Intel has unveiled more details for its upcoming Thunderbolt 4 standard. Interestingly, when it comes to speed, this new upcoming standard isn’t faster compared to the older Thunderbolt 3 standard. That being said, speed isn’t the primary reason for making Thunderbolt 4; it’s more about increasing the minimum performance requirements for systems using this new standard.
Intel Details Thunderbolt 4 Specifications
As mentioned earlier, Thunderbolt 4 will still come with 40Gbps transfer speed, which is similar to Thunderbolt 3. However, PCs that come with this upcoming standard will be able to connect to—at minimum—two 4K displays (previous requirement was just one 4K display). Additionally, it also supports PCIe data transfer speeds of up to 32Gbps.
Moreover, future laptops using this standard are required to have at least one Thunderbolt 4 port that supports charging. Intel has also mentioned that this new standard will require laptops to wake from ‘sleep’ when connected to a Thunderbolt dock. Lastly, devices are also required to add support for docks/accessories with up to four Thunderbolt ports.
Those aside, Intel mentioned that the first computers and accessories equipped with Thunderbolt 4-based ports are expected to be made available later this year—starting with “Project Athena” / Intel Tiger Lake-based notebooks.
(Source: Intel)