Intel Ditches 'Falcon Ridge' Codename for Thunderbolt 2
Two months after its debut, Intel has made Thunderbolt 2 official.
Intel announced the next generation of Thunderbolt way back in April, at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) show. At the time, the controller was codenamed "Falcon Ridge" running at 20Gbs, a doubling of the bandwidth over the original Thunderbolt. Intel this week decided to make things formal and official. In a blog post published yesterday, Intel's Dan Snyder revealed that the next generation of Thunderbolt will (rather imaginatively) be named 'Thunderbolt 2.'
Snyder says Thunderbolt 2 will enable 4K video file transfer and display simultaneously by combining two previously independent 10Gbs channels into one 20Gbs bi-directional channel that supports data and/or display. What's more, DisplayPort 1.2 support means it's possible to stream video to a single 4K monitor or dual QHD monitors. There's also full backward compatibility to the same cables and connectors used with today’s Thunderbolt. The current iteration of Thunderbolt is limited to an individual 10Gbs channel each for both data and display, which doesn't meet the required bandwidth for 4K video transfer.
"By combining 20Gbs bandwidth with DisplayPort 1.2 support, Thunderbolt 2 creates an entirely new way of thinking about 4K workflows, specifically the ability to support raw 4K video transfer and data delivery concurrently," Jason Ziller, Marketing Director for Thunderbolt at Intel, said in a statement. "And our labs aren’t stopping there, as demand for video and rich data transfer just continues to rise exponentially."
Intel is showing off 20Gbs Thunderbolt 2 tech at Computex 2013 in Taipei this week. The chipmaker is promising Thunderbolt 2 products by end of year and into 2014.

which was an industry tested solution and used by people in the audio-video arena *still*. Thunderbolt is largely intel, fortunately we are starting to see PC motherboards with TB links. As problematic as my experiences are with USB3.0 I am looking forward to getting my hands on Thunderbolt hardware.
I can wait 5 years for these to be as cheap as the USB 3 alternative which is pretty cheap at the time of this post. All i see from Thunderbolt are hardware that turn the port into other ports or enclosures that cost an arm and a leg when compared to the USB3/Esata alternative. If its all just the same ill stick with current technology that proven true.
A quick newegg search shows cheap USB 3.0 on-sale at $60 ("normally" $80), while the cheapest TB drive is $160, so more than double. As I said, my experience with USB 3.0 for robust external storage has been less than favorable. You determine your own needs, but search Toms for reviews and benchmarks on TB storage and the data is consistently promising. More-so than USB3.o, and the less common eSata.
No doubt average consumers, Performance gamers, etc aren't in a hurry to get something they dont need. Industry pros dealing in sizable data chunks that need to be portable however are "all ears."
Consoles are dead. If AMD hadn't made the mistake of spending wads of R&D on them, we'd have Volcanic Islands LAST xmas, not this xmas or at least SOMETHING new rather than the same 7970ghz for 2yrs with a few more games added as sales tank. Or at worst the drivers might have worked right all year instead of waiting for prototype etc to fix their problems (enduro still sucks too). Did I mention I hate consoles holding back my pc experiences?