A teardown of Apple's just-released $49 Thunderbolt cable has revealed an "active cable" with transceiver chips on each end.



From Apple Insider:

The teardown experts were prompted by a tip from ArsTechnica, who had been told by a support technician for storage maker Promise that Apple's Thunderbolt cable is a "smart cable" with internal firmware.

Apple released the Thunderbolt cable on Tuesday, alongside the first compatible peripherals--external RAID systems from Promise, which range in price from $999 to $1,999. Early tests of the Promise systems have revealed blazing fast write speeds of up to 700MB/s, as much as 21 times faster than FireWire and USB 2.0.

  Apple's new Thunderbolt cable sports internal firmware, transceivers