Intel officially announced the Thunderbolt 4 interface: 40Gpbs rate, then all world-renowned laboratories have begun to deploy related test certifications. The GRL laboratory from the United States announced that it will provide Thunderbolt 4 certification testing services from now. The following provides you with relevant updates for your reference, including Thunderbolt 4 testing The key summary is compared with USB4 technology.
Thunderbolt 4 technology overview
Following the Thunderbolt 3 technology, Intel has introduced the upgraded Thunderbolt 4, which integrates the new notebook Tiger Lake processor. The Thunderbolt 4 technical architecture and the USB4 protocol specification are essentially one family. Both are based on the Thunderbolt 3 architecture. Both have a maximum transfer rate of 40Gbps (20G x2) and support Thunderbolt 3 and USB4. The main purpose is to combine multiple protocols into the same signal channel, including protocol signals such as USB 3.2, DisplayPort and PCIe, which can be used for simultaneous audio and video and data transmission through a USB Type-C cable. In Intel’s latest Thunderbolt 4 Functional Test Specification (FV CTS), USB4 device has been added to the test project and related test methods have been updated.
What is the difference in Thunderbolt™ 4/ USB4™ / Thunderbolt™ 3 functions?
Thunderbolt 4 focuses on the application of PC and its peripheral devices; besides the PC, the USB4 function is also used in mobile phones and Embedded Hosts. Taking PC as an example, the following table lists the minimum requirements that Thunderbolt 4 and USB4 must support. It can be clearly found that Thunderbolt 4 is equipped with many functions as standard, but most of them are optional functions in USB4.
