Thunderbolt (originally codenamed Light Peak) is an interface for connecting peripheral devices to a computer via an expansion bus. Thunderbolt was developed by Intel and brought to market with technical collaboration from Apple Inc. It was introduced commercially on Apple's updated MacBook Pro lineup on February 24, 2011, using the same port and connector as Mini DisplayPort.

Thunderbolt essentially combines PCI Express and DisplayPort into a new serial data interface that can be carried over longer and less costly cables. Because PCI Express is widely supported by device vendors and built into most of Intel's modern chipsets, Thunderbolt can be added to existing products with relative ease. Thunderbolt driver chips fold the data from these two sources together, and split them back apart again for consumption within the devices. This makes the system backward compatible with existing DisplayPort hardware upstream of the driver.

The interface was originally designed to use flexible optical fiber cables, but a version using conventional copper wiring was also developed to furnish the desired 10 Gb/s bandwidth at lower cost. Intel's implementation of the port adapter folds Thunderbolt and DisplayPort data together, allowing both to be carried over the same cable at the same time. A single Thunderbolt port supports hubs as well as a daisy chainof up to seven Thunderbolt devices; up to two of these devices may be high-resolution displays using DisplayPort.^[5] Apple sells existing DisplayPort adapters for DVI, dual-link DVI, HDMI, and VGA output from the Thunderbolt port, showing broad compatibility.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Xcode is a suite of tools for developing software on Mac OS X, developed by Apple. Xcode 3.2, the latest major version, is bundled free with Mac OS X v10.6, though it is not installed by default. Because version 3.2 is not supported on older Mac OS versions, more dated versions of Xcode are free from the Apple Developer Connection.
The main application of the suite is the integrated development environment (IDE), also named Xcode. The Xcode suite also includes most of Apple's developer documentation, and Interface Builder, an application used to construct graphical interfaces.

The Xcode suite includes a modified version of free software GNU Compiler Collection (GCC, apple-darwin9-gcc-4.2.1 as well as apple-darwin9-gcc-4.0.1, with the former being the default), and supports C, C++, Fortran, Objective-C, Objective-C++, Java, AppleScript, Python and Ruby source code with a variety of programming models, including but not limited to Cocoa, Carbon, and Java. Third parties have added support for GNU Pascal,[1] Free Pascal,[2] Ada,[3] C#,[4] Perl,[5] Haskell,[6] and D. The Xcode suite uses GDB as the back-end for its debugger.

Source:
1. Wikipedia-Xcode
2. Apple Corp.

SuperSpeed USB 3.0

USB 3.0 The USB 3.0 Logo The USB 3.0 Icon
On September 18, 2007, Pat Gelsinger demonstrated USB 3.0 at the Intel Developer Forum. The USB 3.0 Promoter Group announced on November 17, 2008, that version 1.0 of the specification has been completed and is transitioned to the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), the managing body of USB specifications.[31] This move effectively opens the spec to hardware developers for implementation in future products. A new major feature is SuperSpeed bus, which increases the maximum transfer rate to 5.0 Gbit/s.

USB 3.0 receptacles are compatible with USB 2.0 device plugs for the respective physical form factors. However, only USB 3.0 Standard-B receptacles can accept USB 3.0 Standard-B device plugs. The protocol uses Dual-simplex, over four additional wires, differential signaling separate from USB 2.0 signaling (thus six wires total) to achieve the full Superspeed 5.0 Gbit/s. The protocol supports full-duplex data transfers.[34] In addition, data transaction is based on asynchronous traffic flow with explicitly routed packet traffic, instead of the polled broadcast packet traffic in USB 2.0. A streams mode is added for bulk transfer mode. SuperSpeed protocol also supports continuous burst transfers.
New power management features include support of idle, sleep and suspend states,as well as link and function-level power management. Maximum bus power is increased to 150mA per unit load (+50% over USB 2.0). An unconfigured device can still draw only 1 unit load, but a configured device can draw up to 6 unit loads (900mA, an 80% increase over USB 2.0). Minimum device operating voltage is dropped from 4.4V to 4V.
USB 3.0 does not define cable assembly lengths, except that it can be of any length as long as it meets all the requirements defined in the specification. However, electronicdesign.com estimated cables will be limited to 3 m at full speed. The technology is similar to PCI Express 2.0 (5-Gbit/s). It uses 8B10B encoding, linear feedback shift register (LFSR) scrambling for data, spread spectrum. It forces receivers to use low frequency periodic signaling (LFPS), dynamic equalization, and training sequences to ensure fast signal locking.

Availability

USB 3.0 devices supporting SuperSpeed bus are expected to be available in commercial controllers in the first half of 2010. However it will not be until the second half of 2010 when they become seen on products other than computers. Consumer products are expected to become available in 2010.

Source:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB

2. http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/40225/135/