderbolt would do it via USB.
Thunderbolt is basically PCIe + USB + HDMI + power, all on the same cable.

Re:Intentional sabotage?

[BitZtream]

I plugin 2 cables to dock my laptop. One power, one Thunderbolt.

The result is that when I plugin those two cables, my laptop suddenly sees 3 SSDs (the work at full speed), the Apple Thunderbolt monitor, 3 USB3 ports, external audio, and 2 additional monitors via display port, and a gigabit ethernet connection.

1 connection via thunderbolt hooks up literally 9 devices, and I've not used it yet but it also hooks up to a PCIe enclosure.

This allows my laptop to be pretty sparse on ports and light when I'm on the move, but full of devices when its sitting on my desk at home or the office.

And the thunderbolt connection blows the shitty USB protocol away, even for USB3 ... and I'm using TB1, not 2.

Thunderbolt is external PCIe. Don't knock it until you realize how useful it can be.

Re:New connector great thanks

[Dog-Cow]

The funny thing is that all of those were objectively better in performance than what PCs were using, with the (possible) exception of USB. Apple never went for the cheap option just for the sake of being cheap, but the rest of the industry never followed whole-heartedly, so Apple ended up with tech that died, except for niches.

USB is the one that Apple dove into and somehow (probably because of the promise of cheap peripherals) got PC makers to go along. The charge was led by Apple.