Lintes Technology’s Thunderbolt 3 Cable Products Qualified by Intel’s Certification

CHUNG HE, Taiwan - Nov. 5, 2015 - PRLog -- Lintes Technology Co. Ltd.’s Thunderbolt 3 cable product has been certified on October 30, 2015 by Intel’s technical qualification.  The achievement once again strengthens Lintes’ position and shows Lintes’ dedication to Thunderbolt technology.

Thunderbolt technology is developing rapidly since it was introduced by Intel and Apple in 2011.  It provides faster data and video transmission between external peripheral devices and host computers with high-speed data signal transmission with daisy-chain framework.  The latest version, Thunderbolt 3 is being developed by Intel Israel and has been announced as using USB Type-C (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_Type-C) connectors.  Compared to Thunderbolt 2, Intel's Thunderbolt 3 controller (codenamed Alpine Ridge) will double the bandwidth to 40 Gbit/s (5 GB/s), halve power consumption, and simultaneously drive two external 4K displays (or a single external 5K display) instead of just the single one current controllers can drive. The new controller will support PCIe (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCIe) 3.0 and other protocols, including HDMI 2.0 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI#Version_2.0), and DisplayPort 1.2 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DisplayPort#1.2) (allowing for 4K (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_display_standard) resolutions at 30 Hz). Being a USB 3.1 port, a Thunderbolt 3 can also provide up to 100 watts of power, which should allow companies to eliminate the separate power cable from some devices. Thunderbolt 3 will allow backwards compatibility with the first two versions by the use of adapters.

Intel will offer two versions of the controller: one that uses a PCI Express 4x link to provide two Thunderbolt 3 ports; and another "LP" (Low Power) version that uses a PCI Express x2 link to provide a single Thunderbolt 3 port. This follows current practice, in which high-end devices such as the second-generation Mac Pro and Retina MacBook Pro use two-port controllers, while lower-end, lower-power devices such as the Mac Mini and MacBook Air use the one-port version.

After the technical qualification, Lintes Technology will start to provide mass quantity of cables with quality to growing market demand.  Lintes Technology will build up a dedicated production line of Thunderbolt 3 cable in its Suzhou factory.  Lintes technology will develop a series of Thunderbolt 3 product lines for both passive and active cables in the future, including 50cm, 1m and 2m in length.  In the foreseeable future, Lintes technology will continue to offer more advanced cables for rapid and large amounts of data transmission and design flexibility.