Following the launch of Thunderbolt 4 earlier this 12 months as a part of Intel’s Tiger Lake CPUs, the subsequent piece of the TB4 {hardware} stack has dropped this week with the discharge of Intel’s first stand-alone Thunderbolt 4 controller, Maple Ridge (JHL8540). Beforehand 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 transport. With the discharge of the discrete Thunderbolt 4 controller, it can now be attainable for {hardware} distributors to construct TB4 hosts with further 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 top of 2020. These included the Goshen Ridge (JHL8440) machine 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 consumer gadgets. Goshen Ridge went into manufacturing quickly after the announcement. And with the discharge of Maple Ridge Intel has additionally saved its promise right here, getting it out simply previous to the top of the 12 months.
For fairly a while, Thunderbolt ports have been discovered solely on methods with Intel processors. Nonetheless, final 12 months we noticed distributors corresponding to ASRock innovate with the introduction of a Thunderbolt 3 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). Using Maple Ridge will now allow motherboard distributors to create methods with Thunderbolt 4 ports that don’t essentially should be primarily based on Intel processors.
The JHL8540 Maple Ridge controller interfaces with the host processor utilizing a PCIe 3.0 x4 hyperlink and likewise takes in two Show Port 1.4a inputs. On the downstream facet, the controller allows two Thunderbolt 4 ports, which together with their native Thunderbolt (packet encapsulation) talents will also be used as straight-up USB4 ports, or as DisplayPorts by way of USB-C’s DP alt mode.
The PCIe change and, generally, the PCIe help in Maple Ridge has been up to date to work with many non-obligatory 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 related to the 2 Thunderbolt 4 ports to change knowledge with one another with out having to make it journey upstream to the host RAM. From a safety viewpoint, Entry Management Companies (ACS) can also be supported to supply 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 function, permitting completely different downstream PCIe gadgets to precisely synchronize with one another and the host system.
It have to be famous that Thunderbolt 4 brings extra assured bandwidth to end-users. With Thunderbolt 3, machine distributors might skimp on the connection of the controller to the host processor – utilizing solely a PCIe 3.0 x2 upstream hyperlink as a substitute of PCIe 3.0 x4, however nonetheless receive Thunderbolt 3 certification. This decreased the minimal out there PCIe knowledge bandwidth to simply 16 Gbps. With Thunderbolt 4, that’s now not attainable. Distributors are mandated to make use of a full PCIe 3.0 x4 hyperlink in the event that they need Thunderbolt 4 certification. Thunderbolt 3’s bandwidth sharing mechanism between video and knowledge 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 out there for precise knowledge switch. Thunderbolt 4 apparently fixes that with as much as 32 Gbps of knowledge site visitors (full PCIe 3.0 x4 bandwidth) out there, permitting gadgets corresponding to Thunderbolt 4 SSDs to supply 3GBps+ speeds.
Intel has not revealed official pricing of the brand new Maple Ridge controller, nevertheless Mouser Electornics is itemizing the controllers for as low cost as $11.34 in bulk portions. As for the provision of gadgets that includes the JHL8540, I believe we’ll see them ahead of later. Intel’s next-generation desktop platform, Rocket Lake-S, will not be anticipated to have built-in help for Thunderbolt 4, as this function was noticeably absent from Intel’s Rocket Lake reveal again in October. So including Thunderbolt 4 to Rocket Lake-S will probably require utilizing Maple Ridge.
This might be in keeping with different documentation from Intel, such because the Intel 500 sequence chipset pointers, which apparently level to directions to make use of a discrete USB4-compliant Intel Thunderbolt 4 controller connecting to 4 PCIe 3.0 lanes from the chipset for USB4/Thunderbolt 4 help. To that finish, we anticipate that the event of precise {hardware} by Intel’s companions utilizing the Maple Ridge controller ought to be effectively below approach by now.