How fast is Thunderbolt 5?
Intel said this next-generation Thunderbolt will deliver 80 Gbps (gigabits per second) of bi-directional bandwidth (40 Gbps + 40 Gbps) and, over three lanes at 40 Gbps each, will allow up to 120 Gbps for the best streaming experience. intensive video display.
The new speeds of Thunderbolt 5 are therefore up to three times faster than those of Thunderbolt 4.
This is a particularly significant increase, given that Thunderbolt 4 didn’t even increase bandwidth when it succeeded Thunderbolt 3 in 2020. Thunderbolt 4 was more about setting common standards than increasing bandwidth. speed.
See also: Thunderbolt 4 vs Thunderbolt 3 vs USB-C
According to Intel’s Ziller, the next Thunderbolt will automatically switch from 80Gbps to 120Gbps operation only when connected to a display that requires more than 80Gbps, such as with 8K HDR monitors or a 4K display at 240 Hz.
A bandwidth-intensive display is “really the biggest thing that’s going to have very high bandwidth requirements that only go in one direction,” Ziller said. Storage data transfer is usually bi-directional in nature.
Intel has already mentioned the use of “80G PHY technology”, which refers to the physical layer.
Getting more technical, the PHY is based on “a new PAM-3 modulation technology”.
It all depends on how the 0s and 1s are transmitted. Traditional NRZ encoding allows a 0 or a 1 (i.e. a single bit) to be transmitted. A scheme that allows two bits to be transferred is called PAM-4 (Pulse Amplitude Modulation).
However, Intel is working on “PAM-3”, which is a technology where the data line can carry either a -1, a 0 or a +1. PAM-3 signal encoding uses three bits of data per clock cycle instead of two bits.
80-120 Gbps is pretty special considering USB-C’s average data speed is 5 Gbps and a million miles off USB 2.0’s 480 Mbps.
