The only way mainstream portable wintels are going the survive the onslaught of smaller, increasingly powerful and energy-efficient computing devices (such as ARM-driven tablets and smartphones), is by slimming down radically, and making themselves available to the mainstream. No, we're not talking about cheapo netbooks, but ultrabooks (ultra-slim notebooks), that provide mainstream notebook-like performance in a much more compact package. Intel will give this form-factor a big push next year with an Ivy Bridge architecture-based processor platform designed keeping it in mind, and technologies centric to it.

To begin with, slimmer form-factors could eat into wired connectivity, hence, Intel will push its Thunderbolt 10 Gb/s interconnect to the fore. But wired connectivity is the least of ultrabook's limitations. Battery life, data storage, and additional computing power will need to be accessible yet optional to it, and hence docking stations will be hot in the market, yet again. Intel will pitch for Thunderbolt to be a standard component of docking port clusters.

Even as the ecosystem of devices that use Thunderbolt interconnect grows at a snail's pace, there are companies such as ORICO from China that have ideas to take Thunderbolt-attached storage forward. It unveiled CGI sketches of products its working on, 3.5-inch SATA hard drive enclosures. Available in sizes of 1, 2, 4, and 5 drives; these enclosures connect installed hard drives to the system over Thunderbolt, some of the larger variants feature two connectors, to allow Thunderbolt daisy-chaining with other devices and displays. The enclosures make use of aluminum bodies, and draw power from external power bricks. The company didn't give out any more information.

Here are the first slides detailing Haswell, Intel's next generation processor architecture that succeeds Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge. Intel follows a "tick-tock" product development model. Every year, Intel's product lineup sees either of the two. A "tock" brings in a new x86 architecture, a "tick" miniaturizes it to a newer silicon fabrication process. For example, Sandy Bridge is Intel's latest architecture, and is based on the 32 nm fab process. Ivy Bridge is a miniaturization of Sandy Bridge to 22 nm. Likewise, Haswell will be a brand new architecture, it will use the 22 nm fab process cemented by Ivy Bridge.

If all goes well with Intel's 22 nm process, Haswell is scheduled for Q2 2013. 2012 (Q2 onwards) will be led by Ivy Bridge. But then here's a "shocker": Haswell's desktop version will use a brand new socket, LGA1150, and will be incompatible with LGA1155. This is because of drastic changes in the pin map of the package. Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge share the LGA1155 socket, and will hence, have kept the socket alive for over 2 years. A major change with the component arrangement in the platform that is affecting Haswell's pin map is that Haswell will have a higher bandwidth chipset bus, rearranged PCIe pins (with FDI pins), rearranged power pins, and miscellaneous pins. It does away with a separate power domain for the integrated graphics controller.

LaCie announced the Little Big Disk Thunderbolt Series is now available for purchase. It is the first portable solution to feature the shocking 10Gb/s speeds of Thunderbolt technology. This next-generation Little Big Disk is the first product in LaCie's series of high-end Thunderbolt solutions.

Designed for the most demanding applications, the LaCie Little Big Disk Thunderbolt Series will bring a new level of performance to creative workflows and professional storage users. It offers ultra-fast data transfers, complete system backup in minutes, and faster content editing than ever before.

Post production pros know that you can never have enough fast, cool and reliable storage. Dedicated to serving the Apple Mac and creative professional audio/video (A/V) markets, G-Technology by Hitachi is demoing its first 4TB hard drives at IBC 2011 (Stand #7.D12a) in its two-drive, RAID 0, G-RAID solution. Continuing to develop innovative and creative storage solutions for those looking to push creativity beyond the limits, the 8TB G-RAID demo shows how G-Technology is making digital production faster, super-sized and affordable, giving users a competitive edge in the demanding entertainment and film industry.

Seagate today announced it is shipping a new 4TB GoFlex Desk external hard drive - the highest capacity hard drive in the industry. This latest addition to the GoFlex Family of external hard drives showcases Seagate's new desktop design. The streamlined industrial design delivers a smaller footprint and better reflects the aesthetic of today's modern offices while still providing all of the benefits of previous generations of the GoFlex drives. The new 4TB GoFlex Desk drive is now available from www.seagate.com and will be available from select online retailers within the month for a manufacturer's suggested retail price of $249.99 USD. The entire line of GoFlex Desk products will also adopt the new industrial design in the coming weeks. The GoFlex Desk for Mac external drive featuring both FireWire 800 and USB 2.0 will be available in Apple stores by the end of the month.

Village Instruments ran a snap poll on Facebook to see if the Mac user community is interested in a graphics card enclosure that makes use of the Thunderbolt IO interconnect. The response was positive, and so the company decided to work on such a device. The enclosure holds a PCI-Express x16 slot along with a variety of miscellaneous I/O connectors. It connects to the latest generation of Macs and Macbooks over the 10 Gb/s Thunderbolt interconnect. It will power the graphics card using an external power brick. Village Instruments isn't new to such devices, the company currently sells ViDock, a device that does the same over ExpressCard interface. ExpressCard's bandwidth is much lower than that of Thunderbolt, but it still gets the job done in running a graphics card, even if not at its top performance. The ExpressCard ViDock is pictured below.

Apple today unveiled the new Apple Thunderbolt Display, the world's first display with Thunderbolt I/O technology and the ultimate docking station for your Mac notebook. With just a single cable, users can connect a Thunderbolt-enabled Mac to the 27-inch Apple Thunderbolt Display and access its FaceTime camera, high quality audio, and Gigabit Ethernet, FireWire 800, USB 2.0 and Thunderbolt ports. Designed specifically for Mac notebooks, the new display features an elegant, thin, aluminum and glass enclosure, and includes a MagSafe connector that charges your MacBook Pro or MacBook Air.

"The Apple Thunderbolt Display is the ultimate docking station for your Mac notebook," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. "With just one cable, users can dock with their new display and connect to high performance peripherals, network connections and audio devices."

Apple today updated the MacBook Air with next generation processors, high-speed Thunderbolt I/O technology, a backlit keyboard and Mac OS X Lion, the world's most advanced operating system. With up to twice the performance of the previous generation, flash storage for instant-on responsiveness and a compact design so portable you can take it everywhere, the MacBook Air starts at $999 (US) and is available for order today and in stores tomorrow.

"Portable, affordable and powerful, MacBook Air is the ultimate everyday notebook," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. "MacBook Air features our most advanced technology and is an ideal match for Lion, especially with its new Multi-Touch gestures, full-screen apps, Mission Control and Mac App Store."

Did you know what lies behind the USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt controller? It's of course the bus that connects it to the rest of the system, PCI-Express. It is the 500 MB/s per lane interconnect that is indirectly responsible for the awesome bandwidth that today's plug and play interfaces such as eSATA 6 Gb/s, USB 3.0, and Thunderbolt 10 Gb/s enjoy. What if you could eliminate the protocol overhead that comes with any of those protocols, and make PCI-Express directly an interconnect? So thought the PCI Special Interest Group (SIG), the body that decides the fate of PCI. The SIG is planning to create a cabled version of PCI-Express Gen 3, that has no secondary protocol overhead, not even of the kind Infiniband has.

A single PCI-Express 3.0 lane can provide 8 Gbps (1 GB/s) of bandwidth in each direction, the new cabled interconnect can supply bandwidth of four Gen 3 lanes, totaling 32 Gbps, over three times that of the current version of Thunderbolt. Apart from that bandwidth, cabled PCI-E will be designed to supply 20W of power to its devices, plenty of power for even a small 3-bay HDD rack. The connector itself will be designed to be very compact and flat, so it can be fitted into notebooks and tablets. PCI SIG plans to have the first specifications of cabled PCI-Express ready before June 2013. By 2013, Intel will be about 2 years away from releasing its proposed 50 Gbps version of Thunderbolt, but even then, Thunderbolt is an additional protocol that sits over the system bus (again, PCI-Express), unless Intel designs Thunderbolt controllers to somehow talk to CPU over QPI.

Here are some of the first proper pictures of ASUS ROG Crosshair V Formula motherboard, a set of press-shots leaked to the Czech press, which has since been retracted. The ROG Crosshair V Formula comes in two packages, with and without ASUS Thunderbolt card (an addon card by ASUS that provides Bigfoot Killer NIC and Sound Blaster X-Fi hardware-accelerated audio). The Crosshair V made its first appearance with a box-shot disclosure by NVIDIA announcing SLI on AMD chipset motherboards; later a table listing out specifications of some of ASUS' fist socket AM3+ motherboard was published.

The Crosshair V Formula is a socket AM3+ motherboard based on AMD 990FX + SB950 chipset, supporting AMD's upcoming FX-series processors based on the Bulldozer architecture. It combines the best features ASUS has to offer, targeting both gamers and overclockers. The AM3+ socket is powered by a strong 10-phase Digi+ Extreme Engine VRM, it supports dual-channel DDR3 memory with speeds of over DDR3-2133 MHz. Expansion slots include four PCI-Express 2.0 x16, which configure as x16/x16/NC or x16/x8/x8, with the fourth slot being electrical x4, wired to the southbridge. NVIDIA 3-way SLI and AMD CrossFireX are supported.

Apple today updated its signature all-in-one iMac with next generation quad-core processors, powerful new graphics, groundbreaking high-speed Thunderbolt I/O technology and a new FaceTime HD camera. Starting at $1,199, the new iMac is up to 70 percent faster and new graphics deliver up to three times the performance of the previous generation.

"Our customers love the iMac's aluminum enclosure, gorgeous display and all-in-one design," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. "With next generation quad-core processors, powerful new graphics, Thunderbolt technology and a FaceTime HD camera, we've made the world's best desktop even better."

For the greater part of the last decade, PC device connectivity was limited to the 480 Mbps bandwidth of USB 2.0. The pressing need for more bandwidth to run external hard drives and disk racks was alleviated by eSATA, but eSATA lacked the versatility of USB. After quite some delay, came the next big version of USB, the USB 3.0 SuperSpeed, with its massive 5 Gbps bandwidth, plenty for fast and capacious flash drives, and external storage devices.

There was, however, a potential bottleneck lurking with running SSD-based RAID boxes in USB 3.0, as many SATA 6 Gbps SSDs are getting close to the bandwidth limit of USB 3.0. There has also been the need for an interconnect faster than USB 3.0 for high-bandwidth applications such as lossless ultra high definition video streaming in professional environments, and hence came Thunderbolt, which is a copper-electric variant of a fiber-optic interconnect Intel had been working on, codenamed Light Peak. The successor to Thunderbolt is reportedly already under development at Intel Labs.

Intel's next platform for enthusiasts (successor to LGA1366, X58), will consist of a 2011-pin LGA socket, the Sandy Bridge-E (enthusiast) processor that features a massive quad-channel DDR3 memory controller and 32+ lane PCI-Express 2.0 hub, and the X79 chipset. Intel is looking to skip the 6-series chipset family with its next high-end platform chipset, and perhaps it makes sense since the platform is slated for Q4 2011. The X79 is a PCH (platform controller hub), like P55 and P67, since Intel has reorganized the platform. The beefy PCI-E hub housed in the X58 northbridge is relocated to the processor die, and the southbridge is given a much needed overhaul in terms of connectivity.

The X79 is much bigger than P67 in terms of connectivity and features. Differences start right at the interconnect. While P67 connects to the processor over DMI (physical PCI-Express 2.0 x4), X79 supplements this link with an additional PCI-Express 2.0 x4 link to the processor's PCI-E hub if the user chooses so, in the EFI setup program. The chipset bus hence ends up with 8 GB/s of bandwidth, and wait till you hear what will make use of it: a 10-port SATA 6 Gb/s RAID controller integrated to the PCH! That is a huge improvement in terms of storage connectivity, which is limping with 2-port SATA 6 Gb/s (next to four 3 Gb/s ports) on 6-series chipsets.

PROMISE Technology today announced Pegasus, the industry's first-high performance hardware RAID solution designed to unleash the raw speed of the all-new Thunderbolt technology. Designed from the ground up for media and entertainment customers, Pegasus offers superior speed and throughput in a form factor small enough for a desktop, and is available in 4-bay and 6-bay aluminum enclosures with up to 12TB of raw storage.

"Intel is excited about the superior performance and simplicity Thunderbolt technology and PROMISE's Pegasus family of products will bring to consumers and media professionals trying to keep up with the explosion of digital media," said Jason Ziller, Director, Thunderbolt Planning and Marketing, Intel Corporation.

LaCie today announced the LaCie Little Big Disk featuring the all-new Thunderbolt technology, developed by Intel and brought to market with collaboration from Apple. Designed to store large audio and video files, the LaCie Little Big Disk will bring a new level of performance to creative workflows with ultra-fast data transfer, complete system backup in minutes, and faster content editing than ever before.

"Thunderbolt technology is a breakthrough in I/O technology and represents the future of mobile computing. Soon you will be able to carry workstation-class power and functionality in compact devices," said Philippe Spruch, Chairman and General Manager, LaCie. "LaCie is excited to be one of the first to deliver Thunderbolt technology with the LaCie Little Big Disk."

Apple today introduced its 2011 Macbook Pro, the company's premium line portable computers. Available in 13.3-inch, 15-inch, and 17-inch sizes, the Macbook Pro binds the latest notebook hardware with the Apple Mac platform. The 2011 version makes use of Intel's second-generation Core "Sandy Bridge" processors, AMD Radeon HD 6000 series graphics, a minimum of 4 GB of DDR3 memory, and Intel's newly introduced Thunderbolt 10 Gb/s "Light Peak" interface. The new Macbook Pro also features a new Facetime HD camera that allows Facetime conversations with three times the video resolution, and a revamped glass-based multi-touch surface trackpad that gives pointing with the precision of an iPhone 4. Mac OSX "Snow Leopard" is the OS of choice.

The lineup, with available hardware configurations is split according to screen size. The 13.3-inch are the entry-level, starting at US $1,199. The base model features dual-core 2.3 GHz Core i5 with 320 GB HDD, topped by a dual-core 2.7 GHz Core i7 driven model with 500 GB HDD at $1,499. The 15-inch pair includes a quad-core 2.0 GHz Core i7 powered model with AMD Radeon HD 6490M graphics and 500 GB HDD priced at $1,799, followed by a quad-core 2.2 GHz Core i7 model with Radeon HD 6750M graphics, and 750 GB HDD at $2,199. The series is topped by a 17-inch model with quad-core 2.2 GHz Core i7 processor, Radeon HD 6750M graphics, and 750 GB HDD, priced at $2,499. They are available right away from the Apple Store.

Intel Corporation today announced the availability of Thunderbolt technology, a new high-speed PC connection technology that brings together high-speed data transfer and high-definition (HD) display on to a single cable. Running at 10 Gbps, Thunderbolt technology can transfer a full-length HD movie in less than 30 seconds. This Intel-developed technology is coming to market through a technical collaboration with Apple, and is available first on Apple's new line of MacBook Pro laptop computers.

The vision for Thunderbolt technology (formerly codenamed "Light Peak") is to move media faster, simplify connections between devices, and foster new and exciting ways to build and use PCs. Combining high-speed data and HD video connections together onto a single cable is instrumental to achieving that vision. Thunderbolt technology delivers this via two communications methods, or protocols -- PCI Express for data transfer and DisplayPort for displays.