14 DAY TRIAL // Intel's recently released Thunderbolt, previously Light Peak, technology promises to deliver much-improved transfer rates to devices using it, and latest rumors seem to suggest that Nikon has plans to take advantage of all the added speed as it might introduce Thunderbolt to the upcoming Nikon D4 camera.
The D4 is scheduled to be released later this year and is destined to become the company's flagship DSLR, taking the place of the D3 (and partially that of the D3x) in its lineup.
Right now, most DSLR cameras use USB 2.0 for connecting to the PC, a standard which isn't able to reach transfer speeds exceeding 480Mbit/s.
In comparison, Intel's Thuderbolt features dual 10Gbps bidirectional channels which, in theory, are able to provide 20Gbps of upstream and 20Gbps of downstream bandwidth.
This means that, if the rumors are indeed true, the D4 could speed up file transfers considerably if connected directly to the PC, especially when RAW files are involved, making the old method of using memory card readers obsolete.
The Thunderbolt technology was developed in order to provide a unified interface with enough bandwidth to replace all the current connection buses, such as SCSI, SATA, USB, FireWire or PCI Express.
Although this first iteration of Thunderbolt is still far away from reaching that goal, it manages to join together the PCI Express and the DisplayPort interfaces and uses a standard mini-DisplayPort connector.
This would allow Nikon D4 users to connect their camera straight to a computer monitor for watching the pictures (and movies) captured or to an HDMI-enabled HDTV via an adapter cable (if implemented properly).
Outside of the potential Thunderbolt support, the Nikon D4 is rumored to use a full frame 18MP image sensor, 10fps continuous shooting, 102,400 ASA quality similar to that of the D3S at 25,600 ASA and a completely new auto-focus sensor. (via Nikon Rumors)