I am considering to get a thunderbolt usb dock.But I need to know How many PC's I can connect to and the maximum data transfer rate of the dock.
Hello Michael. The thunderbolt (codenamed Light Peak by Intel) is a product of the collaboration of Intel and Apple. One Thunderbolt hub can support up to 7 devices in a daisy chain, it can also support hubs. The thunderbolt technology uses technology from the PCI Express and Display ports and combines them into a serial data that can be carried longer and cheaper wires/cables. The Thunderbolt is backwards compatible with existing display technologies like DVI/dual-link DVA, VGA and HDMI without any loss of functionality. Its input/output performance can reach speeds of up to 800 megabytes per second. It can reach 864MB/s read and 746MB/s write. As compared to Firewire 800 (93MB/s read and 77MB/s write) and USB 2.0 (41MB/s read and 28MB/s write) the thunderbolt technology is definitely faster. It can also support of up to 8 simultaneous streams of 720p video. Hope this answers your questions.
