Intel Shows Off 2 Of Their Newer Thunderbolt Controllers With 20 Gbps/ 4K Throughput

Intel introduced their next generation thunderbolt interface during NAB show 2013 in Las Vegas and the chipset maker assures that this will provide a data rate throughput to 20 Gbps download and upload. The previous generation thunderbolt can only allow 10 Gbps. What should be more interesting is that the next- gen thunderbolt with the code-name “Falcon Ridge” will allow 4K Video file transfer and display at the same time with the data running at 20 Gbps. This however will be released next year. There’s no specific launch date or a timeframe, but one could speculate that this will make its debut with Broadwell architecture.

Currently, Intel’s that it has given about 200 licenses and have many thunderbolt-compatible devices in the marketing, followed by new and thinner cables which is said to release in few month’s time. It was then Intel showed off their Thunderbolt host controller, code- named “Redwood Ridge” and will be implemented on some Intel’s 4th generation Core series processors Haswell platform. Redwood Ridge is speculated to be a little cheaper as it uses an internal 1V voltage regulator. It will also be using appropriate features to work with Intel Haswell’s aggressive power management reductions.

The 2 controllers that were recently announced are DSL4510 and 4410 ‘Cactus Ridge’ controllers which will have support for DisplayPort 1.2 (therefore 4K) when connected to the Native DisplayPort displays, but will also help to improve power management and even helping to decrease the cost for implementing the hardware. The 2 models will be replacing Intel’s current thunderbolt chip, DSL3510 and DSL3310.

Intel assures that these will have backward compatibility with previous gen thunderbolt cables and devices. Intel also said that it will be increasing its Thunderbolt production in 2014.

With this implementation, many professionals will gladly welcome this as the extreme bandwidth throughput will allow them for 4K content distribution.

Source: Anandtech