Thursday, May 25th 2017
Intel to Make Thunderbolt Royalty-Free; Looking to Increase Adoption
Thunderbolt is one of the most flexible data delivery mechanisms ever developed: it boasts of both enormous versatility and performance. These connectors have seen increasingly higher adoption rates due to these characteristics, but are still to trickle down towards mid-range and entry-level offerings, which would be certainly some of the products to benefit the most, allowing them to substitute numerous, costly ports for a single jack-of-all-trades connection.
Intel is looking to solve this problem by removing royalties from Thunderbolt, further increasing adoption by integrating controllers within its own processors. The first Thunderbolt 3 "Alpine Ridge" chips, introduced in the third quarter of 2015, were manufacturer's only solution to implement Thunderbolt in their products; an extra chip which added costs and complexity to designs, which ended up limiting adoption to only higher-margin products. With Thunderbolt 3 an integrated part of the processors, those issues largely evaporate, with system builders being freed of having to design accommodations for an extra chip. Intel did not specify which processors would include the controllers or when they will ship, but the company says that it is going to make the Thunderbolt 3 specification available on a non-exclusive, royalty-free basis. Intel could have played towards eliminating the royalties on Thunderbolt 3 but only supporting it on its own processors, but the company has chosen not to do that: the door will be open for AMD and other companies to bake in support for the interface on their own solutions, spurring innovation and, more importantly, driving down costs of adoption.
Source:
ArsTechnica
Intel is looking to solve this problem by removing royalties from Thunderbolt, further increasing adoption by integrating controllers within its own processors. The first Thunderbolt 3 "Alpine Ridge" chips, introduced in the third quarter of 2015, were manufacturer's only solution to implement Thunderbolt in their products; an extra chip which added costs and complexity to designs, which ended up limiting adoption to only higher-margin products. With Thunderbolt 3 an integrated part of the processors, those issues largely evaporate, with system builders being freed of having to design accommodations for an extra chip. Intel did not specify which processors would include the controllers or when they will ship, but the company says that it is going to make the Thunderbolt 3 specification available on a non-exclusive, royalty-free basis. Intel could have played towards eliminating the royalties on Thunderbolt 3 but only supporting it on its own processors, but the company has chosen not to do that: the door will be open for AMD and other companies to bake in support for the interface on their own solutions, spurring innovation and, more importantly, driving down costs of adoption.
27 Comments on Intel to Make Thunderbolt Royalty-Free; Looking to Increase Adoption
But what about CPU, can AMD integrate it royalty free? (or at all)
I'm puzzled by Intel's motivation here, they are basically giving up on their Apple lock, was it pressure from Apple Inc perhaps?
PS
Prices will go down once it is not an apple only thing.
haha, apple chose thunderbolt, Intel delivered.
Intel had royalty, apple paid.
Easy as that, you can get AMD boards with thunderbolt and devices with it, it costs money just as devices with HDMI.
You pay 15 bucks extra for a pc monitor with HDMI over the exact same without - Royalty.
My feeling is that there is a catch to what Intel is doing here ? or no ?
if no: thank you Intel!
Hell has frozen over,....right,...?
They have been pushing it for years and for many reasons, just hasn't gained traction. Initially, and up until very recently, very few devices even have it. Mobos do, but there weren't many peripherals out which had it, or, and as it still is now as you already noted, there was(is?) a price premium too. Perhaps now this will open doors, and get more pull in the market, but, really, I won't hold my breath.
... as good as it can be as a standard port for many high bandwidth uses. :)
We wont see it on AM4 unless a board manufacturer gives it lanes from the m.2 slot,16x slots or fits a Plx chip or similar
I think even the upcoming AMD hedt platforms chipset is still pci-e 2, though that does at least have enough cpu lanes to use, as x99 boards do at the moment
If not, www.asus.com/no/Motherboard-Accessory/ThunderboltEX-3/
then you have it on your AMD board, nothing stops Asus from stuffing it on AMD motherboards throughout their line... but who would pay the premium? not me for sure!
USB 3.1 is more than sufficient.
At the moment I have few boards which are 'TB-ready' (there is TB header), but no compatible controller. Nice...:wtf:
Seeing 1/2 TB ports on every device would be amazing and allow a lot more products to utilize it.
your logical fallacy shows how weak you are on this topic.
www.extremetech.com/extreme/207211-intels-thunderbolt-3-offers-usb-compatibility-at-full-thunderbolt-speed
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbolt_(interface)
also if i understand correctly can use USB 3.1 C cables and TB cables in the same port since TB supports both modes and both cables. That is awesome.
www.digitaltrends.com/computing/what-is-usb-3-1-when-will-it-be-released-and-what-will-it-do-for-pcs/
So, there is a benefit in the sense that you can use cheaper and more basic cables but, your range is incredibly limited (< 1 meter @ 40Gbps) on a passive cable and if the quality is poor, it very well could still drop down to 20Gbps. The flexibility is nice but, it comes at a cost and like regular TB2 cables, you can't subtitute in active ThunderBolt cable for a Type C cable using USB, just as you can't use a ThunderBolt cable to drive Mini-DisplayPort.