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Intel Adopts USB-C Connector For 40Gbps Thunderbolt 3, Supports USB 3.1, DP 1.2

Posted by timothy on from the ok-that's-pretty-cool dept.

MojoKid writes: The high speed Thunderbolt interface standard, which is used for everything from hyper-fast external storage solutions to external graphics cards, has been slow to take off. You can blame the high-priced Thunderbolt peripherals and the uber-expensive cables (at least when compared to your garden-variety USB cables). For most people, USB 3.0 is "good enough" and making a huge investment into the Thunderbolt ecosystem has been reserved for those in the professional video editing arena. However, Intel is looking to change all of that with Thunderbolt 3. Thunderbolt 3 once again doubles the maximum bandwidth, this time jumping from 20Gbps to a whopping 40Gbps. While that is impressive in its own right, the truly big news is that Thunderbolt 3 is moving away from the Mini DisplayPort connector and is instead adopting the USB-C connector. As a result Thunderbolt will also support USB 3.1 (which is currently spec'd at 10Gbps) and can optionally provide up to 100W of power (in compliance with the USB Power Delivery spec) to charge devices via USB-C (like the recently introduced 12-inch Apple MacBook).

4 of 179 comments (clear)

  1. Re:2x or 4x the bandwidth is not enough by olsmeister · · Score: 5, Funny

    Fine. In base 2, the new revision is 10x the bandwidth.

  2. Re:Where is my high speed LAN? by threephaseboy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I don't know about other operating systems, but If you connect two or more Macs together with Thunderbolt, you get a virtual ethernet interface (just like you did with FireWire).
    Great if you have two Macs with fast storage, but for everything else, I'm waiting for a 10GbE Thunderbolt adapters to come down in price.

    --
    .
  3. Re:One port to rule them all... by hattig · · Score: 5, Interesting

    And for most users, that one cable is going to be a bog-standard USB 3.1 passive cable, that can still be used for 20Gbps Thunderbolt, as well as USB 3.1 and DisplayPort. This is going to be massive news for consumer docks.

    If you absolutely need more than 2GB/s for your attached RAID/GPU then you will need an active Thunderbolt cable to reach 40Gbps.

    I'm sure this use case was part of the USB Type C plan.

  4. Re:One connector to rule them all. by Dixie_Flatline · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Not everyone needs more than one.

    Whenever you post to /., remember that YOU'RE the weird one. You've got more rigorous demands than most people. There are lots and lots of people that don't need more than one port, and will be delighted that they don't have to even think about what sort of connector they'll need for whatever peripheral they have. Everything will come with USB-C, they've only got one port and nothing to sort out.

    For those of us that need more, there are plenty of options, but man, I have lots of people in my life that need ZERO ports on their laptop.