Until now, none of the AMD motherboards with Thunderbolt 3 they were certified by Intel for the simple fact that the rights of the standard forced manufacturers to use controllers manufactured by Intel.
This has changed recently, and now any manufacturer can make its own controller, which we have begun to see recently. Now, the ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming ITX / TB3 has become the first AMD motherboard with Intel-certified Thunderbolt.
AMD motherboards, finally with Thunderbolt 3
The good news is that after three generations of AMD Ryzen processor boards, the Thunderbolt standard finally reaches the AMD motherboards, even if it has taken almost a year getting Intel certification for the first motherboard equipped with the standard since its release.
Until now, Intel did not allow manufacturers to make their own Thunderbolt controllers. But in an effort to push the adoption of the standard, Intel released it in 2019 and delivered the specifications to the USB-IF (USB Implementers Forum), so now any manufacturer can add it to their motherboards. However, the usefulness of this with the USB 4.0 just around the corner.
Until now, Thunderbolt was a technology patented by Intel and therefore had the exclusivity about her. Although it operates through a USB-C port, the standard is capable of much more than simply transporting a data signal, since it is also capable of handling power delivery, DisplayPort and even PCIe.
Thunderbolt 3 is capable of handling a bandwidth up to 40 Gbps, double that of USB 3.2 and four times more than USB 3.1. However, USB 4 uses the same protocol as Thunderbolt 3 and, therefore, will also reach that same speed and will be able to handle the same protocols, which is why there is a high probability that, in the medium term, Thunderbolt will end up being forgotten anyway.
Of course, the biggest advantage of Thunderbolt 3 with respect to everything else is its ability to chain devices (daisy-chain), being able to interconnect up to six devices using a single PC port. Along with this capacity, we must also highlight the ability to use a single cable for power and data, something that we have been seeing with USB-C for some time, but Thunderbolt is also able to integrate USB and Ethernet on the same cable, which USB does not do at the moment.
