14 DAY TRIAL // One would think that Intel would be particularly proactive in its promotion of the Thunderbolt interface, but a leaked roadmap slide shows otherwise.
Intel's Thunderbolt has again caught the eye of market watchers, though not directly.
It was through a motherboard roadmap slide that the high-speed connectivity technology sparked some figurative murmurs.
As usual, leaks are providing people on the web with knowledge about products that have yet to be announced.
Apparently, only one of Intel's motherboard is going to support Thunderbolt.
Though it is a lesser known fact, Intel does make its own motherboards instead of relying exclusively on manufacturing partners (MSI, Gigabyte, ASRock, ASUS, etc.).
That said, one would think that the Santa Clara giant would put more effort into promoting an interface it created itself, but only one mainboard based on a 7-Series chipset will get the USB 3.0 rival.
DZ77RE is the name of said platform, a model that will probably end up as a member of the high-end Extreme Series.
For those unaware, Intel divides its motherboards into several tiers, each with a specific consumer segment in mind.
The Essential Series is for the low-end / entry-level segment, right below the Classic Series, which serves office PCs that may want to get upgraded down the line.
Meanwhile, the Media Series of motherboards is geared towards content-creation professionals and, finally, the Extreme Series is the top-grade line
All things considered, the most sense would make for the Media Series motherboards to include Thunderbolt in their feature sets.
After all, with its ultra-high bandwidth, the connection could easily sustain multiple high-resolution video streams without image quality loss, ideal for video-editing systems.
Alas, there seems to be no Media Series board with Thunderbolt, which is somewhat confusing and contradictory to how the content creation industry is bound to reap the most benefits from using it.