In the never-ending search for faster connections between devices, people are willing to do all sorts of things.
For those who are willing to link two PCs together, Intel has a solution: Thunderbolt Networking.
Thunderbolt is a controller built into select PCs, Macs, laptops, professional digital video cameras, monitors, portable storage and audio-visual systems that allows transfer speeds of up to 20 Gbps.
Not fast enough? According to an Intel blog, it’s added Thunderbolt Networking to the mix — the ability to connect two Thunderbolt-enabled PCs with a cable for 10 Gigabit Ethernet transfer speeds. The capability, created by emulating an Ethernet environment, is already available on Mac platforms, but there’s a Windows driver coming for PCs.
Intel says the new capability will appeal to media professionals. “By offering simple and fast file sharing, Thunderbolt Networking enables backup or upgrade across two computers like never before, using existing cables and connectors,” Dan Snyder says in the blog.
The announcement was made at the U.S. National Association of Broadcasters annual conference, where a number of products with Thunderbolt 2 were announced including Apple Mac Pro, Hewlett-Packard’s Z Workstation line and LG Electronics’ 34-inch IPS UltraWide (Model UM95) monitor, Western Digital’s My Passport Pro portable dual drives.
One of the reasons the Thunderbolt Networking announcement was made at that show is because many professionals shooting 4K digital video need high-speed transfers offered by Thunderbolt or FireWire.