One of the only major non-Tablet or Ultrabook related stories at Computex this year was Intel’s coming out party of Thunderbolt on the PC.

As Intel’s peripheral connectivity protocol is capable of 10Gbps of data throughput, it was marketed at Computex as the USB 3.0 killer. The USB protocol can’t beat Thunderbolt on speed throughput, but the consortium behind the connectivity protocol have different ideas on how to fend off Thunderbolt: Power delivery.

Late last week the USB 3.0 Promoter Group announced a new USB power delivery specification that would allow up to 100W of power delivery through special enhanced USB cables.

“USB Power Delivery enables a path to greatly reduce electronic waste by eliminating
proprietary, platform-specific chargers,” said Brad Saunders, USB 3.0 Promoter Group
Chairman, in a statement. “We envision a significant move toward universal charging based on this specification, most notably for charging notebook PCs using standardized USB power
bricks or when connected to USB hubs and desktop displays that integrate USB Power
Delivery capabilities.”

“We believe USB Power Delivery is the next big step in the USB evolution to provide
high bandwidth data and intelligent power over a simple, single, ubiquitous cable,”
added Robert Hollingsworth, Senior Vice President and General Manager of the USB
Products Group at SMSC, in the same statement. “USB has always combined data and power over a single cable, and this is widely believed to be a major contributor to the present ubiquity of USB. USB Power Delivery builds on that success and adds full bi-directional power that
can be renegotiated as system power needs change with the end-user.”

Though USB 3.0 can’t move as much data as Thunderbolt, meaning it won’t be able to data chain, the increased power capacity provides an interesting competitive advantage for the protocol. Ultimately, the market will which is the successful next generation peripheral connectivity protocol.