Thunderbolt is a new technology that allows data transfer speeds at 20 times faster than regular USB ports, 12 times faster than the Firewire 800. It also offers the ability to power ultra high resolution displays. And according to the patent applications discovered by Patently Apple, Apple might be working to bring Thunderbolt technology to mobile devices.

All current iMac, Mac Mini, MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air models use Sandy Bridge processors. Currently, Intel is working on Ivy Bridge, the successor to Sandy Bridge, which is designed to be faster and use less power. While Ivy Bridge isn’t scheduled to be released until Q2 2012, there is already information being released, both officially and unofficially.

A report at Digitimes claims Intel may have plans to expand its Thunderbolt technology to the PC industry. Intel has apparently notified their partners that the company intends is to “fully release” a motherboard equipped with Thunderbolt around April of 2012. This opens the doors of opportunity for other companies such as HP and Dell more »

At the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) in San Francisco this week, Intel revealed more particulars about its next-wave third-generation Ivy-Bridge Core CPU family. To wit, that Ivy Bridge would feature a 3D 22nm manufacturing process compared with the 32nm process used to manufacture the current Sandy Bridge second-generation Intel Core processor silicon, and faster integrated graphics processors.

Considering that Intel plans on integrating USB 3 alongside Thunderbolt into their next processor, Ivy Bridge, sometime in 2012, it was assumed that when Apple uses that processor they would use USB 3, as well. However, VR-Zone reports that Apple is looking at doing this before Ivy Bridge is available. But it begs the question, for what product?

With Intel’s next-generation Ivy Bridge mobile processors not expected until March 2012, it’s highly probable Apple will release a MacBook Pro refresh in the company’s traditional fall calendar envelope for laptop upgrades, somewhere from mid-October to late November, to keep interest up and goose sales a bit over the winter. That probability has been reinforced by Intel announcing that upgraded Sandy Bridge Core i7 processors will be released soon, dovetailing nicely with Apple’s traditional product update schedule, to headline a timely fall MacBook Pro refresh.

The only way to really know how something works is by taking it apart and the folks at iFixit did just that with a 21.5″ Thunderbolt iMac. While many of the components were the same from the previous iMac there were a few surprises. For instance, it’s now possible to replace the CPU and the graphics card separately instead of having to replace the entire logic board if either of them fail, which can get quite costly out of warranty.

When Apple released their new MacBook Pros on Thursday, they also introduced a new I/O technology originally developed by Intel under the name Light Peak. We have seen demos of Light Peak in the past, but now it has been officially launched as Thunderbolt. And the very first (and currently only) products to use the technology are the new MacBook Pros. So, what is Thunderbolt?

Today, Apple shipped sealed pallets of products to some dealers. The pallets have strict warnings against breaching the integrity of the sealed pallets, which can mean only one thing: a product refresh. And the products most likely to be refreshed this week based on rumors and the current shipping time frames on the Apple Store online are the MacBook Pros.

Earlier this week, Intel announced it has discovered a design issue in the recently released support chip, officially the Intel 6 Series, and has implemented a silicon fix. Longtime Apple portables watcher Jason D. O’Grady says in his ZNet “The Apple Core” column that this design flaw—discovered in Intel’s Sandy Bridge CPU family’s Cougar Point controller chipset—could delay the next MacBook Pro refresh until summer at the earliest.