Intel Teases Next-Gen Thunderbolt, With Peak 80Gbps Speeds

HAIFA—At the Intel Tech Tour 2022 event ongoing in Israel this week, Intel demonstrated briefly, in the midst of a presentation on the current and future state of Thunderbolt connectivity, what it says is a working sample of next-generation Thunderbolt, claiming it will double the potential peak throughput. Demonstrating a lab-environment prototype system via a teaser video, the company claims that it was executing Thunderbolt transfers at up to 80Gbps.

Intel did not divulge a whole lot else about the setup, except to point out that it was achieving the 80Gbps transfer rates by the use of two discrete 40Gbps channels. The most recent version of the Thunderbolt spec, Thunderbolt 4, tops out at 40Gbps.

The 80Gbps tease was part of a larger state-of-Thunderbolt presentation given to journalists and analysts at the Intel Design Center (IDC) in Haifa. IDC has been heavily involved in the development and execution of Thunderbolt tech over the years. Yehonadav Moshe, who is VP of Intel’s Client Computing Group and GM of its Client Connectivity Division Engineering Group, rattled off a host of Thunderbolt milestones. Among them is the shift to the USB Type-C physical connector in 2015 and the integration of Thunderbolt 3 and 4 support into “Ice Lake” and “Tiger Lake” silicon, respectively, in 2019 and 2020.

Thunderbolt timeline
(Credit: John Burek)

But the on-video glance at the amped-up Thunderbolt prototype was a surprise. Though perhaps not entirely for keen watchers of the storage space: It comes on the heels of the announcement by USB-IF of the USB4 Version 2.0 spec, which (likely not coincidentally) outlines an 80Gbps mode, too.

Drawing Conclusions From a Capture

Speaking with Moshe after the presentation, he was unable to elaborate much more on the new-gen Thunderbolt, apart from mentioning the synchronicity with USB4 Version 2.0. When asked about the potential adoption of (or rationale for) this new Thunderbolt so soon after Thunderbolt 4, he discussed usage cases such as highly demanding content creators moving large video files to and from banks of NVMe solid-state storage in a production flow, as well as the increasing file sizes of ever-larger, very-high-res video such as the emerging 8K.

As you can see in this crop-in of an image from the video snippet, what we presume is a high-speed Thunderbolt device (the module at left below, attached to the system and lying on the desk) is an external SSD.

(Credit: John Burek)

Whatever the case, the board on the desk is connected via a USB Type-C cable to what appears to be a PCI Express card, as well as, presumably, to a power source offscreen. The Thunderbolt functionality may be being added via the PCI Express card, which has an unfamiliar daughtercard sticking out the top.

(Credit: John Burek)

Intel Thunderbolt future generation PCIe
(Credit: John Burek)

More to come on the next version of Thunderbolt as we get additional info. Moshe noted that the next-gen spec doesn’t even have an official name yet. We’d gather “Thunderbolt 5,” but we’re not sure quite yet how this will shake out, and if other, undiscussed features will merit a full-number-version tick-up from 4 to 5.