So what's everybody's take on Intel's Light Peak launch, now officially branded as Thunderbolt?
Anandtech - Intel's Codename Light Peak Launches as Thunderbolt
From Anandtech's review it looks like the production version didn't end up with all the bells-and-whistles that Intel was showing off at IDF 2010. Apparently Thunderbolt only supports PCI-Express and DisplayPort whereas the Anandtech guys were under the distinct impression Light Peak technology was originally intended to serve as a unified transport technology for HDMI, DVI, USB, FireWire, SATA, et al. Additionally Thunderbolt is only launching with copper as supported physical transport medium. Thunderbolt support for fiber optic transport is supposed to come toward the end of this year. That being said, 10 Gbps bi-directional throughput over copper is nothing to sneeze at.
Image file posted on Anandtech.com
So we'll see how Thunderbolt works out. OEM's like Western Digital, Seagate, and Promise have already announced their support for Thunderbolt. I guess this pretty much confirms my suspicions that Thunderbolt was the reason for Intel's slow adoption of USB 3.0 for its new chipsets since it's fairly obvious Thunderbolt is a competing in the same space.