Promise Technology has launched the first range of Thunderbolt-compatible devices but it looks like the technology will be hit by the curse of Apple.
Pegasus RAID R4 and R6 storage solutions can now be ordered from the Apple Store but the problem is that to get anything to work you have to buy a cable directly from Apple. Apple wants to sting people for $50. Now obviously if you splash out $999 or $1999 for a RAID unit you are not going to care about an additional $50. But it does show the hurdles that Thunderbolt will have, particularly if its number one cheerleader is Jobs' Mob who charge huge mark ups.
Thunderbolt uses what's called an active cable. Inside the cable there's a pair of Gunnum GN2033 transceivers which enabling dual bidirectional 10Gb/s concurrent links over narrow-gauge copper wires. It seems fairly clear to us that while this is pretty good technology it is going to go the way of FireWire' pretty smartish.
$50 for a cable!
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Nick Farell
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