Intel would like to bring Thunderbolt to portable gadgets but there are tradeoffs that have to be made when using the technology in low-power devices, said Jason Ziller, director of Thunderbolt planning and marketing at Intel, after a presentation at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco.

Thunderbolt might instead find its way into hybrid ultrabooks based on Core processors, on which screens can be detached to become tablets, Ziller said. The tablet/PC hybrids draw more power and are more appropriate to handle the high data transfer rates of 10Gbps (bits per second) provided by the high-speed interconnect.

Thunderbolt transfers data at high speeds between devices and external peripherals. Intel initially envisioned the technology as something that would be used across both personal computers and mobile devices, but it is currently found in Apple's Mac and Windows PCs from Lenovo, Acer, Asus and Hewlett-Packard. The technology supports PCI-Express 2.0 and DisplayPort technologies.

Intel's focus right now is squarely to ensure Thunderbolt works well on the Windows and Mac OS platforms. Intel officials could not provide a timeline for when the technology could reach mobile devices.

The technology was co-developed by Intel and Apple and officially launched early last year. There are currently 37 peripherals available for Thunderbolt-equipped Macs, including external storage devices and an Apple display. Intel has said it hopes to have 100 peripherals with Thunderbolt by the end of the year.