You _could_ interconnect multiple computers via thunderbolt. ...
You could rewrite OS X 100% in assembler. It isn't going to happen.
"Memory Channel" was an interconnect developed by Digital. It's a PCI-based (not PCI-Express) point-to-point connection between computers,
and CPU and Memory clock speed were what back then?
Note that there was a fair amount of OS kernel and device driver software needed to make it work. For example, see
http://h18002.www1.hp.com/alphaserver/download/es45_ts.pdf (page 12).
With enough kludges piled on top almost anything can work. Whether it is effective and economical is another issue.
An interesting thing I learned from this wikipedia page: Intel (maker of thunderbolt) bought Qlogic's InfiniBand business last year. Hmm.
Not really if look at overall strategy. Intel also bought Cray's CPU interconnect.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/25/intel_cray_interconnect_followup/
Intel already was a sizable player in Ethernet. > 10Gb/s Ethernet and Infiniband largely has many of the same issues. Like the Cray interconnect and the Xeon Phi line Intel is setting things up so that systems vendor who wants to build large grids can just come to them for the major subcomponents. Buy the CPU , GPGPU , CPU interconnect , storage network ( Ethernet or Infiniband ) , etc (i.e., all the high margin components ) all from Intel. You get your much more commodity drives and memory from someone else.
Thunderbolt really doesn't play in that HPC and/or grid context at all.
Thunderbolt could provide similar functionality to Memory Channel or InfiniBand, probably at much lower prices.
With respect to Inifinband the prices are lower because the performance is much lower. Real host-to-host throughput of Thunderbolt is roughtly x4 PCI-e v2.0.
The other problem is that Thunderbolt compilance standards means dragging GPUs around with all of these TB connections. TB does two things. If really only need just PCI-e it is actually a higher cost than relatively short range external PCI-e would be.
But I haven't heard of anyone bringing this kind of product to market.
Probably because it needs the same sort of specialize, nonstandard drivers that Memory Channel needed . PCI and PCI-e are all naturally much more hiearchial than a peer-to-peer network. Thunderbolt in essence from a narrow PCI-e viewpoint is a switch. Not a peer-to-peer network. The host and peripherals have different compliance standards to meet.
It sounds far outside of Apple's area of expertise; they've never shown any interest in clustering their computers.
XGrid ( at NeXT Zilla ). XGrid was dropped last year (and always was mainly focused on homogenous Mac clusters/grids. )
A sustained primary interest no. There was a time in the 2nd Jobs era at Apple when desktops where declining and overall Mac PC market share was steadily imploding in which Apple threw multiple initiatives out into significantly different directions to see what would stick. That is an era when Macs powered an Va Tech supercomputer and Apple was rolling out things like XRaid. None of that really caught on in a sustainable fashion and the market force shifted much more to what particularly no value-add box could you cobble together into a makeshift grid/cluster.
Apple got out of that market. It is extremely doubtful they will want to jump back in now. Especially with the design choices with the 2013 Mac Pro.
Inifinband ( at least where most folks are going with Infiniband ) won't work at all. ( would need minimally PCI-e x8 v3.0 and more desirably PCI-e v3.0 slots to work. Mac Pro has none free either as slots or embedded. )
(Most of the top-notch clustering intellectual property is languishing at companies like HP. If Apple wanted it, they could probably license or purchase it for pocket change.)
Intel didn't get Cray's for pocket change. It would not make any finanicial sense at all for Apple to absorb that kind of tech for a single minor part of the Mac product line up.
Intel's server group is bigger than Apple's whole desktop product line. Probably a decent portion of the laptop product line too. For them they can get economic return on investment for these Infiniband, Cray interconnect, etc. acquisitions they are making because they are still going to sell that stuff directly to many vendors.