A little too fast finger on the camera may have happened to reveal the first information about Thunderbolt 5. This when an Intel employee happened to post a picture on Twitter after a visit to one of Intel’s development facilities.
An Intel employee on a study visit and a little too eager camera finger resulted in a post on Twitter that gave us the first information regarding the upcoming standard Thunderbolt 5. It did not take long for the original image to be downloaded from Twitter but the website Anandtech was fast enough to save the image and let it live on online.
In the picture, we can clearly see a couple of bits of information regarding Thunderbolt 5. Among other things, we see how it is still USB-C that will be responsible for the form factor. Something that will hopefully mean backward compatibility with older devices without the need for adapters. We also see how the next generation of the standard doubles the maximum speed from 40 Gbps to 80 Gbps. The information sheet attached to the image also lists PAM-3 as part of the forthcoming standard. Compared to the technology used today, this should lead to an increase of 50 percent when it comes to the number of pieces that can be sent each cycle.
Intel seems to have sorted out the technology. Exactly when it will be widely available to end consumers remains to be seen. As USB 4 and Thunderbolt 4 are connected today, we may have to wait until USB 5 is ready before we can take part in the next Thunderbolt generation.
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