Intel Announces Thunderbolt 5

[Darryl Ramm]

Intel announced Thunderbolt 5. Not seeing any mention of Apple announcing anything, cheering this on, etc.

https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/...ngous-monitors

Thunderbolt 5 supports 4x PCIe 4 lanes, I suspect interesting early use (on Macs and Windows laptops) to include Thunderbolt docks with multiple M.2 cards, whether they are PCIe 3 or 4. Once we have any systems that support it.

C'mon Apple your move... this needs a spin on Apple silicon, so something to look for in M3 based systems. If Apple does not deliver that it will be disappointing, but M3 has slipped a lot already and Apple's failed to deliver really high-end packaged version of silicon they had intended to. They need to ship M3 with a good performance kick and delivering bigger packaged CPUs/more memory. OTOH if Apple don't make a splash and get behind Thunderbolt 5 in a timely manner, and be seen to be doing it, I could see it harming Thunderbolt 5 and Apple themselves. So who knows.

(And if there are comments here that Apple invented or owns Thunderbolt I'm going to scream...)

[BScout]

As SoC, it's too late for M3 chips.
I expect it will show in M4 computers. Especially since Apple builds their own TB subsystem.
(Intel have, of course, announced TB5 in products before the end of the year.)

This is probably a good thing seeing as the cross-compatability between Intel TB and Apple TB has been an issue before and, at least, commercially accessible chips will be out for some time before Apple's implementation.

[JFreak]

May even be M5 if Apple does bigger updates on odd numbers and incremental tuneup on even numbers. Hopefully my logic is somehow flawed and they deliver new stuff when it is ready.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by BScout

As SoC, it's too late for M3 chips.
I expect it will show in M4 computers. Especially since Apple builds their own TB subsystem.
(Intel have, of course, announced TB5 in products before the end of the year.)

This is probably a good thing seeing as the cross-compatability between Intel TB and Apple TB has been an issue before and, at least, commercially accessible chips will be out for some time before Apple's implementation.

I guess you are right. But its a possibility it could be in M3, Thunderbolt 5 is based on USB 4 v2 underlying technology, that spec was published in June 2023? And Apple has had access to all during development. Like if they really really wanted to crunch it in they could try... but why risk it. They have to get the TSMC 3nm node delivering, hopefully fix whatever was up with the high-end interposer/packaging problems, etc. But the A17 has the lead on 3nm and maybe they have that licked, the A17 also had USB surgery to get to USB 3.2 Gen 2, so getting along the way of stuff needed for TB5... but yea nah.

[JCBigler]

They should just skip ahead and do Thunderbolt 10.