Intel announced that Thunderbolt, their high speed I/O data port, will be coming to non-Apple computers at IDF 2011 today. Thunderbolt, which is based off of Intel’s Light Peak, was demoed running off of their upcoming Haswell chipset, due in 2013. However, Acer and ASUS both have products planned for a 2012 launch supporting Thunderbolt.
Intel announced that Thunderbolt, their high speed I/O data port, will be coming to non-Apple computers at IDF 2011 today. Thunderbolt, which is based off of Intel’s Light Peak, was demoed running off of their upcoming Haswell chipset, due in 2013. However, Acer and ASUS both have products planned for a 2012 launch supporting Thunderbolt.
Intel demoed Thunderbolt’s capabilities on a Windows 7 system, streaming four uncompressed HD videos simultaneously over Thunderbolt. As you can see below, this interface has no trouble handling even the most demanding situations, averaging a continuous transfer rate of 726MB/s.
Thunderbolt itself is a high-speed I/O port with a mini-displayport interface and a 10Gb/s bi-directional data interface. It allows for both high-speed data transfer and multiple displays to be connected via a single port. While Sony has a laptop with a high speed dataport based on Intel’s Light Peak, it is not Thunderbolt compatible, making Apple the only current computer manufacturer to implement it at the moment.
