Intel and Apple have jointly released a new I/O technology called Thunderbolt on the eve of the launch of Apple’s brand new MacBook Pro models. The technology was until know known by the Light Peak Moniker. While we have already talked abbout Light Peak in the not too distant past, here’s a brief description of the technology again for you.
Thunderbolt is significantly faster than USB 3.0 transmitting a data at 10 GB per second in both the directions simultaneously. According to Intel , the speed of the connection will not be affected by the presence of copper wire. However , the speed of the for the transmission of data may increase to 100 GB per second in near future.
Thunderbolt has the ability to connect multiple protocols at once over a single cable enabling to connect multiple devices such as peripherals , display , disk drives etc. This will led to more flexible , simpler designs , good connectivity and faster media transfer. Thunderbolt would allow transfer of full HD movies in under 30 seconds! It is compatible with existing DisplayPort devices and it also uses the PCI Express protocol.
We believe that Light Peak will find its in way in to other Apple products shortly as Intel had also demonstrated this new technology on a machine running Mac OS X in one of its developer conferences in 2009.
[via CNET]
