THUNDERBOLT CABLES

Thunderbolt is the name of a high-speed cable technology, originally developed by Apple and Intel, as a competitor to USB 3.0 (now USB 3.2). During the development phase, the standard was names Light Peak, as it was originally intended for an optical cable type. Closer to launch, the name was changed to Thunderbolt and the cable type to ordinary data cables, as copper technology was eventually good enough to support the high speeds. Thunderbolt cables are designed to connect electronic devices to each other for high-speed data transfer, in the form of both an image signal such as Displayport video, and a PCI data signals in the same cable. This meaning that you can connect everything from external hard drives to monitors via Thunderbolt if they support it.

The Thunderbolt cable standard is designed to deliver a high bandwidth and extremely high speed from the start of 10 Gbps. per second, and has potential at 100 Gbps over time via optical cables, but e.g. at "just" 10 Gbit / sec. you can transfer data amount equal to a full-length Blu-ray movie in just 30 seconds. The technology used also allows for smaller plugs and longer cable runs than for example traditional USB cables. Thunderbolt connections are backwards compatible with the Displayport 1.2 standard.

• Apple was the first to start using Thunderbolt for their new Mac products, read more about Thunderbolt at Apple.
• Read more about the Thunderbolt standard on Wikipedia.