“We got our hands on Apple’s newest MacBook Pro 15″ on February 24, 2011. This is Apple’s first laptop to sport a quad-core processor, and also adds a brand-new I/O technology with a Thunderbolt port,” iFixit reports.
“Thunderbolt claims to provide 10 Gbps throughput for both input and output,” iFixit reports. “It appears that both PCI Express and DisplayPort receive their own 10 Gbps data channel. That’s nice, as you don’t want your display competing with your external hard drive for bandwidth.”
“You can chain up to six Thunderbolt devices. That’s not a problem today as we’re not even aware of six products that support Thunderbolt yet,” iFixit reports. “If the connection becomes widespread, the six device limit might be a problem for some people.
In comparison, FireWire supports 63 devices and USB supports up to 127 devices.”
MacDailyNews Note: An active electrical-only (copper) Thunderbolt cable provides for connections of up to 3 meters in length, and provides for up to 10W of power deliverable to a bus-powered device. An active optical cable provides for “tens of meters,” according to Intel.
iFixit continues, “Unibody design allows for easy access of most components with minimal amounts of extra work needed to get to them.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]