Apple brands Intel 'Light Peak' as Thunderbolt
High-speed IO just rebranded DisplayPort tech?
Apple's take on Intel's 'Light Peak' high-speed IO technology will be call Thunderbolt, it has emerged, and it will be delivered through the new MacBook Pro's DisplayPort connector.
Throughout the morning, snaps have appeared online showing the specification stickers on the back on the new MacBook boxes. The first ones were in German, but now English ones have been posted too.
They say the same thing. The key bullet point reads: "Thunderbolt port supports high-speed I/O and Mini DisplayPort devices".
Source: MacRumors.com
A snap of the port array on one of the new machines shows the Mini DisplayPort now sports a lightning icon - the same image used on promo material posted elsewhere.
Easy to Photoshop, of course, but MacRumors claims to have confirmed the legitimacy of the picture, initially posted on French-language site Mac4Ever.
Source: Mac4Ever
It all begs the question: is Light Peak - in its non-optical form - merely a clever way of sending non-video data over a DisplayPort link? DP 1.2 can do more than 20Gb/s over four 5.4Gb/s lanes - pretty much what Light Peak is said to deliver. ®
COMMENTS
High Voltage? Danger of Death?
Yeah, this is a very poor choice of symbol.
Reminded me of this: http://www.proshieldsafetysigns.co.uk/signs/4221_signs.jpg "Danger of Death"
erk
They shouldn't use that, it looks just like the "High Voltage" warning pictogram. Major possibility for my mum to get confused and try and plug the power cord in there.
Ahem, Thunderbolt is already used by ...
HTC with their Thunderbolt handset; by Thunderbolt Computing, Inc. of Redmond, WA; by Squakenet of games fame and Thunderbolt Computer & Software Service of Georgia.
Seems all these have prior claim to this name, not that it's ever stopped Apple stealing others names before ... including the word apple!
Maybe HTC will do a deal over the name ... how about withdrawing court actions?
With USD$60-billion cash in the bank Apple can afford to buy off the people/companies whose name it is stealing.
HTC is the nearest challenge as they are in manufacturing, too.
