According to a leak, Thunderbolt 5 will reportedly be supported for the first time on Arrow Lake desktop CPUs. A look at the PCIe lane map for Arrow Lake, which contains a clear reference to Barlow Ridge—the Thunderbolt 5 controller that Intel unveiled in September—was one of the documents that were leaked. With four PCIe 4.0 lanes, Barlow Ridge has twice the bandwidth of Thunderbolt 3 and Thunderbolt 4 at 80Gbps in both directions. Furthermore, Barlow Ridge has the capacity to operate at 120 Gbps in one direction and 40 Gbps in another, if necessary, to enhance performance in certain situations.
For the first time, Thunderbolt 5 will be available for desktop computers and second-generation CPUs. As of right now, Thunderbolt 5 is limited to a few laptops with Raptor Lake HX processors that have chosen to include a Barlow Ridge chip. It’s unclear if Barlow Ridge will be included on specific motherboards or integrated into Arrow Lake CPUs themselves.
Additionally, according to the PCIe lane map, Intel has added more PCIe 5.0 lanes, increasing the total to 20. This figure is significant because it indicates that desktops from Arrow Lake can simultaneously fully utilize all PCIe lanes for both an SSD and a GPU. A GPU requires sixteen PCIe 5.0 lanes, while an SSD requires four. The Raptor Lake CPUs of the current generation only provide 16 PCIe 5.0 lanes and four PCIe 4.0 lanes.
Installing a PCIe 5.0 SSD and a GPU in a 12th, 13th, or 14th generation computer requires the two components to share those lanes. The GPU will use eight of the twelve available lanes, leaving four empty (or for another PCIe 5.0 SSD), while the SSD will have all four lanes required. Now that PCIe 5.0 SSDs and PCIe 5.0 GPUs are becoming more and more common, it’s appropriate that Intel is able to offer a platform that can provide all available lanes to SSDs and GPUs at last.
The PC has come a long way over the years, landing us in the age of the AI PC ⚡️
— Intel (@intel) January 12, 2024
Which Intel PC was your first? pic.twitter.com/zS6yIousos
