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Intel's Light Peak tech is coming to an Apple MacBook near you

The arrival of Apple's latest MacBook Pro models brings with it a brand-new connection technology called Thunderbolt. And by brand-new, we mean "just announced Thursday morning," which raises lots of questions about what, exactly, Thunderbolt is and why Apple has chosen to make it a flagship feature of the company's newest notebooks.

Here's what you need to know about the industry's latest connection standard.

What is Thunderbolt?

Thunderbolt (previously called Light Peak) is a new periphera connection technology, developed by Intel with collaboration from Apple, that combines data, video, audio and power in a single connection.

Based on the PCI Express and DisplayPort architectures, Thunderbolt allows for high speed connection of peripherals such as hard drives, RAID arrays, video-capture solutions and network interfaces, and it can transmit high definition video using the DisplayPort protocol. Each Thunderbolt port also provides up to 10 Watts of power to connected peripherals.