Intel Titan Ridge Thunderbolt 3 Controller Support Getting Squared Away For Linux

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Intel Titan Ridge Thunderbolt 3 Controller Support Getting Squared Away For Linux

Back in January was the announcement of Intel's "Titan Ridge" Thunderbolt 3 controllers that offer DisplayPort 1.4 support and optional USB-C computer port compatibility while retaining backwards compatibility...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Titan-Ridge-Thunderbolt-3-Linux

[M@GOid]

For a company that invests so much on Linux development, Intel's Thunderbolt support always looked lackluster to me. Somebody here that owns a PC with those, can comment on the Linux support as is today?

[polarathene]

If any Intel dev reads this thread and can comment why eGPU has to give 10Gbps to I/O data(unrelated to GPU) on the TB3 controller limiting it to 22Gbps, that'd be good to know?

I hope TB4.0 support will be good to go with PCIE 4/5(I'm hearing that 4 may be short lived?) motherboards once those start to be available around 2020? Extra bandwidth would be sweet

[starshipeleven]

For a company that invests so much on Linux development, Intel's Thunderbolt support always looked lackluster to me. Somebody here that owns a PC with those, can comment on the Linux support as is today?

TB is barely a rare gimmick even on Windows.

[wizard69]

Micheal

something to think about is benchmarks for common TB usages. For example access to disk arrays, access to video cards or compute modules, and maybe even small scale clustering. It is the possibility for clustering that i find interestingas motherboards will start to feature these high performance ports even at the low end.

My only complaint about TB is the stupid way Intel tried to keep the tech to themselves. Rather what was need was broad support in the micro controller wourld so that adoption would have been quick and easy. TB had huge potential for use in the instrumentation world but volumes there demand commercial chips that support the interface. Basically what is needed is chips with the port built in like so many of the USB supporting chips out there.

[wizard69]

TB is barely a rare gimmick even on Windows.

The problem with TB is the perception that it is a USB replacement. That isnt the point of TB, the fact is the bandwidth would be wasted on most USB use cases. Rather it is a high performance port that frankly most desktop users have little need for. As such it shouldnt surprise snyone that adoption is limited. Where it is used though it works great, you can hook up a disk array and get spectactular performance for example.

The only consummer uses that really shine are hooking up to docks for laptops and vieeo monitors that also act like docks. In this area TB is coming on strong in my opinion even if docking is limited to a small subset of laptop users that actually use a dock.

[doom_Oo7]

For a company that invests so much on Linux development, Intel's Thunderbolt support always looked lackluster to me. Somebody here that owns a PC with those, can comment on the Linux support as is today?

I've been using a laptop with thunderbolt2 ports since 2014 without any problems, everything always worked as far as I can remember.

[starshipeleven]

The problem with TB is the perception that it is a USB replacement.

No, the problem with TB is that it requires an additional controller and a ton of board design shenanigans (as you must route a displayport into it) plus the license fee, so it's very expensive to add, especially to a laptop.

We'll see this year when Intel integrates it in the CPU or Chipset or whatever, and drops the license fee.

[kapqa]

are any of these cards (titan ridge, alpine ridge , asus ex3 etc.) now somehow supported in Linux?