Apple and Intel partnered up in February to introduce the Thunderbolt technology on a new line of MacBook Pros. Intel later suggested that Apple had a full year head start on its competitors.
Later this quarter, however, Intel will attempt to level the playing field with the release of developer kits for the technology, Macworld reports. According to an Intel spokesman, those kits could reduce the amount of time needed by device makers to bring Thunderbolt products to market.
Intel has already lined up several additional partners to help drive adoption of Thunderbolt, including LaCie and Western Digital.
Vendors began showing off new products that take advantage of Thunderbolt at the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas earlier this week. For example, AJA, BlackMagic and Matrox all have Thunderbolt-capable breakout boxes on display at the show.
Apple is expected to release a new version of Final Cut Studio at an NAB side event late Tuesday.
Canon executives have also expressed interest in the technology, though the company has yet to formally announce any related products. Sony and HP are also reportedly looking into bringing Thunderbolt to their laptops.
Thunderbolt pairs the high-speed PCI Express serial interface with the Apple-developed Mini DisplayPort to provide both data and video through a single port with I/O performance of up to 10Gbps. Originally codenamed 'Light Peak,' Intel had planned to use optical cabling but switched to copper wire because of cost constraints.
As adoption of the standard begins to ramp up, Apple is looking to build out its in-house Thunderbolt team. Last week, the Mac maker posted job listings for a "Thunderbolt Software Quality Engineer" and a "Thunderbolt Firmware/Software Engineer."
8 Comments
This is "shockingly" good news.
This is "shockingly" good news.
Okay maybe I'm being to optimistic about this...
Wouldn't a KICKSTARTER project to design a TB ... ANYTHING get SO SO SO much attention?!?! If any of you know of any really smart circuit board engineers.. Perhaps you might get them to look into doing something really cool and get it funded...
A great example of hardware based projects:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...ooth-test-tool
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...-reprap-cubely
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...op-cnc-machine
Thunderbolt pairs the high-speed PCI Express serial interface with the Apple-developed Mini DisplayPort to provide both data and video through a single port with I/O performance of up to 1 Gbps.
Um... Don't you mean 10 Gbps?
It'd also be great to see more outlets talking about the bidirectional capability... 10Gbps is pretty great all on its own but 10Gbps full-blast, both directions is just plain awesome - like FireWire on super-roids.
Um... Don't you mean 10 Gbps?
It'd also be great to see more outlets talking about the bidirectional capability... 10Gbps is pretty great all on its own but 10Gbps full-blast, both directions is just plain awesome - like FireWire on super-roids.
10Gbps is great, but 100Gbps is where it's headed.
I'm waiting for a Thunderbolt port replicator with all the same connections that are currently on the Macbook Pro and more:
3 or more USB ports
2 MIni Displayport/Thunderbolt connectors
Ethernet
Firewire 800
Analog+digital audio in/out
Basically, plug all cables except power into the port replicator.