Intel Thunderbolt replacement to hit 50Gbps

Intel circuit strategy director Jeff Demain at an event late Wednesday teased early details of the successor technology to Thunderbolt. Though unnamed, it would use silicon photonics to transfer information at 50Gbps, or five times the speed of its just-launched ancestor. Data would travel at light speed, but the use of silicon meant it could be cheaper to use, PCWorld and others in attendance were told.

Cabling would also be thinner than used today but would still run up to distances of 100 meters. DisplayPort, PCIe and other standards could still use the 50Gbps technology as their interconnect. It's presumed this would allow for daisy-chaining a display with storage or other external hardware that would normally need to be given its own dedicated port.

Thunderbolt could sit side-by-side on some of the computers that come out of the development, Demain said. He didn't say whether Apple was working closely with Intel on the technology as it was with Thunderbolt.

The development is still very early and had reached the stages of working chips, but had no functional cables to show. A final launch isn't expected until 2015.

By Electronista Staff