Hello, today I will be talking to you about Intel’s Thunderbolt technology. Thunderbolt technology is a dual protocol I/O that utilizes PCI Express and DisplayPort over a cable that can transmit data and video bi-directionally. The cable has a bandwidth on 10Gbps and is used with the thunderbolt controller. The controller controls the processing, sending and receiving of data. In a device that is daisy chained to other devices the controller passes data packets up and down stream. The cable itself is made from copper, although it was originally supposed to be fiber optic, due to cheaper cost. In the future it is planned to release a fiber optic cable Your device can be daisy chained, using the thunderbolt cable, between 7 devices (6 thunderbolt devices and 1 DisplayPort Monitor) and can utilize each devices hardware (as long as they have a thunderbolt controller). This means that if you have a cheap, not very powerful laptop, with a thunderbolt controller built inside, then you can link it up to a monitor and 6 other devices and, theoretically speaking, use their memory, graphics card etc. and turn your cheap laptop into a relatively powerful computer. Considering that apple are the main users of thunderbolt, with it being used in their MacBook Pro, and with technology shifting away from PC’s and more towards tablets (this is shown with Microsoft’s Windows 8 and the unveiling of the surface tablet) I can imagine this technology being used to complement the technology inside a tablet. When unplugged, your tablet can be a portable device that you can use for basic tasks (like browsing the web, reading emails, listening to music etc.). But when you get it all plugged in then you can use your tablet to run the latest games or run applications that are too demanding for the technology your tablet fields. ASUS have recently released a new motherboard, the P8Z77-V Premium, which has thunderbolt integrated into it. This is an option to take, if you want to use thunderbolt, without having to buy a Mac. However, I would recommend waiting a bit until you decide to invest in Thunderbolt. Current purchase of a thunderbolt cable is priced around £40 and the technology itself is rather buggy so some time should be allowed for the bugs to be ironed out and the prices to drop.