That way, the total speed and performance of the link can be shared between the underlying usages of these protocols – whether they are data, display, or something else. Power Delivery and Charging In each of the modes listed hereby, the Thunderbolt 3 system ( if designed to support this by the system manufacturer ) can also request to charge over the connector from a device or adapter designed for delivering power to the system up to 100W via the USB PD Specification. In this way the Thunderbolt 3 enabled USB C Connector can support charging, display, data or all three at the same time in various configurations.įundamentally, Thunderbolt is a tunneling architecture designed to take a few underlying protocols and combine them onto a single interface. In this case, Thunderbolt has software that creates an IP networking link between these systems. This networking mode allows for the Thunderbolt interface to act as a virtual Ethernet adapter and transfer traffic over the PCI Express interface that the Thunderbolt silicon has in each host system.

Thunderbolt Networking ModeAn additional powerful capability of Thunderbolt allows to or more hosts to be connected directly ( or on separate ends of a Thunderbolt chain ) via Thunderbolt. Additionally, to fill this Thunderbolt link, the silicon extracts and routes up to four lanes of PCI Express Gen 3 ( 4 x 8 Gbps ) and up to two ( four lane ) full links of DisplayPort out over the Thunderbolt cable and connector to the device(s) attached downstream from the host system. This allows for basic connectivity for data and display devices such as docking stations or data and display dongles.With two lanes of DisplayPort 1.2a resolutions at Quad HD (QHD) can be achieved or 2560x1600 at 60Hz Thunderbolt 3 ModeIf a cable and device supporting Thunderbolt are plugged in, the Thunderbolt silicon activates its highest capability mode, and links two bidirectional links at either 10Gbps or 20Gbps or 40Gbps. DisplayPort and USB Mixed ModeIn this alternate mode of operation, one of the high speed connector pin pairs of signals will be dedicated to DisplayPort (now two lanes at 5.4 Gbps ) and one to USB 3.1. This kind of DisplayPort link can support a single, uncompressed display at 4K resolution at 60 Hz. These four links run across the two pairs of high speed wires in the USB-C connector and cable. In this mode, a Thunderbolt 3 enabled USB C port will support a single four -lane (4 x5.4 Gbps, or HBR2 ) link of DisplayPort.

Hdmi to thunderbolt 4 cable