Apple chooses Thunderbolt, PCs still use USB--who's right?
CNET - In an
interview with PC World posted this morning, HP's Consumer Desktops Product Manager Xavier Lauwaert was quoted as follows in regard to the absence of Thunderbolt ports in HP's
newly announced desktops: "On the PC side, everybody seems to be content with the expansion of USB 3.0. Do we need to go into more fancy solutions? Not convinced yet."
Thunderbolt, if you're unaware, is a new peripheral device input standard. In development at Intel since 2009 (when it was code-named Light Peak), Thunderbolt debuted this year in Apple's most recent
MacBook Pro laptops and
iMac all-in-one desktops.
Boasting 10Gbps full-duplex data transfer speeds (meaning it allows 10Gb of data per second both into and out of each port, simultaneously) Thunderbolt also integrates support for the DisplayPort and PCI Express 2.0 standards. That means along with fast data transfers, Thunderbolt can act as a monitor port, and also work with external video-processing devices at bandwidths approaching those of an internal graphics card.
Although Thunderbolt ports have been available by way of the new MacBook Pro since February 24, no Windows-based systems offer Thunderbolt. When we asked why, we were told by Intel's Dave Salvator that we "should expect to see Thunderbolt in a lot more places in 2012." It's worth noting that Intel is currently the sole vendor of the necessary Thunderbolt controller chip.
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