Thunderbolt 4/5 passthrough

I want to work on the thunderbolt driver in Linux kernel. For that I need to have my TBT4/5 devices connected directly to the Linux VM. Meaning Linux should recognize my device as TBT4/5. My devices are TBT4/5 Hubs, SSD enclosures and DP monitors.
Can you confirm that Parallels will pass my devices to the VM and I can work them with them natively?

 

Thunderbolt 4/5 passthrough refers to the ability to pass through the Thunderbolt connection from a virtual machine (VM) to the host system or external devices in a virtualized environment. This allows direct access to Thunderbolt devices, like external GPUs or storage, from within the VM. However, as of now, full support for Thunderbolt 4/5 passthrough is limited in virtual machines, such as those running on Parallels or similar virtualization software. For optimal performance and functionality, it's important to check if your virtualization platform supports this feature.

 

Hello. Thanks for responding. I am planing to run latest Ubuntu VM running in Parallels on Apple Macbook M2 pro processor. Am I able to access my TBT 4/5 device directly with this setup?

 

As far as I know, Parallels only allows USB pass through.

You want to work on Thunderbolt driver for host controller of Mac or for peripheral controller of downstream Thunderbolt devices?

Thunderbolt driver for Intel Thunderbolt host controller is going to be different than Thunderbolt driver for Apple Silicon Thunderbolt port.

Intel Thunderbolt host controller is a PCIe device. Parallels doesn't support PCIe pass through.

Apple Silicon Thunderbolt host controller is a platform device, not PCIe.

Parallels has to use Apple's Hypervisor for Apple Silicon Macs. That hypervisor probably doesn't allow passthrough of non-USB devices.