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Leak shows off Intel’s next-gen 40Gbps Thunderbolt spec

If you thought your external drive was pretty nippy, think again – an Intel presentation leaked onto the internet on Monday via Chinese tech site VR-Zone outlines the key features of the next revision to the Thunderbolt interface which will come with Intel’s Alpine Bridge controller technology, and transfer speeds are set to double to a whopping 40Gbps.

Source: VR Zone
Source: VR Zone

Thunderbolt technology evolved from 10Gbps to 20Gbps in the last revision, and, should this leaked side prove to be legit, then to 40Gbps. That leaves poor old USB 3.0, with its meagre 10Gbps interface, in the dust.

On top of the speed increase, the leaked slide says Thunderbolt’s power consumption has been reduced by 50%, a move that will have notebook  owners breathing a sigh of relief as using it won’t drain battery power as rapidly while providing double the bandwidth.

The Thunderbolt cable itself is also being upgraded to carry 100W of charging power, a move that means the physical form factor will have to change as well. The new connector is 3mm thick, and the physical port it slots in to is backwards-compatible with previous-gen connectors by way of an adapter.

The new ports will support HDMI 2.0, generation 3 of the PCI bus, USB 3.0 and the DisplayPort 1.2 standard, meaning you will still be able to connect all kinds of devices to the port, from displays to USB gadgets, as long as they support it.

Now if only other technologies maintained the same sort of development pace. I could totally get behind a new car that drives twice as far on half the amount of petrol as my old one used. Wouldn’t that be marvellous?

[Main image: Shutterstock]

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