Following the launch of Thunderbolt Four earlier this 12 months as a part of Intel’s Tiger Lake CPUs, the following piece of the TB4 {hardware} stack has dropped this week with the discharge of Intel’s first stand-alone Thunderbolt Four controller, Maple Ridge (JHL8540). Previously introduced again in July as a part of Thunderbolt 4’s reveal, Intel this week up to date their Ark database so as to add a product web page for the Maple Ridge controller household and flag that the primary half is now delivery. With the discharge of the discrete Thunderbolt Four controller, it’ll now be potential for {hardware} distributors to construct TB4 hosts with extra ports, or in gadgets not utilizing Intel’s Tiger Lake Silicon.
This late-December launch comply with’s Intel’s earlier roadmap, which had the launch of standalone controllers set to happen earlier than the tip of 2020. These included the Goshen Ridge (JHL8440) gadget controller – to be used in docks and peripherals, and the Maple Ridge (JHL8540 and JHL8340) host controllers – to be used in computer systems, tablets, and different shopper gadgets. Goshen Ridge went into manufacturing quickly after the announcement. And with the discharge of Maple Ridge Intel has additionally stored its promise right here, getting it out simply previous to the tip of the 12 months.
For fairly a while, Thunderbolt ports had been discovered solely on methods with Intel processors. However, final 12 months we noticed distributors similar to ASRock innovate with the introduction of a Thunderbolt Three port on the X570 Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB3, an AMD Ryzen platform motherboard. This was adopted just a few months again by the introduction of M1-based Macs that includes Thunderbolt 3 (backed by Apple’s in-house controllers). The use of Maple Ridge will now allow motherboard distributors to create methods with Thunderbolt Four ports that don’t essentially must be based mostly on Intel processors.
The JHL8540 Maple Ridge controller interfaces with the host processor utilizing a PCIe 3.zero x4 hyperlink and in addition takes in two Display Port 1.4a inputs. On the downstream aspect, the controller permits two Thunderbolt Four ports, which together with their native Thunderbolt (packet encapsulation) skills can be used as straight-up USB4 ports, or as DisplayPorts through USB-C’s DP alt mode.
The PCIe change and, normally, the PCIe help in Maple Ridge has been up to date to work with many non-compulsory options, retaining safety in thoughts and the wealthy number of PCIe gadgets coming into the market. For instance, Maple Ridge consists of PCIe peer-to-peer help which permits two PCIe gadgets linked to the 2 Thunderbolt Four ports to alternate information with one another with out having to make it journey upstream to the host RAM. From a safety viewpoint, Access Control Services (ACS) can also be supported to offer isolation between completely different units of PCIe gadgets and make them all the time undergo the IOMMU. Precision Time Measurement (PTM) can also be a supported characteristic, permitting completely different downstream PCIe gadgets to precisely synchronize with one another and the host system.
It have to be famous that Thunderbolt Four brings extra assured bandwidth to end-users. With Thunderbolt 3, gadget distributors might skimp on the connection of the controller to the host processor – utilizing solely a PCIe 3.zero x2 upstream hyperlink as an alternative of PCIe 3.zero x4, however nonetheless acquire Thunderbolt Three certification. This diminished the minimal obtainable PCIe information bandwidth to only 16 Gbps. With Thunderbolt 4, that’s now not potential. Vendors are mandated to make use of a full PCIe 3.zero x4 hyperlink in the event that they need Thunderbolt Four certification. Thunderbolt 3’s bandwidth sharing mechanism between video and information additionally put in some dampeners – even within the absence of tunneling DisplayPort streams, 18 Gbps of bandwidth was all the time reserved for video site visitors, and solely 22 Gbps obtainable for precise information switch. Thunderbolt Four apparently fixes that with as much as 32…
