It turns out that Apple has developed the standard and was instrumental in bringing it on board over at Intel. Instrumental in this case means Steve Jobs aguing with Intel chief Paul Paul Otellini about getting the product into new motherboards. 10Gbs is fast. It is 10 times faster than Gigabit Ethernet (and is duplex meaning both tx and rx are 10Gb as the same time). That is also faster than the DisplayPort connector that connects Apple’s displays. The video below shows a video card driving an HD monitor while a 2 GB file copy transpires in a few seconds.
The good news from Engadget is that Apple machines with this technology are to debut within a year – they say around the back to school season. A lower power version is due a year from then (in 2011) and would be a good fit for mobile devices like a tablet. The bus standard is expected to hit 100Gbs in the future as well. In the meantime, it might also make a good dock connector-type port. It would allow USB/Firewire/Ethernet/DisplayPort all to run at full speed simultanously and would only require one plug.
