Yes, Apple might be the first to announce Thunderbolt on their MacBook Pro, but according to Intel, Apple doesn’t actually have a timed exclusive on the technology. Intel might be targeting an early 2012 launch for Thunderbolt with other OEMs, there’s nothing stopping other manufacturers from launching machines with the 10Gbps interconnect a good bit earlier if they so desire.

Apparently there are already a few products with Thunderbolt feature that’s listed for this year’s launch. Promise has a product called Pegasus RAID array, which is capable of 800MB/sec video streaming. It comes with either four-bay or six-bay variants, topping out at 12TB of magnetic storage, and is expected to arrive in Q2 this year. LaCie also has a product called the Little Big Disk, boasting a pair of Intel 510 Series SSDs in RAID 0 for 500GB of storage in total. Oddly the Intel 510 Series SSDs aren’t even announced yet.

Hopefully more manufacturers will be implementing Thunderbolt in their products to truly maximize the 10Gbps transfer rate that it has.

SOURCE via Engadget