Thunderbolt 4 appears to be almost identical to Thunderbolt 3

It seems that Intel’s Thunderbolt 4 is almost identical to Thunderbolt 3, but simply with a different name. In any case, Thunderbolt 4 will not be faster than the third generation of the technology, according to information from Intel.

Intel announced earlier this week that the upcoming Tiger Lake processors for laptops will have an integrated Thunderbolt 4 controller. The only specification about the new Thunderbolt generation that the company gave is that the throughput speeds are “four times higher than with USB 3”. Intel did not report which USB 3 variant was involved. The company now reports to Tom’s Hardware that it concerns USB 3.1.

The throughput speeds of the USB 3.1 specification, or USB 3.2 gen 2, or superspeed USB, is 10Gbit/s. The throughput of Thunderbolt 4 would then be 40Gbit/s. That’s also the maximum throughput of Thunderbolt 3, which Intel announced in 2015.

A source from Tom’s Hardware claims that Thunderbolt 4 is primarily a rebrand. In response, Intel announced that Thunderbolt 4 is based on open standards and is backward compatible with Thunderbolt 3. At a later date, Intel promises to share more information about Thunderbolt 4. The company does talk about “the latest Thunderbolt expansions” but Tom’s Hardware speculates that this could also include some new management capabilities.

Intel may be trying to distinguish Thunderbolt from USB 4 with the new name, which is based on Thunderbolt 3 and also offers dual-channel capacity for a total throughput of 40 Gbit/s. The new name can then make it clear that, for example, USB-c cables are certified by Intel for both USB 4 and Thunderbolt.