When it comes to docking systems, Thunderbolt™ 4 won’t rock the boat. What Docking Systems Work With Thunderbolt™ 4? It’s also reversible as Thunderbolt™ 4 uses a USB-C connector type and it offers power delivery of up to 90 watts. Thunderbolt™ 4 already complies with the latest USB4 specifications, getting us one step closer to unified connectivity.Īdditionally, the new minimum standard calls for dual 4K or single 8K video to Thunderbolt™ 4 ports. In the last five years, we’ve had Thunderbolt™ 3, USB 3.0, USB 3.1, USB 3.2, and now we’re getting ready for USB4. Keeping up with all the port standards isn’t easy. Whether you use an Apple product for your workstation or a Windows based PC, with Thunderbolt™ 4 we’re moving closer to the same capabilities. What Changes Do Thunderbolt™ 4 Ports Provide?Īpart from the improvements to the architecture, Thunderbolt™ 4 aims to give you a unified, universal connection solution. The laptops with new protocols and controllers incorporated only shipped late in 2020, so we should expect to see more devices hitting the market in 2021. Strengthen security with Intel VT-d direct memory access to protect against DMA attacksĪccording to Intel, Thunderbolt™ 4 aims to make Thunderbolt™ accessible everywhere.Increase PCIe data transfer to 32Gbps (from 16Gbps) at 3,000Mbps rates.Improve performance and provide universal compatibility using the 8000 series controller.While Thunderbolt™ 4 does bring some changes to the technology, it doesn’t change the port configuration or require new adapters for backward compatibility.Īccording to Intel, the Thunderbolt™ 4 upgrade will: Once the company released the Thunderbolt™ 4 specifications, manufacturers and consumers were able to rest a little easier. Intel clarified the initial confusion about what Thunderbolt™ 4 would bring to consumers in the middle of 2020. What Updates Are Available in Thunderbolt™ 4? With this single decision, Intel ushered in a new era of universal compatibility for our devices. Each one of these new generation CPUs can support up to four Thunderbolt™ ports (two per side) and provide 40G USB 4 data transmission. Thunderbolt™ is now part of Intel’s tenth generation Ice Lake CPUs. This meant a unified connection port that many manufacturers could implement without having to make dramatic changes to their internal components. However, one of the primary benefits of the Thunderbolt™ 3 connection ports were adopting the USB-C form factor. The evolution of Thunderbolt™ connectivity from Thunderbolt™ to Thunderbolt™ 3 was massive. Only two years later, we saw another doubling of speeds to 40Gbps with ThunderboltTM 3. With its high-speed data connections, Thunderbolt™ quickly found a home in premium devices like MacBooks.īy 2013, the 10Gbps connection speeds doubled to 20Gbps with ThunderboltTM 2. While most manufacturers were working to integrate HDMI ports into their laptops, Apple quickly adopted the technology for all types of connections, including video output. Over the last decade, Thunderbolt™ ushered in a new era of data, video, and charging capabilities. For anyone using a Thunderbolt™ 3 or USB-C enabled docking system, there are some things to consider when upgrading your devices. Thunderbolt™ 4 isn’t the same level of upgrade that we saw with Thunderbolt™ 3, but it still brings new capabilities to device connectivity. The quick answer is you can still use your Thunderbolt™ 3 dock with Thunderbolt™ 4 devices, but you may want to find out more about what improvements a Thunderbolt™ 4 connection brings to your docking system. You’ll want to know what it means for your previous docking solutions and whether a new Thunderbolt™ 4 device will require a new docking solution. The news of another upgrade to the Thunderbolt™ family of connections brings users many questions about the new port’s connection capabilities and underlying architecture.

Thunderbolt 3 docking station