Microsoft-Powered PCs Getting Thunderbolt Ports in 2012

When Apple first partnered with Intel to include Thunderbolt ports on the MacBook Pro, it may or may not have known how much interest the technology would generate in the computer world. In 2012, Thunderbolt looks to make a bigger splash by making its way onto several different PC platforms. Names like Sony, Acer, Gigabyte and Asus came up in a report from tech blog DigiTimes. Intel announced to its partners they would be fully releasing Thunderbolt with more widespread PC adoption in the new year.

Gigabyte Technology is mentioned in the report, and they may have plans to make Thunderbolt-equipped motherboards available in the spring. Additionally, Sony could be planning to use the data port standard in its high-end laptops. The Sony Vaio Z ultraportable bundles Thunderbolt tech into a USB 3 port. That means Sony could easily include standard Thunderbolt ports in the near future.

Acer and Asus said during the Intel Developers Forum in September that they would ship products with Thunderbolt ports starting next year. HP, the world's biggest PC maker, has so far decided to not use Thunderbolt ports, and the same goes for Dell, Lenovo and Toshiba, according to tech blog Ars Technica.

Other than being used on computers, the Thunderbolt technology has been adopted by high-speed storage devices and video producers. Thunderbolt is unique because it is made to bring desktop level input/output to the mobile world. It's handy, as any Mac user will tell you, for connecting extra monitors, storage and audio and video devices.

Thunderbolt is now moving toward becoming a new standard that could replace FireWire and USB with connections capable of high bi-directional I/O. It's able to achieve 10Gbps bi-directional communication, and that make it 20 times faster than USB 2.0. That means a single port can communicate with multiple devices at the same time for a total throughput of 10Gbps. Tell us in the comments what devices you have connected to your Mac with the Thunderbolt port.