While the Thunderbolt 4 controller has now been integrated into Tiger Lake CPUs, there’s another critical step taken by Intel to ensure more machines ship with Thunderbolt 4, and that’s Intel Evo. And it became the basis for the USB four specification,” expounded Ziller. On the spec, you know, we contributed the protocol to the USB group. And then last year, Thunderbolt four was integrated into the Tiger Lake processors.
We integrated starting with Thunderbolt 3 in the Tiger, sorry, in the Ice Lake processors. And the other is to open the technology spec to the industry, right and so we really delivered on both of those. “We're doing two big things in order to do that. We asked Ziller how the brand hopes to make the port more mainstream, aiding in its mass adoption.
#Is intel thunderbolt 3 the same as usb c windows
One of the biggest problems with Thunderbolt 3 was that the port was limited to high-end windows laptops or Macs only. Support for accessories with additional TB ports
#Is intel thunderbolt 3 the same as usb c full
This creates potential inequality amongst USB4 ports between different machines, so Thunderbolt 4 “now requires, the full two 4k displays (two dp1.4 streams) and also the full four PCIe Gen 3 lanes.” Another critical difference between Thunderbolt 4 and USB4 is the fact that Intel certifies all Thunderbolt accessories, while USB4-compatible accessories don’t go through any such process. For video, the minimum spec on USB-4 is also very low, with PCIe also being optional.
He goes on to clarify that while both standards boast of a 40Gb/s peak bandwidth, for Thunderbolt 4 it’s a minimum requirement while for USB4, the minimum spec is actually 20Gb/s. Given that Thunderbolt 4 and Thunderbolt 3 share the same overall bandwidth, we asked Jason what made Thunderbolt 4 stand out from USB4. So with Thunderbolt 4, we have docks now that have three downstream Thunderbolt ports.” He further goes on to say that each of these three Thunderbolt ports could further be expanded into USB-A ports (with the use of hubs) or video ports, 10gig ethernet even. Just to be clear, Thunderbolt 3 also supported docks, but Jason clarifies that “with Thunderbolt 3, you would have a docking station but you could only have one downstream Thunderbolt port, while other ports would be USB, or DisplayPort, or HDMI or something else. Essentially, over this singular port, you could connect external displays, while charging (or fast charging) your laptop, or connect multiple peripherals to leverage that whopping 40Gb/s bandwidth. Thunderbolt 4 continues to support this now well-adopted feature, but the Alternate Mode (parallel connection) allows you to maximise your port’s capabilities without having to spend on extra Thunderbolt cables, which don’t come cheap. Previously, Thunderbolt 3 only had support for daisy-chaining (Serial connection), which meant that if you had a monitor connected to your laptop over Thunderbolt 3, you could then further connect a Thunderbolt-compatible accessory to the monitor using another Thunderbolt 3 cable. The port also supports dual 4K displays and now, also comes with Thunderbolt Alternate Mode for USB Hubs. It is a singular port that is capable of transfer speeds of up to 40Gb/s, with a minimum bandwidth requirement of 32Gb/s over PCIe. Thunderbolt 4 is the latest version of Intel’s connectivity standard and promises some incredible things. It wasn’t until 2015, when Thunderbolt 3 was announced, that we saw this port become widespread on Windows machines. However, after hitting critical roadblocks, Intel and Apple sort of formed a partnership to develop the existing mini Display Port into a Thunderbolt port.
After experimenting with some designs, including the use of an optical cable embedded into a traditional USB port. This is because when Intel Labs was looking to take Thunderbolt mainstream, they needed a connector that would allow for power, data and a video signal to traverse over the same cable. In the beginning, Thunderbolt, as we’ve mentioned, was exclusive to the MacBook Pro. Ten years later, the Thunderbolt port has become a key pillar of Intel’s offering in modern-day laptops and we had the chance to sit down with Jason Ziller, Client Connectivity Division, Intel Corporation to get more insight into Thunderbolt and its latest iteration, Thunderbolt 4. Originally introduced and exclusively found on the 2011 MacBook Pro, the Thunderbolt port’s purpose was always to be a high-bandwidth port which would also be the singular point of connection for multiple peripherals. The Thunderbolt port has been the fastest and most versatile port for the past ten years when it comes to laptops.