Promise Technology first with Intel Thunderbolt storage arrays

Promise Technology has announced Raid arrays based on Intel's Thunderbolt, making it one of the first vendors to deliver products based on the high-speed interconnect.

Available from the second quarter of 2011, the Promise Pegasus line consists of four-bay and six-bay Raid enclosures supporting up to 12TB of storage with two Thunderbolt ports for host connectivity.

Thunderbolt, officially revealed by Intel and Apple this week, provides plug-and-play connectivity for external peripherals, akin to USB.

However, Thunderbolt offers much higher data transfer speeds with two bi-directional 10Gbit/s data channels per port, making it twice as fast as USB 3.0 and about 12 times faster than FireWire.

Promise Technology said that a Pegasus box can deliver 800MB/s of sustained throughput with the new interconnect, and is targeting it at creative professionals and power users dealing with large volumes of data.

"Promise is thrilled to deliver one of the first peripherals to feature the blazing speed of Thunderbolt technology. Pegasus brings groundbreaking Raid performance to creative professionals in the studio, on location and in the home," said Promise chief executive James Lee.

However, with Apple's new MacBook Pro laptops the sole systems currently configured with Thunderbolt ports, Promise is selling to a very niche market.

The company said that Thunderbolt's performance enables Final Cut Studio users to edit and play back multiple streams of uncompressed high-definition video on the MacBook Pro.

Users will also be able to daisy-chain multiple Pegasus enclosures to expand storage to a maximum of 72TB.

Pricing for the new Pegasus storage arrays has not been disclosed, but the products will be available for order from the Apple Store and authorised Promise resellers.