Intel cranks up speed of Thunderbolt 3, builds in support for USB

From InfoWorld: Intel is giving Apple and other laptop makers a reason to put its Thunderbolt high-speed data ports back in their next ultrathin laptops: Thunderbolt 3.0 ports will use the same Type C connector as USB 3.1 -- but when connected to other Thunderbolt devices, will run up to four times as fast.

Thunderbolt 3 can transfer data at a whopping 40Gbps, twice as fast as Thunderbolt 2, which was introduced in 2014.

Found in Macs and some Windows PCs, Thunderbolt technology connects computers to peripherals such as external storage devices and even graphics cards. Laptops with Thunderbolt 3 ports will be released by the end of the year, said Kirk Skaugen, senior vice president and general manager of Intel's PC Client Group, during a keynote at Computex in Taipei.

The faster pipes in Thunderbolt 3 will allow two 4K monitors to be connected to a computer simultaneously. A user will be able to transfer a 4K movie from an external storage device to a PC in 30 seconds, said Jason Ziller, marketing director at Intel, during a briefing session.

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