Introducing Thunderbolt - The Future of I/O

Today, Apple released the new MacBook Pro range, which induced the highly anticipated Thunderbolt I/O port (also known as Light Peak). 

Thunderbolt began life at Intel Labs with a simple goal, "to create an incredibly fast input/output technology that just about anything can plug into." Basically offering a unified and consistent replacement for all current buses, such as USB, FireWire, SATA, PCI Express and DisplayPort.

Thanks to an ongoing collaboration between Intel and Apple, the MacBook Pro range is the first commercially available "Thunderbolt Ready" device (although I expect to see many more over the next year). Thunderbolt shares the same port as Mini-DisplayPort (as shown in the image below), resulting a small, asymmetric connector.

So why should we care about Thunderbolt? Well for starters, Thunderbolt offers unparalleled performance, with 10Gb/s of throughput in both directions (simultaneously). The table below shows just how fast Thunderbolt is compared to other popular I/O technologies.

As you can see the numbers speak for themselves, however due to Thunderbolt offering two 10Gb/s channels on the same connector, the real world performance figures are even greater. For example, first tests are showing Thunderbolt to be over 20x faster then USB 2.0, allowing you to copy a 20GB file in less than 30 seconds, while simultaneously streaming multiple 1080p videos. If you don't believe me check out the video from Engadget below:

The other key component of Thunderbolt is that it is based on two fundamental technologies: PCI Express and DisplayPort.

• PCI Express is the technology that links all the high-performance components in a modern computer. Therefore by building PCI Express into Thunderbolt, it enables compatibility with existing USB and FireWire peripherals, including RAID Arrays, Gigabit Ethernet and Fibre Channel networks. This helps ensure that your existing hardware will maintain full compatibility in the future.

• DisplayPort is the current standard for high resolution displays (used on Apple's Cinema Display) and because Thunderbolt shares the same connector as Mini-DisplayPort, it is compatible with all current displays, including backwards compatibility with HDMI, DVI and VGA. Thunderbolt can even be daisy chained, meaning you can pass through a single connector from your Mac to a high speed RAID device and on to your display. 

In conclusion, I believe Intel may have successfully created a single port that could feasibly replace all other I/O technologies, even the one you use to drive your display! This is an exciting prospect for the future, as it is now possible for your Mac (or PC) to have a single Thunderbolt port driving your network, storage connection and display, allowing Apple (and others) to build less cluttered, thinner and lighter devices.

It also opens the door for ultra high performance external storage (like shown in the Engadget video above). We have already seen the first Thunderbolt storage from LaCie, however I expect to see many more over the next year. Therefore I will definitely be on the lookout for the best external hard drive.

For more details on the new MacBook Pro range and Thunderbolt, I suggest head over to Apple.