Posted on Thursday, September 29 2011 @ 12:11 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
Earlier this month Intel revealed plans for two "Cactus Ridge" Thunderbolt controllers at the IDF, and now word has reached VR Zone that the chip giant is also working on the L2210 "Port Ridge", a low-cost device only controller. Full details
over here.
However, the controller that caught our attention is the tiny 5x6mm Port Ridge or L2210, it's a single channel controller that has been designed specifically for low-cost Thunderbolt devices. Due to its single channel design it only supports two lanes of PCI Express 2.0 bandwidth and it lacks support for pass-through connectivity. That said, there are plenty of PCI Express x1 devices that could easily be adapted for use in an external enclosure combine with Port Ridge and we can see this becoming a hugely popular Thunderbolt controller from Intel if it's priced accordingly to its functionality. Port Ridge should be in production before the end of the year, so hopefully we should see a raft of more affordable Thunderbolt devices early next year.
