In the third quarter of 2024, Intel officially released the Thunderbolt™ 5 chip for device-side, code-named Barlow Ridge. This chip is designed to meet the needs of high-performance peripherals, aiming to provide high-speed data transmission and multi-functional connectivity, bringing users a better user experience.
Significant performance improvement
Compared with Thunderbolt™ 4, Thunderbolt™ 5 has achieved a leap in multiple key performance indicators.
Data transmission
With a total bidirectional bandwidth of up to 80Gbps, Thunderbolt™ 5 upgrades the PCIe high-speed channel to version 4.0. Through 4 PCIe channels, it achieves a unidirectional data transfer rate of 64Gbps, which is twice the speed of Thunderbolt 4. In addition, its bandwidth enhancement function can be flexibly adjusted according to actual usage. In specific scenarios, the video bandwidth can be increased to up to 120Gbps. Such powerful transmission capacity greatly improves the speed and efficiency of data transmission. Whether it is professional users processing large files or gamers quickly loading large game resources, they can easily cope with it. Taking an external storage device as an example, its sequential read and write speeds reach 6200MB/s and 5300MB/s respectively with the support of Thunderbolt™ 5.
Display output
In terms of display output, Thunderbolt™ 5 has been upgraded to DisplayPort 2.1. This upgrade enables it to support simultaneous connection of 3 4K@144Hz monitors or two 8K@120Hz monitors. For gamers, the refresh rate of FHD game screens can reach 540Hz, bringing players a smooth and clear visual feast, allowing players to capture every detail more clearly in fierce game battles.
Power supply capacity
Thunderbolt™ 5 adopts the Power Delivery 3.1 standard and supports a maximum power supply of 240W. This means that high-performance PCs such as gaming laptops and workstations can be fully expanded with just one cable, without the need to connect multiple complicated power adapters, greatly improving the convenience of device use.
Good backward compatibility
While pursuing performance improvement, Thunderbolt™ 5 maintains excellent backward compatibility. It is compatible with Thunderbolt 4 devices. Users can use the Thunderbolt 5 interface to connect Thunderbolt 4 devices. Although the transmission speed will be limited by the Thunderbolt™ 4 specifications, this feature provides users with more flexible usage options and reduces the upgrade cost to a certain extent.
Wide application scenarios
From the perspective of application scenarios, the powerful performance of Thunderbolt™ 5 provides strong support for customers to expand their product lines. Thunderbolt™ 5 plays an important role in areas where Thunderbolt™ 4 performance is insufficient, especially for high-performance devices such as docking stations, external graphics card boxes and high-speed storage devices. For example, Purplelec's first Thunderbolt 5 mobile SSD enclosure TX001 and OWC's Thunderbolt 5 mobile SSD Envoy Ultra both use Intel's JHL9480 main control chip, making full use of the high-speed transmission performance of Thunderbolt™ 5 to provide users with fast and efficient data storage and transmission solutions.
Intel's Thunderbolt™ 5 chip, with its excellent performance improvement, good compatibility and wide range of application scenarios, will undoubtedly bring new changes in the field of high-performance device connections, bring more excellent user experience to professional users, gamers, etc., and promote the further development of related industries.
