Slides show that Intel Arrow Lake desktop CPUs will support Thunderbolt 5
Intel’s upcoming Arrow Lake desktop processors may receive support for Thunderbolt 5. This is evident from leaked slides, which mention that the CPUs will have a Barlow Ridge controller for Thunderbolt 5. Arrow Lake will be released later this year.
The slides in question were published on social media by well-known Intel leaker YuuKi_AnS, although they have since been removed. The slides included the PCIe map for Arrow Lake, it said including Tom’s Hardware. It describes how the PCIe lanes of the processors are distributed among various equipment, such as GPUs, SSDs and Thunderbolt.
In total, the Arrow Lake series appears to have twenty PCIe 5.0 lanes, in addition to four PCIe 4.0 lanes. Those PCIe 4.0 lanes are intended for the Barlow Ridge controller for Thunderbolt 5. Yuuki_AnS’s slides specifically mention Arrow Lake-S processors for desktops. That seems to confirm that some upcoming LGA1851 motherboards will get Thunderbolt 5 ports. This does not mean that every motherboard for Arrow Lake will actually support Thunderbolt. Currently, such functionality is usually reserved for relatively expensive motherboards in the higher market segment.
Intel announced Thunderbolt 5 last year, together with the Barlow Ridge controller, but did not provide details about a possible release date at the time. The technology will include a higher bandwidth of 80Gbit/s in both directions. There will also be a high bandwidth mode of 120Gbit/s in one direction and 40Gbit/s in the other, mainly for use with monitors with high refresh rates and resolutions. Thunderbolt 5 is not yet incorporated in the most recent Meteor Lake processors, which were officially announced for laptops at the beginning of this year. The technology must therefore make its debut in its successor, Arrow Lake.
Intel’s Arrow Lake CPUs should use a new LGA1851 platform, which should succeed socket LGA1700. The manufacturer is expected to remove support for DDR4 memory, something that is still supported in Raptor Lake. The chips are planned for this year, although a specific release date has not yet been announced.