The chip giant showed off its Thunderbolt technology and was able to achieve a bandwidth of 80 Gbps, a number that doubles the maximum of the Thunderbolt 4 standard, which, as many of our readers know, is capable of reaching 40 Gbps. It’s an important achievement for everything that comes from it in terms of performance, but also because with this advancement it can place itself at the level of the USB 4 2.0 standard.

What does this increase in bandwidth mean? Well, it means that the transfer speeds when connecting external devices are twice as fastand this can have a very big impact when using certain products, not just storage units. So, for example, one of those that would benefit the most from this increase in bandwidth would be external graphics cards, which can be heavily penalized if the available bandwidth is reduced.

According to Intel, they have not yet chosen a name for this new version of Thunderbolt, which is capable of reaching 80 Gbps, but with simple logic, they could choose two paths, call it Thunderbolt 4 2.0 or Thunderbolt 5. Both make sense and fit together perfectly, but the source of the news seems more likely to end up calling it Thunderbolt version 2.0. There is nothing definitive about this, so keep that in mind.

It is also important to note that Thunderbolt 3 was the basis on which the USB 4 version 1.0 standard was developed, and that Thunderbolt 4 maintained the 40 Gbps bandwidth but improved video output by allowing the use of two 4K displays and also introduced improvements . at the security level. Reaching 80 Gbps is quite an achievement, but how did Intel do it? Well, use it PAM-3 Modulation (Pulse Amplitude Modulation Level 3) and two lanes of 40 Gbps over one cable.

Unfortunately, the information we have about this new Thunderbolt standard right now is scarce, so we’ll have to wait for more details to be officially released. However, it can be assumed that this new standard will be compatible with its predecessors, as well as with next-generation standards, including DisplayPort 2.0. We are facing a standard that will almost certainly not be optimally used until 2023.