Will there be 2m (or even 3m, if using the same tech as currently only Apple seem to do? †) Thunderbolt 4 cables that can do 240W power? (most currently do max 100W.)
Thunderbolt 5: will this differ from USB 80Gbps? (presumably “5”, as not even announced yet!)
AFAIR doesn’t TB3/4 offer better latency than USB; hence why people use it over USB? Will this remain into the 80Gbps future, so that it’ll still better than using USB 80Gbps in at least this respect – otherwise why bother with TB at all?
† re. Apple’s 3m TB4 cable: For all the money they charge, for USB it says “USB 3.1 Gen 2 data transfer at up to 10Gb/s” – not even USB 20Gbps.
Unclear. There should be longer Thunderbolt cables coming and almost certainly longer USB4, but I can’t find reliable information about lengths and when, probably because it’s still being engineered and tested.
On power, Thunderbolt relies on the USB Power Delivery specification, so it’s possible that there will be a Thunderbolt 4 update that incorporate the latest PD.
Intel and the USB-IF still seem far apart on a merger—they even trash talk a bit.
Thunderbolt has a huge number of extra things that aren’t in USB4, which is a subset of Thunderbolt 3. My book explains it—or search for Intel’s presentation deck on Thunderbolt 4 that goes into it. Thunderbolt 4 is a robust computer-oriented peripheral, display, and power backbone with alternate modes that help it work in many different ways beyond data transfer. USB (1 to 4) is a peripheral standard that encompasses mobile, desktop, and other devices, and increasingly has a robust video component, but isn’t designed to be as multifarious.
Related: very few people need 40 Gbps, much less 80 Gbps. Improved SSDs at lower cost will mean most people will want ~35 Gbps as a baseline but also a maximum to achieve highest drive performance. But unless you’re doing massive reads/writes or external GPU computation, etc., you won’t need > 40 Gbps.
Yup, it’s a non-2x2 cable. So it can carry Thunderbolt 4 at 40 Gbps or USB4 at 20 Gbps (due to length).
Sure for now, but the going forward, increased speed means things like 8K/10K HDR+ video are possible, and more importantly, having ONE connection that the host device can connect to all other peripherals (display, storage, audio interfaces, etc.), instead of having to have separate connections to each one.
I guess we’ll likely still see TB (TB5) remain as the superset protocol, then. Intel did originally aim it to grow to up to 100Gbps, so it’ll be interesting to see what comes after – imagining “OptiBolt™ – powered optical/copper over distances of 250m (820ft)!” or something, lol.
USB4 20Gbps? But the specs page doesn’t mention “USB4”, only “USB 3.1 Gen 2…at 10Gbps”?
Technically, not Thunderbolt 5—yet. They’re calling it Thunderbolt “next generation.” But it will probably be Thunderbolt 5. The funny part is how they’re saying Intel is “leading” when they cite the two standards already released by other organizations that form the backbone of Thunderbolt NG.
It’s important to consider real-world vs. posted spec. The so-called “40 Gbps” of TB3 and TB4 have translated in real-world disk transfer to at the very best ~26 Gbps. And that is territory where a well-cooled quality SSD (or an SSD RAID) can definitely get bottlenecked by the bus. And since most Mac users these days will rely on TB for external attachment (not even the Mac Studio offers much going on internally, and the new Mac Pro after all the hoopla and many months of talk is still MIA at this point), that is a crucial limitation.
So if “40 Gbps” spec is what we need to just barely get by with one quality SSD attached to one Mac today, and we keep in mind drive progress and the fact that in professional settings it’s rather common to attach more than just one drive, I’d say we very much need the 80 Gbps spec or even better. Not because people actually need to push 8 GB/s to a single device, but because like cars’ MPG ratings these specs are totally over-inflating capabilities compared to what people actually see in the real world.
Here’s some good reading on this topic along with what TB’s PCIe 3.0 lanes actually offer, how TB3 vs. 4 relates to lanes used, and why there’s this massive discrepancy between posted spec and real-world throughput.
I think you make a strong argument that certain classes of users would greatly benefit from it. But that’s not the same as “need” for the rest of us.
Just like there are some networks that can definitely benefit from 200G Ethernet, but it would be quite a stretch to say that most people “need” more than the 1G ports bundled with most consumer hardware.
Late to the conversation, but I don’t think Intel (nor Apple) should be making fun of USB’s versions on their connectors.
Ever since I bought my first Thunderbolt to Ethernet Adapter, and subsequent dongles (Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2), I have always wondered: How do you know which version of Thunderbolt your cable is? There’s no indicator or marking as far as I can tell.
And relying on Apple’s so-called “Help” pages is worthless, as is their production descriptions of various Thunderbolt dongles, cables, et al.
I can understand Thunderbolt 1 being limited to USB-2 speeds, but does this mean TB 2 and TB 3 are also still transferring data at USB-2 speeds?
At Apple’s inflated prices for dongles, etc., I have to ask, “Why”?
And if I bought a new Thunderbolt to Ethernet Adapter, I suppose it’s still the same adapter I bought when the dongle was first introduced. Sad.
(I suppose the same lackluster speeds apply to their Lightning cable/ports on their iDevices… It’s still USB-2, right?)
Unfortunately, that was often the case and like you say, it’s annoyong. It’s gotten a lot better lately though. I see many cables now carry a 3 or 4 on their plug to indicate with TB version. I want to believe this will eventually become a problem of the past.
Strictly speaking, right now you only need to distinguish 1 vs. 2 and 3 vs. 4, because the former and latter pairs have physically different connectors (mDP vs. USB-C) showing right away their different version.
TB1 was 10 Gbps, so way ahead of USB2’s 480 Mbps. It was already back in its day actually much closer to what only far later became USB 3.1 gen 2 or SS+ or USB 3.2 or whatever else stupid name the marketers conjure up for it as they go along.
TB2 took that to 20 Gbps (so more like “3.2 Gen 2” or “2x2” or whatever). And again preceded the fancier USB stuff by many years.
TB3 started using the same USB-C physical interface as USB, but at 40 Gbps it’s an entirely different beast. TB4 didn’t change the nominal peak b/w, but it did add nice features like daisy-chaining hubs with multiple DS ports, USB4 interoperability, and certain minimum requirements to hosts and peripherals.
The crucial difference is not just b/w though. It’s protocol and layers. TB operates as an “external PCIe” interface and as such you can run all kinds of stuff over it, like USB or video. USB is just one of the protocols it supports, but it does others too. USB traditionally was always strictly USB and remains to this day, apart from “alternate modes”, which these days for example allow you to push DP video over USB signaling lanes.
This layer vs. protocol thing is also why TB4 gear can fall back to just acting like USB3/USB4 gear if connected to USB-only chipsets (but not the other way around: USB gear can’t just turn into TB gear). It’s also important to realize that due to this PCIe heritage, it works quite different compared to USB’s traditional host/client model where unless your host actively asks something of the peripheral, the peripheral does nothing. And where the host needs to spend effort (CPU cycles) to run stuff over the bus and manage communication. There used to also be significant differences in terms of stuff like DMA and latency (which is why A/V loved FW and later TB, but often frowned at USB), but these days a lot of that has become more mushy between the two.
Not so sure that’s correct. Perhaps the dongle should have become cheaper, but technically, there’s not really a lot to change. Not even 10G Ethernet requires more than that old TB2 dongle provided. It’s not like Gigabit b/w is now all of a sudden so high an older TB version would bottleneck it. In fact, most Gigabit users will probably be better served with a cheap USB dongle instead. Even at just 5 Gbps it’s just fine for regular Gigabit, but there’s a huge selection of those dongles and they’re really cheap. TB these days appears massive overkill for what is a simple $10 Gigabit dongle. In a professional environment with 10G Ethernet that might be a bit different, but for regular Gigabit? Nah.
That is indeed correct. And it’s embarrassing as heck, not to mention annoying in 2022, especially on what should be “high-end devices” sold at a premium.
But fortunately for us all, the EU is now actively strong-arming Apple into finally dumping it. Come 2024 Lightning will be gone almost everywhere. Sayonara.
Now just a word of caution there: the switch to USB-C has the potential for vastly better b/w and transfer speeds, but it is not 100% given. On the 10th gen iPad Apple built in a USB-C port, but they actually managed to gimp its throughout to USB2 speeds again.
