Thunderbolt for PCs April 2012

lifeinfocus

"Intel has recently notified its hardware partners that the company will “fully release” its 10Gbps Thunderbolt technology in April of 2012, several PC players already preparing to launch motherboards, notebooks and desktop systems supporting this interconnect."......

The Thunderbolt technology was developed in order to provide a unified interface with enough bandwidth to replace all the current connection buses, such as SCSI, SATA, USB, FireWire or PCI Express."

Faster and fewer ports to chose from. Intel has said it is not intended to replace USB, but somehow I don't believe that. I expect this replace all those those choices to make it less complicated and much faster.

This could make it easier to build and manage a PC.

Phil

More info at: http://tinyurl.com/7tyww3x

eoren1

I'm hoping this will lead to more (and cheaper) external drive enclosures including SSD/HDD hybrids. Really hoping for a DROBO thunderbolt implementation.

Intel will now have USB 3 on their boards so I think they realize Thunderbolt can't/won't replace that standard.

lifeinfocus

I expect to see some Thunderbolt announcements by computer manufacturers at the CES (consumer electronics show) January 10 to 12, 2012.

There is a lot of discussion about USB 3.0 versus Thunderbolt. I am betting that the use of one cable and one standard will win out over many types of cables and standards.
With Thunderbolt you can connect up to 7 devices with one cable - not sure how to do that but I like the thought of it.

Simplicity, speed and eventually less cost wins out in my years of IT experience. It will take time and USB 3.0 will be around for quite awhile IMHO.

Phil

Pupator

In the length of time it will take for USB 3.0 to die out something better than Thunderbolt will come along. I don't think there will be one port to rule them all.

Still, I'm very excited about this announcement because Thunderbolt on the PC means we'll start seeing more (and cooler) Thunderbolt devices and implementations.