I suspect Intel has realised that people who need Thunderbolt have no practical alternative. May as well charge what that market will bear for a while.
AMD does have a low cost alternative - Lightening Bolt http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_Bolt_(interface) - and I will admit that if it takes off and beats Intel/Thunderbolt I will smile a bit. It will be AMD64 all over again.
I'm curious as to how the hell Intel can charge huge license fees on a pci express passthrough port. Though, it doesn't sound like Lightning Bolt is similar - the Displayport part, maybe, but USB is serial and has high latency compared to the pcie bridge.
> I'm curious as to how the hell Intel can charge huge license fees on a pci express passthrough port.
They aren't - they charge the fees for Thunderbolt. You can't claim something supports Thunderbolt without paying licensing fees.
> it doesn't sound like Lightning Bolt is similar
You can draw a venn diagram and find that all three have an overlap. A desire for fewer cables, to be able to connect lots of stuff, and bang for the buck. Display, storage, peripherals etc. Outside of the venn diagram, Thunderbolt does have low latency, but most don't need or want to pay for it. If Thunderbolt support was as pervasive and cheap as USB, it would be a different conversation.
I suspect Intel has realised that people who need Thunderbolt have no practical alternative. May as well charge what that market will bear for a while.
AMD does have a low cost alternative - Lightening Bolt http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_Bolt_(interface) - and I will admit that if it takes off and beats Intel/Thunderbolt I will smile a bit. It will be AMD64 all over again.