Thunderbolt ports found on Apple’s current Mac models will work with future fiber optic Thunderbolt cables when they are released next year, reports PC World. Thunderbolt, originally called Light Peak, was initially designed to be used with fiber optic cables, but Intel later decided to start with copper to reduce costs.
Future optical versions of Thunderbolt are expected to operate at significantly faster speeds than today’s copper-based implementation, and while future Macs may be able to use the fiber optic cables in the future, its unclear whether there would be any speed benefit, as the actual transfer speeds may be limited by the Thunderbolt chipset included in those machines.
According to Intel spokesman Dave Salvator, fiber optic versions of Thunderbolt cables will increase the distance that data can be reliably transfer from six meters to “tens of meters,” and could also theoretically boost transfer speeds as high as 100Gbps, up from the copper version’s maximum of 10Gbps.
