1. What is a Thunderbolt 4 port?
If you keep up with the latest developments in technology, there's a good chance you've heard of Thunderbolt 4 technology. You might even have a device with a Thunderbolt 4 port.
But if you look closely, you'll find that this so-called Thunderbolt 4 port looks suspiciously like a USB-C port. Well, that's because it is a USB-C port! So what exactly is the difference?
USB-C is the name for this physical type of port, while Thunderbolt 4 is a protocol. Or to put it another way, a Thunderbolt 4 port is a USB-C port that features the Thunderbolt 4 protocol.
So now let's take a look at some of the features of Thunderbolt 4:
2. Features of Thunderbolt 4
- Screen Expansion: Mirror or expand your display to 2 monitors in up to 4K, or up to 8K to a single monitor.
- Charging Power: Provide up to 100W charging power from a single port.
- Data Transfer: Supports a PCIe data transfer speed of 32 Gbps.
- Support Wake From Sleep: Thunderbolt 4 lets users wake up their laptop using an external keyboard or mouse that's connected via the Thunderbolt 4 port.
- Security: Thunderbolt 4 provides Direct Memory Access (DMA) protection. It is based on Intel VT-d's DMA attack* protection, which can physically prevent DMA attacks. Although this level of protection is probably overkilled for ordinary users, it can prevent malicious devices from using DMA to steal information from enterprises and users with extremely high data-confidentiality requirements.
*DMA attack: In a Direct Memory Access attack, PCIe devices can directly access the data in a device's memory without going through the CPU. In short, if a malicious PCIe device accesses the computer, then even an encrypted computer can be easily cracked.
If you're not sure what all of that information means in context, let's have a look at how Thunderbolt 4 stacks up against other protocols including Thunderbolt 3:
|
| |||||
|
|
|
|
| ||
|
|
|
|
| ||
|
|
| ||||
|
|
| ||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
| ||||
|
|
| ||||
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
| |||
|
|
|
|
| ||
|
|
|
| |||
|
|
| ||||
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
| |||||
As you can see, Thunderbolt 4 outmuscles all of the USB specifications that we compared it to.
If you have any further questions, please contact us for assistance.
