Intel Light Peak – Thunderbolt facts

1. You can connect up to six devices in a line, daisy chain fashion. Each peripheral will need to have two sockets for this to work.
2. The Optical only cables could run as long as 100 metres as the light signal doesn’t degrade over distance as the electrical signal does.
3. Electrical cables for Thunderbolt are limited to a length of about 5 to 7 metres.
4. The laser transmitters of the optical signals are only 250 microns wide, about the width of two human hairs.
5. Intel claims that in time they can scale up the speed to 100Gbps, not with copper cables though.
6. This Thunderbolt data transfer technology will be around longer than the HTC Thunderbolt Phone, which was released the same week as the Thunderbolt port appeared on the MacBook Pro from Apple.

Apple have picked up the ball with Intel Light Peak and called it Thunderbolt.