believes that it is not difficult for you to find that the positioning of notebook computers in recent years can be said to be more and more clear. The differences between different types of notebooks are also quite obvious. The difference between thin and light notebooks, commercial notebooks, and gaming notebooks can basically be seen at a glance. However, one very interesting thing is that the current notebooks seem to have abandoned too many interface configurations in the past and started to develop in the direction of fewer interfaces. Take the Macbook Pro as an example. In addition to the charging interface and headphone interface, there is only one HDMI interface and 3 Thunderbolt 4 interfaces. So, why did it become like this?
In fact, the Thunderbolt interface is a potential reason.
may be the most advanced interface at present, and the development process of the Thunderbolt interface is also quite interesting: In 2011, Intel first announced the Thunderbolt (Lightning) interface with the technical code name "Light Peak".
However, it is a pity that the Thunderbolt interface was basically only used by Macbooks at that time, so a considerable number of people could not directly experience the power of this advanced interface until the arrival of the Thunderbolt 3 standard in 2016. Thunderbolt 3 not only has the ability to transmit data, video and power, but also lays the foundation for Thunderbolt to become popular through the universal interface of USB-C.
In 2021, Thunderbolt 4, the connection technology with the most powerful performance so far, is officially released. It is not only integrated in the 11th generation Intel Core chip, but also provides the most complete USB-C connection. Why is the interface of
Thunderbolt 4 strong? The main reason is that this protocol unifies various transmission protocols such as data, video, and power supply on a single interface, which can connect computer equipment, monitors, mobile hard disks, docking stations, external hard disk cabinets and other equipment into the same transmission system without having to spend time on complicated interfaces and data lines.
Compared with other interface specifications, the characteristics of Thunderbolt 4 are very prominent. First, Thunderbolt 4 provides the most complete and high-standard USB-C connection solution, while other USB-C solutions do not require it; secondly, Thunderbolt 4 raises the lower limit of performance required for certification, requiring that the performance always reach 40Gb/s bandwidth while providing support for data, video and power. In contrast, the minimum performance bandwidth of USB 4 and USB 3 is only 20 Gb/s and 10Gb/s, and the video quality is not guaranteed, and it does not require charging in the direction of the notebook. USB 3 does not even support PCIe connections. Finally, because Thunderbolt 4 and USB 4 share the underlying interface protocol, Thunderbolt 4 achieves compatibility with other USB-C devices. Of course, if you connect a computer with a Thunderbolt 4 interface to other USB-C peripherals, you can only reach the connection rate limited by the USB-C device.
I believe that you will also understand that the existence of the Thunderbolt protocol makes data transmission, video transmission and even power supply organically combined. One interface can take on the mission of multiple interfaces. As long as you have a Thunderbolt data cable, there are actually a lot of devices that can be connected. It can be said that there is no need to worry about scalability. It is precisely because of this that the current notebook can maintain scalability while discarding useless interfaces as much as possible.
