A New Linux Driver Could Make USB4 Cables a Blazing Fast Way to Move Data

Intel engineers Mika Westerberg and Alan Borzeszkowski are developing a new Linux protocol called USB4STREAM and a matching kernel driver (thunderbolt_stream) that enables direct data transfer between two or more machines over a USB4 or Thunderbolt cable, bypassing the networking stack entirely. Each host gets a character device at /dev/tbstreamX that works with standard read/write operations, requiring no special application patches. Streams are configured via ConfigFS with automatic or manual channel ID assignment, and multiple streams can run simultaneously. The patch is currently in the Thunderbolt git tree's next branch and is targeting Linux 7.2.