Intel has announced a couple of measures that should go a long way toward boosting Thunderbolt 3’s adoption.
The first step is straightforward and, in our view, a long time coming: the company is going to finally integrate Thunderbolt 3 into its processors. Although the first Thunderbolt 3 chips, codenamed “Alpine Ridge,” were released in the third quarter of 2015, last year’s Kaby Lake chipsets, including the high-end Z270, didn’t include any native Thunderbolt 3 support. Instead, vendors had to add Alpine Ridge chips separately, with many of them opting not to do so.
With Thunderbolt 3 an integrated part of the processors, those issues largely evaporate. System builders will still have some work to do if they want to actually hook up the processor to the physical interface.
Future for the high-speed interface is looking bright. It’s already seeing much more adoption than its two predecessors ever did, and a world in which one cable can do it all is getting that bit closer.
