A new peripheral-connection interface called Thunderbolt was announced this week by chip-maker Intel (NASDAQ: INTC). Developed in collaboration with Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), Thunderbolt was previously known as Light Peak, and supports a blistering 10Gbps of throughput per channel. Moreover, it is bidirectional for simultaneous receiving and sending of data, and each Thunderbolt port incorporates two distinct channels.

While Thunderbolt was first mooted as an optical-only interface, market pressures from manufacturers to bring cost down led to the development of an electrical version. On the upside, the electrical version of Thunderbolt does provide 10 watts of power to peripherals, though its current incarnation is limited to a three meter cable at present. Intel says it will eventually offer an optical cable that will plug into existing hardware and that will support greater distances. (Light Peak was initially designed to transfer 10Gbps over distances of up to 100 meters).

Internally, the design of Thunderbolt revolves around two fundamental technologies that are already in use today: PCI Express and DisplayPort. Support for daisy chaining allows multiple devices to be connected using just one port. One point that might have escaped attention is Thunderbolt's support for low latency and high accurate time synchronization--which sounds like it was also designed for commercial-grade audio and video equipment in mind. For now, leading hard drive makers Seagate and Western Digital have already said they will support Thunderbolt in the calendar year of 2011.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at PC World
- check out this article at Channel Register
- check out this article at CNN

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