On Tuesday, Apple began selling their official Thunderbolt cable alongside the first 3rd-party Thunderbolt products in the Apple Online Store. The cable was priced at $50, which left many wondering why – iFixit was kind enough to slice one up so you could find out.
What they found was pretty interesting – the Thunderbolt cable is no ordinary cable. It’s actually an “active cable”, meaning it contains embedded microchips (and tiny embedded transistors) that actually contain firmware to make everything work together. This is a big part of why the Thunderbolt cable is so much more expensive than many of Apple’s other cables, and even more expensive than most high-end HDMI cables.
While taking a hot X-Acto knife to a $50 cable seems almost criminal, and perhaps a bit insane, it seems like the knowledge that they gained was worth it. The sum total of their findings are that the $50 cable contained a total of 12 embedded chips, as well as a fair number of other smaller electrical components.
The chips it contained, Gennum GN2033’s, are not the cheapest chips available, but they do enable reliable data transfers at pretty incredible speeds while allowing the cable to remain as thin as possible. Could Apple have used cheaper chips? Probably – but the resulting cable would not have been as fast, as thin, or capable of performing to as high of standards.
So, if you thought Apple’s Thunderbolt cable was expensive, well, you’re right – but at least now you can rest assured that it’s not your average garden-variety cable, and considering what goes into it, the price probably isn’t that bad at all.
