From PC World: It’s official: The next-generation Thunderbolt spec will be called Thunderbolt 5, debuting next year with enough charging power and bandwidth to support eGPUs and a new class of “external AI devices.”
Intel teased the new Thunderbolt specification at the end of 2022, promising that the next-gen Thunderbolt would continue the trend of doubling bandwidth, all the way to 80Gbps in one direction. That included a promise, now confirmed, that the four lanes of Thunderbolt could be reconfigured to allow three lanes from a laptop to a monitor, rather than two. That will allow the option of a 120Gbps connection to a display, which Intel now refers to as Bandwidth Boost.
Thunderbolt 5 will eventually be integrated within Intel’s Core platforms, primarily laptops. Although Intel has a prototype dock and laptop that it will begin showing off to customers, integrated Thunderbolt 5 will debut in laptops “in 2024,” Intel executives said. Unfortunately, Intel is not saying whether that will be inside its new Meteor Lake chip or some other platform. Thunderbolt 4 and 5 will coexist for some time, though, Intel said, eventually giving way to the updated spec.
Intel’s discrete Thunderbolt 5 controller will be known as “Barlow Ridge,” a chip which Intel will sell to Thunderbolt dock and device makers.
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