Connecting Intel Alder Lake Systems Via USB4/Thunderbolt Can Be Faster Come Linux 5.19

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Connecting Intel Alder Lake Systems Via USB4/Thunderbolt Can Be Faster Come Linux 5.19

A feature of Thunderbolt seemingly not widely leveraged is allowing two distinct hosts/systems to be connected over a Thunderbolt cable that can then be used for tunneling arbitrary data packets using high-speed DMA rings. Should you find yourself using such a setup, starting with Linux 5.19+ it should open the door for being much faster when running on latest-generation Intel hardware for USB4/Thunderbolt...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Thunderbolt-XDomain-Bonding

[Loranga]

Could we start to see lower-latency clusters and/or private clouds built on Thunderbolt connectivity rather than Ethernet?

[CommunityMember]

Could we start to see lower-latency clusters and/or private clouds built on Thunderbolt connectivity rather than Ethernet?

Ethernet has not been the choice for low latency interconnect for the large cluster HPC crowd for decades (that would probably be Infiniband and/or RapidIO). As with much else, all technologies may have a specific use case.

[smotad]

Now where did I leave my copy of Laplink?

[flower]

Could we start to see lower-latency clusters and/or private clouds built on Thunderbolt connectivity rather than Ethernet?

as long as intel insists that any thunderbolt connection has to supply a display signal and doesnt certify any thunderbolt cards which work without a thunderbolt header: no. just not enough links to connect mutiple machines

(imho that really sucks from intel... i'd really love to use multiple thunderbolt connections on my vm-server)

[zboszor]

Now where did I leave my copy of Laplink?

I haven't used that for decades. Maybe a one-on-one Doom multiplayer game in DOSBOX can utilize this direct connection?

[lejeczek]

Cannot wait to shed the weight of all NICs and have host to host direct link that way instead - only hoping that AMD's USB4 and onward, will also cover this properly.

[Lycanthropist]

Does anyone know when USB 4 expansion cards will be available? I would like to put one into my Threadripper System.