14 DAY TRIAL // Intel's Thunderbolt high-speed interconnect has seen limited adoption this year, but this hasn't stopped the Santa Clara chip giant from developing two new such controller that will be released together with Ivy Bridge in 2012.
Currently, Intel is offering two Thunderbolt controllers to its clients, known as Light Ridge and Eagle Ridge.
This first one of these is also the most powerful of the two since it comes equipped with quad bi-directional 10Gbps channels, capable of delivering an aggregate bandwidth of 80Gbps, as well as with two DisplayPorts outputs.
Thanks to its powerful specs, Light Ridge is used in the MacBook Pro, Mac mini and iMac.
Moving to the second controller, known as Eagle Ridge, this is basically half of a Light Ridge chip, and only features two 10Gbps bi-directional Thunderbolt channels and a DisplayPort output.
The controller is used inside the MacBook Air since it's also available in a small form factor package.
According to AnandTech, next year this lineup will be updated to feature two new controllers, both of these being called Cactus Ridge.
Their specs will be identical with Light Ridge and Eagle Ridge, but Intel has chosen to use a smaller package that measures only 12x12mm in size.
Pricing for the two chips is yet unknown, but Intel really needs to get the costs of Thunderbolt hardware down if it really wants to push the technology into the consumer market.
Since Thunderbolt was introduced, quite a few companies have announced their support for the technology, but, as we speak, the only computing devices to include this interface are built by Apple and Sony.
The latter already uses an external GPU, developed by AMD, for the latest generation of the VAIO Z notebook, which connects to the system via a Thunderbolt interface.