Leaked slides details Intel Thunderbolt 5 controller for Arrow Lake-S CPUs

Intel's recently announced Thunderbolt 5 controller (codenamed Barlow Bridge) was announced back in December. The successor to Thunderbolt 4 comes with significant improvements to the connection standard. Although it's not available on Meteor Lake Core Ultra 100 series laptops, some high-end laptops powered by Raptor Lake-R-HX chips already support the new standard.

The Thunderbolt 5 platform is expected to be widely spread in H2 2024, with an upgrade for the Intel desktop series based on the Arrow Lake CPU series. That's based on the new slides shared by YuuKi-AnS, which show the Barlow Bridge controller will be included in some next-generation motherboards.

Image credit: YuuKi_AnS

Thunderbolt 5 offers several new features, including PCIe 4.0 x4 interface support. As such, users can expect a maximum bandwidth of 64 Gbps, twice as much as on Thunderbolt 3/4. Due to this upgrade, we expect manufacturers who had Thunderbolt 3 and 4 for external GPUs in the past might be interested in upgrading their design to Thunderbolt 5.

Thunderbolt 5, like USB4 Version 2.0, offers asymmetrical connections, allowing up to 120 Gbps of speed in one direction or 80 Gbps in both. It also supports the DisplayPort 2.1 standard and up to 240 W power delivery. Thunderbolt 5 also allows higher resolutions of up to 10K, and up to three DDI (Display Interfaces) are supported. The first Thunderbolt 5-enabled products may take a while to release, but when they do, some systems will already be ready for them.

KitGuru says: IF you were on the market for an 800-series motherboard, would Thunderbolt 5 support be a must for you?

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