Even before the announcement of the first notebooks with Thunderbolt ports, which was in the spring of 2011 Apple company reported that the standard will support work with optical cables. Avoiding the copper would allow to transmit data over long distances without losing speed. In fact the optical Thunderbolt cables have not appeared. . Laptop Sony Vaio Z (model 2011) used an optional optical cable to connect to a docking station. To transmit information on optics was involved port USB, which was equipped with an optical pair - the laser and the receiver, and all the control electronics on a separate circuit board. To connect to a laptop dock using pure optical cable and standard Intel Light Peak, later received a commercial name Thunderbolt.
This optical cable Thunderbolt, Intel and its partner prepared to sell only this season. On sale will be a cable length of 10 to 100 meters. Thunderbolt copper cables are available in lengths up to 3 meters. The speed of data transmission over optical Thunderbolt will remain within the copper standard of 10 Gbit / s in each direction for Thunderbolt 1.0 and 20 Gbit / s Thunderbolt 2.0.
Demonstration of optical Thunderbolt cables was in session of the IDF in 2013. The cables are fully compatible with all ports.
As for prices, they are not yet published. Six years ago, Intel began shipping these cables for interfaces Infiniband (Socket 4X) and 10 GbE (10GBASE-CX4), where the connector were mounted on optical transceivers - that's are Connects Cables. price is $ 450 for 10 meters. For the retail market of similar prices never showed up. Related Products :
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