Thunderbolt Expansion

Thunderbolt Expansion chassis are available in desktop and rack-mount options

** Thunderbolt enclosures for PCIe cards
These have 1 or more PCIe card slots, and connect to your machine by Thunderbolt cable.

** Thunderbolt enclosures for RAID
These have 1 or more PCIe card slots, and 16x/24x/48x/etc hard drive slots, and connect to your machine by Thunderbolt cable.
Your choice of PCIe RAID controller is fitted into the slot, and a RAID is created within the enclosure; your machine will see the RAID volume.


About Thunderbolt :
Thunderbolt (codenamed Light Peak) is an interface for connecting peripheral devices to a computer via an expansion bus. Thunderbolt was developed by Intel and brought to market with technical collaboration from Apple. It was introduced commercially on Apple's MacBook Pro in 2011. It uses the same connector as Mini DisplayPort.

Thunderbolt combines PCI Express and DisplayPort into a serial data interface that can be carried over longer and less costly cables. Thunderbolt driver chips multiplex the data from these two sources for transmission then de-multiplex them for consumption within the devices. This makes the system backward compatible with existing DisplayPort hardware upstream of the driver. A single Thunderbolt port supports hubs as well as a daisy chain of up to seven Thunderbolt devices; up to two of these devices may be displays using DisplayPort. Existing Mini DisplayPort adapters for DVI, dual-link DVI, HDMI, and VGA are compatible with Thunderbolt, allowing backwards compatibility and no loss of functionality compared to Mini DisplayPort.

Intel will provide two types of Thunderbolt controllers, a 2 port type and a 1 port type. Both Peripherals and computers need to include a controller. Thunderbolt is based on the physical Mini DisplayPort connector developed by Apple. Mini DisplayPort is electrically identical to DisplayPort, but uses a smaller, non-locking connector. Thunderbolt can be implemented on PCIe graphics cards, which have access to DisplayPort data and PCI express connectivity, or on the motherboard of new devices, such as the MacBook Air.

Thunderbolt controllers on the host and peripherals multiplex the PCIe and DisplayPort data into packets at the transport layer and demultiplex them at the destination. Thunderbolt is interoperable with DisplayPort 1.2 compatible devices. When connected to a DisplayPort compatible device the Thunderbolt port can provide a native DisplayPort signal with 4 lanes of output data at no more than 5.4 Gbit/s per lane. When connected to a Thunderbolt device the per-lane data rate becomes 10 Gbit/s and the 4 lanes are configured as 2 channels with each bidirectional 10 Gbit/s channel comprising one lane of input and one lane of output.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the following Wiki article(s) :
* Thunderbolt_(interface)

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