Intel Announces Thunderbolt 5 With 120 Gbps Bandwidth Boost

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Intel Announces Thunderbolt 5 With 120 Gbps Bandwidth Boost

Intel today announced Thunderbolt 5 as their next-gen Thunderbolt standard that will allow 80 Gbps of bi-directional bandwidth or a "Bandwidth Boost" mode of up to 120 Gbps...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-Thunderbolt-5

[avis]

Who cares?

It looks like the industry is stuck on USB3 (also known as USB 3.1/USB 3.2/USB 3.2 Gen1). Even in 2023 laptops and motherboards have most of their USB3 ports running the oldest revision of the standard.

[kiffmet]

I'd much rather like to see the industry switching over to OCuLink, which can already operate at PCIe 4.0x8 speeds with zero additional development needed.

[debrouxl]

144 Hz, let alone 540 Hz refresh rate, for displays normally aimed at being watched by humans whose brains can't process images at rates close to those... why, just why ?
Oh yeah, newer and bigger is better and more expensive, too. Sorry, I temporarily forgot about that.

[Weasel]

Who cares?

It looks like the industry is stuck on USB3 (also known as USB 3.1/USB 3.2/USB 3.2 Gen1). Even in 2023 laptops and motherboards have most of their USB3 ports running the oldest revision of the standard.

You can probably get a PCIe card with it if you really need it.

[Weasel]

144 Hz, let alone 540 Hz refresh rate, for displays normally aimed at being watched by humans whose brains can't process images at rates close to those... why, just why ?
Oh yeah, newer and bigger is better and more expensive, too. Sorry, I temporarily forgot about that.

Human eye can even see 1000 fps. It's not quantized.

[dragorth]

Who cares?

It looks like the industry is stuck on USB3 (also known as USB 3.1/USB 3.2/USB 3.2 Gen1). Even in 2023 laptops and motherboards have most of their USB3 ports running the oldest revision of the standard.

This is not actually as true as you might think. For example, the current gen of AMD chipsets include USB4. But they are being marketed as USB 3 because MS has in their contracts that if they want to sell Windows on it, the USB 4 implementation has to include certain of the optional USB 4 parts, such as Thunderbolt 3.

I am of 2 minds on this. The first part is MS is trying to fix the mess the USB folks made in the frankly fragmented standard. On the other hand, I don't like MS forcing their ideas on the rest of the world like this.

So, you may have USB 4 ports capable of those faster speeds but the manufacturer is forced to promote it as USB 3.

[debrouxl]

Human eye can even see 1000 fps. It's not quantized.

Note that my post, which you quoted, mentions brain image processing rate, not eye optics

For brains, an image rate a bit above the fluid motion impression (24-25 FPS) is supposedly useful (although ISTR from my basic HMI courses at the CS university, over 15 years ago, that the conscious processing rate for useful changes is lower), but there's a wide margin between 24 FPS and 6 * 24 FPS, let alone 22.5 * 24 FPS.

[stormcrow]

This is not actually as true as you might think. For example, the current gen of AMD chipsets include USB4. But they are being marketed as USB 3 because MS has in their contracts that if they want to sell Windows on it, the USB 4 implementation has to include certain of the optional USB 4 parts, such as Thunderbolt 3.

I am of 2 minds on this. The first part is MS is trying to fix the mess the USB folks made in the frankly fragmented standard. On the other hand, I don't like MS forcing their ideas on the rest of the world like this.

So, you may have USB 4 ports capable of those faster speeds but the manufacturer is forced to promote it as USB 3.

It's also largely irrelevant as most people are going to look at USB4/TB4 prices, look at their personal wallet, then buy the USB 3 gear instead. Macs openly advertise USB4/TB4, but there isn't a lot of gear for it less than $300 just for docks, let alone monitors, drive enclosures, etc. It's one thing to spend your employer's money on high bandwidth gear and just using what you can personally afford (for example most hard drives won't saturate a 6Gib SATA link let alone a USB 3.2 10 Gib link and the CPU use is negligible on a modern CPU).

[Doomer]

Who cares?

It looks like the industry is stuck on USB3 (also known as USB 3.1/USB 3.2/USB 3.2 Gen1). Even in 2023 laptops and motherboards have most of their USB3 ports running the oldest revision of the standard.

So what? We stop all r&d until a certain % of marketshare is reached for a particular technology to start working on the next version?