Thunderbolt is developed by Intel partners and at Intel's Silicon Photonics lab. As the technology advances, every users want workstation performance but demand an Ultra book form factor. So which leads to need of very fast I/O interface which can transfer data at lightning speed but at same time being compact. Even majority of users don’t care about cost factor. The Intel which is one of biggest hardware company takes innovative to develop such an interface which can meet the need of next generation of I/O data transfer and came up with the thunderbolt technology which they codename it as “light Peak”. With this Thunderbolt technology it is now possible to enable the thinnest and lightest laptops can connected over a single cable to high performance storage, external media drives, multiple HD displays, HD media and editing systems as well as legacy I/O hubs and devices.

Thunderbolt technology dramatically increases the data transfer rate enabling faster backup, editing and file sharing, significantly reducing the time to complete key tasks. Thunderbolt technology was specifically designed with inherently low latency and highly accurate time synchronization capabilities. These features enable extremely accurate audio and video creation, playback that no other standard interconnect technology can match Originally, Thunderbolt was going to be enabled using an optical physical layer and optical fiber cabling. But Intel discovered that it could achieve its 10 Gbps per channel at a lower cost using copper wiring. Copper cabling delivers up to 10 W of power to attached devices. When optical cables do emerge, attached devices will require their own power supplies. The interface shares certain capabilities with other technologies. For example, it supports hot plugging. And, like FireWire, it is designed to work in daisy chains. Machines that come armed with Thunderbolt will either include one or two ports, each supporting up to seven chained devices, two of which can be DisplayPort-enabled monitors.