Thunderbolt 3 specification announced, will be housed within USB-C cabling

The Thunderbolt 3 specification has been announced by Intel.

And it’ll be housed within the new USB-C cabling.

The next generation of the high-speed Thunderbolt specification was announced on Tuesday, effectively replacing the legacy Mini DisplayPort connector for the new smaller, reversible USB-C standard, and offering transfer speeds of up to 40Gbps with high-end cables.

Thunderbolt 3 will be a “superset” for USB 3.1, which runs at 10Gbps. Using a standard USB-C cable, Thunderbolt 3 will offer transfer speeds of twice that, at 20Gbps.

The Thunderbolt 3 specification will hit 40Gbps transfer speeds provided it’s housed within a USB-C cable. Optical cables supporting the Thunderbolt 3 standard will also offer a 40Gbps transfer rate, albeit at greater distances once they hit the market in 2016.

Because Thunderbolt 3 is compliant with the USB-C standard and USB 3.1 specification, the cabling will also simultaneously support DisplayPort 1.2, third-generation PCI Express, and power supply for recharging notebooks at up to 100 watts. The standard will also allow for Thunderbolt 3 to enable dual 4K monitor support simultaneously with 10-gigabit Ethernet networking.

Computers supporting the Thunderbolt 3 specification are expected to hit the market later this year. It’s likely that it will require Intel’s next-generation Skylake processors.

The USB-C connector, which debuted with the 12-inch MacBook notebook, is expected to find its way onto other Apple computers and notebooks.

Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.

Via AppleInsider