Intel’s Thunderbolt initiative coming soon on a PC near you

Acer, Asustek, Lenovo expected to begin adopting Thunderbolt this spring and are expected to initially have this connector on their proposed ultrabook devices. All three PC makers are expected to introduce new Ultrabooks incorporating Intel's Ivy Bridge platform with support for Thunderbolt.

Intel's next Ivy Bridge chip platform, the successor to Sandy Bridge, includes native support for USB 3.0, but does not support Thunderbolt across the board. Support for Thunderbolt increases the cost of PCs by more than $20.

As a result, Thunderbolt is only expected to be adopted among high-end notebooks or desktops in 2012. The new Intel-driven standard for PCI Express data paired with DisplayPort video is however expected to be fully standardized by 2013.

Apple aggressively rolled out support for Thunderbolt last year, adding it to all of its Mac product lines apart from the Mac Pro, which already has PCI Express slots. Thunderbolt hard drives and other devices have started to trickle into the market behind Apple's own Thunderbolt Display, with docks and external PCIe slot enclosures being shown at CES last month.

HP states that it doesn’t see the value proposition of the Thunderbolt Technology and intends to exclusively support USB 3.0.

DigiTimes reported Tuesday that Thunderbolt and its 10Gbps data connection speed could "greatly affect" adoption of the competing USB 3.0 port in the future. It said that in addition to Apple, which added Thunderbolt to its latest line of MacBook Pros, Sony is also said to be considering adopting the technology into its high-end notebooks.

Last Spring, Intel publicly said it planned to support USB 3.0 alongside Thunderbolt. But sources reportedly said that Intel is simply hedging its bets by adding USB 3.0 support to its next-generation chips, code-named "Ivy Bridge."
"Sources believe Intel's strategy of adopting both technologies into its next generation products is to minimize the risks of placing all the eggs into one basket," the report said.

People in the PC industry reportedly believe that USB 3.0 is a "transitional product" with legacy support for older USB devices. Thunderbolt, on the other hand, is viewed as the true next-generation successor.

Formerly code-named "Light Peak," Thunderbolt has data transfer speeds that are 20 times faster than the current market standard, USB 2.0. Thunderbolt's 10Gbps speeds are also twice as fast as the USB 3.0 specification.
For comparison, a FireWire 800 port is 800Mbps, while an Express Card slot has bandwidth of 2.5Gbps.

Thunderbolt's speeds are accomplished with copper wire, though previous versions of Light Peak were demonstrated with fiber optic strands allowing speeds of up to 100Gbps. Thunderbolt was co-developed by Intel and Apple.