Intel Executive Posts Thunderbolt 5 Photo Then Deletes It (anandtech.com) 22
AnandTech: An executive visiting various research divisions across the globe isn't necessarily new, but with a focus on social media driving named individuals at each company to keep their followers sitting on the edge of their seats means that we get a lot more insights into how these companies operate. The downside of posting to social media is when certain images exposing unreleased information are not vetted by PR or legal, and we get a glimpse into the next generation of technology. That is what happened over the weekend.
EVP and GM of Intel's Client Computing Group, Gregory Bryant, last week spent some time at Intel's Israel R&D facilities in his first overseas Intel trip in of 2021. An early post on Sunday morning, showcasing Bryant's trip to the gym to overcome jetlag, was followed by another later in the day with Bryant being shown the offices and the research. The post contained four photos, but was rapidly deleted and replaced by a photo with three. The photo removed showcases some new information about next-generation Thunderbolt technology. In this image we can see a poster on the wall showcasing '80G PHY Technology,' which means that Intel is working on a physical layer (PHY) for 80 Gbps connections. Off the bat this is double the bandwidth of Thunderbolt 4, which runs at 40 Gbps.
The second line confirms that this is 'USB 80G is targeted to support the existing USB-C ecosystem,' which follows along that Intel is aiming to maintain the USB-C connector but double the effective bandwidth. The third line is actually where it gets technically interesting. 'The PHY will be based on novel PAM-3 modulation technology.' This is talking about how the 0 and 1s are transmitted -- traditionally we talk about NRZ encoding, which just allows for a 0 or a 1 to be transmitted, or a single bit. The natural progression is a scheme allowing two bits to be transferred, and this is called PAM-4 (Pulse Amplitude Modulation), with the 4 being the demarcation for how many different variants two bits could be seen (either as 00, 01, 10, or 11). PAM-4, at the same frequency, thus has 2x the bandwidth of an NRZ connection.
EVP and GM of Intel's Client Computing Group, Gregory Bryant, last week spent some time at Intel's Israel R&D facilities in his first overseas Intel trip in of 2021. An early post on Sunday morning, showcasing Bryant's trip to the gym to overcome jetlag, was followed by another later in the day with Bryant being shown the offices and the research. The post contained four photos, but was rapidly deleted and replaced by a photo with three. The photo removed showcases some new information about next-generation Thunderbolt technology. In this image we can see a poster on the wall showcasing '80G PHY Technology,' which means that Intel is working on a physical layer (PHY) for 80 Gbps connections. Off the bat this is double the bandwidth of Thunderbolt 4, which runs at 40 Gbps.
The second line confirms that this is 'USB 80G is targeted to support the existing USB-C ecosystem,' which follows along that Intel is aiming to maintain the USB-C connector but double the effective bandwidth. The third line is actually where it gets technically interesting. 'The PHY will be based on novel PAM-3 modulation technology.' This is talking about how the 0 and 1s are transmitted -- traditionally we talk about NRZ encoding, which just allows for a 0 or a 1 to be transmitted, or a single bit. The natural progression is a scheme allowing two bits to be transferred, and this is called PAM-4 (Pulse Amplitude Modulation), with the 4 being the demarcation for how many different variants two bits could be seen (either as 00, 01, 10, or 11). PAM-4, at the same frequency, thus has 2x the bandwidth of an NRZ connection.
Uh huh (Score:1, Insightful)
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Exactly.
You know how potatoes were introduced in France? People were suspicious of potatoes when they first appeared - despite the famines and hardship, people wouldn't touch them. The king of France decided to make it the latest fashion in court - with express instructions to the courtisans to keep it hush-hush. Of course, the very first thing they did was tell everyone. The peasantry eventually learned that rich nobles couldn't get enough of em, and decided potatoes were probably good enough for tthem too
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I feel sorry for the first lady-in-waiting who had to wear that potato dress though.
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I'm suddenly imagining Marie Antoinette singing "I'm a potato". (Okay, so I'm off by a couple of hundred years, but still....)
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Why wouldn't they?
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Why wouldn't they?
We already have "single-connection" do-it-all interfaces feeding docking stations. Really don't know if I need faster for quicks sake when heat becomes an issue. I need to transfer data, not cook with it.
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Re:Thunderbolt 5 great (Score:4, Informative)
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I don't know. Why does anyone use USB 3? Why do we need cable modems or more than 64K of RAM? Why do we need PCI when ISA is doing the job just fine? Why HDMI? Why ANYTHING? Why do you even have a computer. The sum of all human accomplishment before the invention of a computer was done without a computer so therefore computers are pointless and we don't need them.
Fuck man who needs an abacas. 10 fingers and 11 toes ought to be enough for anyone.
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Why so easy to publicly post? (Score:2)
For a company the Size of Intel, with also with contracts with a lot of government and businesses that need a degree of confidentiality. To post something like that, shouldn't it go to to the PR department for review before sending it out. Even just to check spelling and grammar. But normally I would think posting stuff like that would normally need some planning, such as the Exec saying on this date (1 week or more out) We will be posting some new stuff. PR dept will get that information review it, the
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For a company the Size of Intel, with also with contracts with a lot of government and businesses that need a degree of confidentiality. To post something like that, shouldn't it go to to the PR department for review before sending it out. Even just to check spelling and grammar. But normally I would think posting stuff like that would normally need some planning, such as the Exec saying on this date (1 week or more out) We will be posting some new stuff. PR dept will get that information review it, then send it to the people to post it officially.
I could see this coming from some small company where the exec has his hand in every pot. But for a big company like Intel, there should be more checks and balances.
Possibly, but it's also his personal Twitter account, his intended audience is probably Intel employees so it's not really a press release. And I don't know how many people want to be giving random PR folks logins to their personal social media accounts.
Realistically, the exec has probably been given guidelines on what's appropriate to post, but is trusted to do their own social media. Mistakes happen, though PR folks screw up too.
Just great... how will Intel screw this up? (Score:2)
So we'll have another set of problems with 1 socket that now has another 2 standards running over it! This leak shows a path for USB 5 & 6; no waiting for 4 bit encoding, they are jumping into 3 bit encoding.
Amazon will probably find a new way to sell us cheap cables that break our machines, thanks to Intel! Oh don't forget new backdoors to system RAM and naturally, prevent/delay AMD compatibility. Perhaps they'll even delay Apple despite it's contracts and patents from thunderbolt 1.
Will we get a ne
Cable Length (Score:2)
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For Thunderbolt 4, Intel is implementing a wireless direct-to-brain interface.
As you might have heard, the reference designs to this point have had the unfortunate side-effect of lobotomizing the user due to the amount of energy traveling over a rather focussed beam. Intel is hopeful it can solve this and roll it out as a hot-fix within a few months after the initial round of product launches.
That corporate mandated training works great (Score:2)
Time to retire bps as a unit of measure (Score:2)
Who cares about bits per second anymore? 10 gig per second makes more sense to me.