I think Intel’s new Thunderbolt protocol/adapter is a truly brilliant move on their part. It’s more than just a new adapter, yet there’s not really a new protocol, in the sense that you don’t get to (nor need to) see much of the protocol.

It sounds like the adapters will be practically invisible in the software layer: we’ll just see PCIe and some display devices. That means stuff will just work, ie minimal “pain” for end-users. Plug in a new external drive, and it will just look like you hooked-up an extra SATA or USB adapter to your PCIe bus.

Ditto on the hardware side of things: we just get a more versatile display connector, not a useless-most-of-the-time Firewire port. If you’ve never heard of Thunderbolt, you can still plug in a standards-compliant DisplayPort device that doesn’t speak Thunderbolt, and nothing will break.

I think these two aspects together will mean that no one will come clamouring for “open standards”. In other words, Intel can be the exclusive source of Thunderbolt controllers for everyone who wants in on this, simply by not annoying anyone who isn’t already in.

And yeah, I know I’m merely stating the obvious, but it’s just quite impressive engineering.

Finally, it’s somewhat ironic that geeks had to complain for years that Firewire should have triumphed over USB based on technical merits, and now we get a controller that’s much more like Firewire from the company that pushed USB so hard. If I was cynical, I’d suggest they didn’t need USB to waste clock cycles and sell faster CPUs any more, now that they’ve hit a clock speed ceiling… ;)