Today, Intel announced Thunderbolt 5 - the next generation of Thunderbolt - and demonstrated a prototype laptop and dock. Thunderbolt 5 promises to deliver significant improvements in connectivity speed and bandwidth benefits for computer users.

"Thunderbolt 5 will provide industry-leading performance and capability for connecting computers to monitors, docks, storage and more. Intel is excited to continue our tradition of leadership for wired connectivity solutions. Thunderbolt is now the mainstream port for connectivity on mobile PCs, and delivering the next generation of performance with Thunderbolt 5 will provide even more capability for the most demanding users," said Jason Ziller, general manager of the Client Connectivity Division at Intel.

Intel Client Computing Group Executive Vice President & GM Gregory Bryant has recently published and deleted an image that appears to show the specifications of a next-generation Thunderbolt technology. The photo was taken at an Intel R&D facility in Israel and shows a poster highlighting "80G PHY Technology" which signifies that Intel is working on an 80 Gbps physical layer. This speed represents a doubling of the existing Thunderbolt 3/4 which runs at 40 Gbps while still working over a USB-C connection. These speeds can be achieved with novel PAM-3 Pulse Amplitude Modulation technology which allows for 50% more bits to be sent per cycle compared to the NRZ technology currently used while limiting the increased complexity that would be introduced with PAM-4. Intel appears to have a working test chip manufactured on the N6 node at TSMC which is showing promising results however we don't expect this technology to reach consumer devices for some time.