Intel Announces Thunderbolt 2 at Computex: 20Gbps Bi-Directional Bandwidth per Channel
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 4, 2013 7:18 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- Thunderbolt
- Trade Shows
- Computex 2013
Earlier this year Intel revealed some details about Falcon Ridge, its 2014 Thunderbolt controller. Today it went a little further and gave the updated Thunderbolt spec a new name: Thunderbolt 2.
New details are scarce unfortunately. Thunderbolt 2 moves to a new 20Gbps bi-directional channel that can handle both data and/or display. Current implementations are limited to 10Gbps per channel for data or display, both can't be sent over the same channel.
Thunderbolt 2 will support DisplayPort 1.2 and 4K video. Intel expects the first Thunderbolt 2 controllers to go into production by the end of this year, and ramp into early 2014. Given the timeframe I no longer believe this is a Broadwell play. It also seems too early for the rumored 9-series chipset refresh. Thunderbolt 2 may end up appearing out of phase with both of those.
Source: Intel
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Hector2 - Tuesday, June 4, 2013 - link
You really don't have a cluerangerdavid - Tuesday, June 4, 2013 - link
Drive-by trolling? I'm tempted to agree with every unsubstantiated word! And I'll give you a free "." to end your hastily-typed phrase! Good job!BMNify - Wednesday, June 5, 2013 - link
They're still trying to revive this stillborn? Amazing! Say a prayer, bury it and move on already!USB 3.0 and DisplayPort have won, just stop already Intel!
axien86 - Tuesday, June 4, 2013 - link
It is too expensive to implement on board and for external interfaces, unless you're part of the 1% where money has no boundaries.Intel should go back to the drawing board...
Sabresiberian - Friday, June 7, 2013 - link
It wouldn't be so expensive if Intel would put support for it in their own freakin CPUs.Seriously. Haswell may be what I'm going to upgrade to when I retire my almost 5-year old X58 system, but it's under protest. 16 PCI lanes, no Thunderbolt, a GPU solution I'll never use and makes overclocking that much harder because Haswell is a bigger chip. Some nice architectural tuning, but not what I want in the bigger picture.
CalaverasGrande - Friday, June 7, 2013 - link
Funny, we have an Asus laptop running an external PCIe box over TB.tipoo - Tuesday, June 4, 2013 - link
So the aggregate bandwidth is no different, right? Just individual channels are faster, but there's half as many? That's a good thing I suppose, unless you were daisy chaining multiple devices which would be better on multiple channels.Dentons - Tuesday, June 4, 2013 - link
Too little, too late, too expensive.USB 3.0 is fast enough for nearly every use case and is orders of magnitude cheaper.
repoman27 - Wednesday, June 5, 2013 - link
Well, actually Thunderbolt is generally 5x - 10x more expensive than USB 3.0, which would only be a single order of magnitude, and only in the extreme cases. And Thunderbolt is 2.5x - 8x faster, which makes it worthwhile to the time is money crowd.While it would have been nice for Intel to have sorted out channel bonding and DP 1.2 support from the get go, it's hardly as if those shortcomings slowed adoption. If Intel has done too little, too late, it's in regards to making the Thunderbolt host controller interface specification available so that it could have a fighting chance of becoming a true interoperable standard. At this rate, as soon as Apple stops buying controllers, Thunderbolt goes out like a proprietary punk bitch.
Dentons - Wednesday, June 5, 2013 - link
It's often much more than 10 times the price, and that price has to be multiplied for each device, hub, or cable a user may need. The dearth of supported devices is also a major issue.Combine those factors, and even those with money to burn have very few use cases that could not be handled with USB 3.0, eSATA, or DisplayPort. On paper, TB may have advantages. In the real world, the performance differences may be hardly noticeable.
I fully agree with your conclusion. Whenever Apple tires of driving down this cul de sac, Thunderbolt will suffer a quick death.