Thunderbolt 3 FW update

[Njk]

I've a Lenovo laptop with early TBT3 controller chip (Intel JHL6240). The system does not recognize it as a TBT controller but it should. Regardless of the BIOS settings. Lenovo provides a patch for that with new firmware versions for TBT and PD controllers. Lenovo says that the patch is critical because beside of the security concern, the current firmware renders the TBT controller inoperable in about a year. Some are speculating that this is because the firmware writes a sort of debug log to Flash chip quickly wearing it off and/or flooding it with a debug data.

According to Lenovo, with current TBT3 firmware, it's required to plug a Thunderbolt device to the Type C connector before applying the patch. The problem is that such devices are still quite expensive while personally I don't feel any need for them.

Is it possible to update the firmware without the device connection? A UEFI test utility or something like that. According to JHL6240 data sheet, the chip has POC_GPIO_3 input which is described as "Host/Device: force_pwr (input) - force full power". The mobo schematic diagram shows that the input is routed directly to the CPU. Any ideas?

[Njk]

Found a solution.

Lenovo provides TBT FW update package for many models. Every such package comprises the TBT DROM binary image and the related tools. It uses Intel TBT SW (the driver and control app), which is assumed to be installed.

Two kinds of the Intel SW are known, the old (v.17.x.x) and the new (v.1.41.x.x, so called DCH-compliant SW). The old looks half-baked. When no TBT HW is present, it works unstable, the app even unable to display its own version, making it almost useless. Intel deprecated it and advised to use only new version.

Typical TBT FW update package from Lenovo relies on either the old or new Intel TBT SW. But the package for T480 model is rather unique, because it includes two sets of executables, one is for the old TBT driver and the other is for the new driver. That's very convenient.

Anyway, the package includes a tool for determining installed FW version. For some reason, it doesn't work as intended, but the side effect is that it wakes the TBT chip (perhaps by activating the GPIO input) so it switches to the NHI mode and becomes visible in the Device Manager as TBT Controller till the next system reboot. The old Intel control app still does not show the NVM FW version, but the DCH-compliant app does. My current FW version is 21.3, while according to Lenovo, the Flash wearing issue is present only with the versions before 20. No need to reflash. Investigation complete.