Intel has announced the next-generation Thunderbolt port dubbed as Thunderbolt 4. Technically Thunderbolt 4 isn’t faster than Thunderbolt 3. Thunderbolt 4 offers 40Gbps speed which is the same as with Thunderbolt 3 but there are a few other differences to justify the increment in version number.
The most notable improvement with Thunderbolt 4 is that now you can add a dock with up to four additional Thunderbolt 4 ports. It was just one with Thunderbolt 3 and users needed to do daisy chain to add multiple Thunderbolt accessories.
Thunderbolt 4 PCs will also be able to connect to at least two 4K displays, whereas one could only add one with Thunderbolt 3. The new connect supports PCIe data speeds up to 32 Gb/s. It is twice as fast as in previous-generation Thunderbolt.
Intel also now requires compatible PCs to support at least one Thunderbolt 4 port capable of charging.
This connection will also require protection against direct memory attacks (DMA). This is important because system memory is shared across a host of PCIe devices including ones connected connected externally. Thunderbolt 4 uses hardware-level protection supported by kernel-level DMA remapping (DMA-r).
Thunderbolt 4 is also fully compliant with USB4 since they both use USB-C cable. Connected accessories must be able to wake the PC from a state of sleep.
Intel has confirmed that its upcoming mobile PC processor having code-name “Tiger Lake” will be the first one to integrate Thunderbolt 4.
