Intel's Thunderbolt 5 with 80Gbps speeds

 Intel Executive accidently teases Thunderbolt 5 with up to 80Gbps speeds

Thunderbolt 4 just launched last year with Intel's 11th-generation Tiger Lake processors, it's not new that the company is working on Thunderbolt 5. More to the story is that Intel Client Computing Group EVP and GM Gregory Bryant accidentally teased it on Twitter. This news is covered by AndandTech.

The then been deleted and reposted with three images.

The main difference between Thunderbolt 4 and Thunderbolt 5 is that, it supports double the data transfer speeds and it will be around 80Gbps. As we have the seen the USB trend this is not new new, with only exception with Thunderbolt 4, where changes were made to minimum requirements, rather than focusing on maximum speed.

While the 80Gbps speed will affect the consumers directly, there are more to that. For the compatibility it says that Thunderbolt 5 should "support the existing USB-C ecosystem". It means that it will still going to use Type-C port, and it should be backward compatible with the previous USB and Thunderbolt standards.

What is PAM-3?

And its going to use something called PAM-3, as indicated by the rest of the sign. PAM stands for Pulse Amplitude Modulation, for speeds to increases we need to send more data means 0's and 1's. PAM-3 can send three values: -1, 0, 1. There are thresholds (or levels) set for frequencies, and if it's at the top, it's one;

if it's in the middle, it's zero; if it's on the bottom, its negative one. To know more about PAM-3 you can check out this explanation video:

For those who are wondering when will Thunderbolt 5 will be coming:

Thunderbolt 4 is still brand new, and just launched a year back, So we don't think that this new standard will be coming anytime soon with the next Intel 12th-generartion chips but should be coming soon but most probably not this year.