Thunderbolt 5.0 unveiled with 240 Watts fast charging and up to three times more bandwidth than Thunderbolt 4.0

[Redaktion]

Intel has revealed new standards for Thunderbolt 5.0 connectors, coming to laptops in early 2024. It can output data at up to 120 Gbps, charge peripherals at 240 Watts and power multiple 8K monitors.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Thunderbolt-5-0-unveiled-with-240-Watts-fast-charging-and-up-to-three-times-more-bandwidth-than-Thunderbolt-4-0.748684.0.html

[somebody]

that's a great news 👍

[Bizarro_NikoB]

Finally! Excited for the performance bumps to new eGPUs that incorporate this technology.

[NikoB]

On the optics front, Thunderbolt 5.0 can output video to "multiple" 8K monitors

Thus, even a bandwidth of "120Gbps" is not enough to transmit a 30-bit 8K lossless 4:4:4 signal at 60Hz to 2 monitors simultaneously.

And only in 24 bits 2x8k@60Hz 4:4:4 without lossy DSC compression is possible in "120Gbps mode".

There will be even more problems with cheap cables - especially non-branded Chinese ones.

Obviously, as I have already written many times about TB5+/DP2.0+, an urgent transition to optical data cables is needed, which will immediately remove all restrictions on cable length, at least for ordinary consumer homes. And power can, as before, be transmitted in one braid using copper conductors.

Optics will provide two powerful advantages:
1. Bandwidth from 500 Gbit/s immediately - even a full x16 pci-e 4.0 link on an external video card is easily provided.
2. You can move all the noisy PC units at home to another room or utility room and work/play in complete silence despite 100% load on either the processor and/or gpu. The monitor and everything else will be connected to a PC/laptop remote to another room with a cable at least 20-30m long, no problem with optics.

I increasingly do not understand why Intel developers continue to be stupid and do not switch to optics. Everything is ready for this.

An optical universal connector on PCs/laptops from 500 Gbit/s, that's what we need right now.

[anan]

Wasn't the original Thunderbolt 1 supposed to be implemented with optical cables? That never materialized even in later versions. Likely because copper cables were just "good enough" for the features that were implemented. And optics would likely require expensive additional hardware/connector.

[NikoB]

Likely because copper cables were just "good enough" for the features that were implemented. And optics would likely require expensive additional hardware/connector.

No copper cable is "good enough" because...have a shameful limit of 1.2m maximum for TB3-5.

We urgently need optical ports from 500 Gbit/s on PC/laptops, which allow you to connect all peripherals to PCs/laptops with one cable and with long distance from main unit.

With the monstrous consumption and noise of modern extremely backward technical processes (and there will be no better way on silicon, this is a technological dead end) - there is no place for a system unit and a laptop in high load mode next to the owner who wants to sit in complete peace and quiet. At least one problem can be solved ELEMENTARY with optical cables - moving the noisy hardware outside the living/office rooms.


We have been waiting for 8k monitors (otherwise ppi above 220 on large diagonals) for many years. Filthy Google deliberately spoiled and is spoiling our vision, the entire population of the planet, who are forced to use their filthy chrome with the non-disabled buggy and cloudy black and white anti-aliasing.

But even at 8K in 2D, for even regular surfing and various professional work, we need 30-36 bit panels at 120Hz+ with a real response time of less than 7ms on B2W/G2G.

Therefore, TB5 is already obsolete (and the developers are well aware that it is outdated before it even comes out - that's why they created a desperate 120Gbps mode, which is still not enough for 8k@120Hz/30-bit 4:4:4 monitors without DSC lossy compression ) - now you need a video interface of at least 200 Gbit/s. And taking into account all other requests, this should definitely be 500 Gbit/s optics.

This brings up another key issue - as I've written many times over the years - RAM bandwidth is shamefully low on the x86 platform. Already now, RAM should pump at least 200 GB/s even on ordinary PCs/laptops, not to mention top-end ones that are required to pump 350-400 GB/s, like the Apple M2 Max.

x86 is suffocating with slow RAM, hence the shameful attempts to increase the L3 cache to huge proportions (which is still useless) and even attempts to introduce an on-chip L4 cache.

Memory controllers on x86 should long ago be at least 256-bit, and preferably 512-bit, as in the Apple M2 Max.

Slow memory severely limits external devices and interaction with processor cores and other logic on the chip. This is the Achilles heel of x86, which is only getting worse and worse every year against the backdrop of the success of competitors, primarily Apple.

[YUKI93]

Finally! Excited for the performance bumps to new eGPUs that incorporate this technology.

IKR! About friggin' time we see new generation of eGPU. I still love the idea of eGPU as I can keep desktop-grade performance at home and have mobile-grade efficiency when travelling outstation.