Intel Shows Off Prototype 128GB Thunderbolt Thumb Drive

[zorinlynx]

That drive looks like it's been through war. WTF?

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It is not, actually, the most expensive thumb drive on the planet. See here:

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/technol...ive-flash-drive-37-000-sparkly-172140917.html

That doesn't really count. They only made it expensive by adding a ton of expensive decorations to it.

I can do that right now with a cheap 1GB USB thumb drive by krazy-gluing a Krugerrand to it.

 

[nekonari]

TB1 already is faster than SATA III.



TB prices will probably never go down to the point of being as cheap as SATA. Heck, just look at the price of cables, much less the price of devices themselves. And TB is intended as an external standard, they could potentially do an internal version but that doesn't seem likely at this point.

What a product is intended for doesn't really matter. If it's viable or better alternative, then why not?? Wonder how much faster it'll be..

 

[naurmel]

What is it for?

This stick is a kind of "just one minute Jack"-Stick. With the right software on it you are able to copy the whole RAM and Parts of the users home directories. In seconds. That is the reason why it is Thunderbolt.
And why do we see this stick now? Maybe Intel has closed this door with the last firmware update.

 

[MrNomNoms]

The big question is what kind of flash is being used - if the flash is just the cheap low end slow variety then it really won't matter how much bandwidth is piped to the device if the bottleneck is the chip itself. IMHO although flash is a great technology now I'm more interested in the future technologies that are coming down the pipe which don't have the limitations of flash such as the limited number of writes, the cost relative to the size when compared to traditional rotating media etc. For me I've used flash in the past (on a Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon) and don't get me wrong it was great in terms of responsiveness but I always felt as though the promise of flash has been greatly overhyped when it came to speed when compared the downsides.

 

[cmanderson]

Nothing beats the aesthetics of the Kingston

Image

just give me this with thunderbolt.

Design award for a svelte bottle opener. I can go along with that.

 

[Rossatron]

wouldnt mind getting one of these if they go on to production

 

[milo]

Its pointless because you could buy a universally usable USB drive for a fraction the price, or , get a proper external Thunderbolt SSD if you want performance

Maybe it's not the best choice for some uses, but that doesn't make it pointless. And while we all assume it would be expensive, at this point we don't know specifics. If it's somewhat more expensive and somewhat faster, it just depends what those specific numbers are and what it's worth to a user.

 

[Nightarchaon]

No. A Thunderbolt display can be at any point in the chain (so long as it has a pass-thru port). For proof of this, just look at Apple's current display.

A DisplayPort or mini DisplayPort display has to be the last in the chain. (Because it doesn't have a Thunderbolt pass-thru.)

ahh, that makes WAY more sense than how i was reading it..

 

[carestudio]

Not sure if the Thunderbolt thumb drive would make sense to me or actually USB 3 Thumb drive would make even more sense to me considering the pricing and others.
Found some good tear-down pictures of this Intel thunderbolt flash drive.
http://www.thunderbolt4mac.com/Intel/Thunderbolt-Flash-Drive/index.asp?C=0

A 128G flash memory on the board and the other side is thunderbolt connector and chip.