Thunderbolt PCIe Expansion Card will basically upgrade any OEM and existing PC with Intel’s impressive Thunderbolt technology. Codenamed Light Peak the Thunderbolt technology provides very high speeds via a Thunderbolt port. The Thunderbolt PCIe Expansion Cards will basically allow the up gradation of existing PCs to the Thunderbolt Port.

   Image Courtsey of VR Zone.

Thunderbolt PCIe Expansion Cards (Light Peak) Specifications

The Thunderbolt PCIe Expansion Cards will upgrade any existing PC with only 1 Thunderbolt Port. While that may seem less for the headache of having a separate PCIe card, its actually more than enough. Thunderbolt aka Light Peak provides speeds up to 20 GB/s with literally lightning fast I/O timings so is ideal for SAN and Server/Networking setups. It will also serve as an excellent home networking solution.

The Specs of the Thunderbolt PCIe Expansion card are given courtesy of Vr Zone.

The Thunderbolt PCIe Expansion card is quite a low profile card and should be priced reasonably too and will undoubtedly be below the $100 mark. However the main problem that lies is that Thunderbolt (Light Peak) is in active competition with USB 3.0.

Thunderbolt PCIe Expansion Card (Light Peak) and USB 3.0 Comparison

There are very few systems shipping with Thunderbolt port and it is unlikely that the general target audience will find the Thunderbolt PCIe Expansion Cards (Light Peak) a viable or cost effective choice. Even though USB 3.0 is not in every PC yet and you cannot upgrade an older PC, it is undoubtedly mainstream. USB 3.0 is already in most PCs and the time will soon come when it will be in every PC.

Infact ASUS already has a PCIe Thunderbolt Expansion Card and its sales aren’t quite high, which should be a clear forecaster for Intel. The Thunderbolt Port (Light Peak) has only a small potential for success and perhaps Intel is capitalizing on that.