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I have yet to hear any clear explanation for why Intel appears less than cooperative about the idea of Thunderbolt being used for GPU purposes. There have been a few, heavily integrated and close to model-specific, releases; but the "Here is a box with an x16(mechanical) PCIe slot inside, and a thunderbolt port" market is pretty slim, with the exception of some very, very, expensive cardcages from outfits like Magma, clearly aimed at audiences with expansion cards that make gamer toys look disposably cheap.

Most of the tinkering you see skips Thunderbolt entirely and uses the PCIe 1x->16x adapters that became popular when GPU cryptocurrency mining became a craze; and connect those either to the 1x PCIe lane provided by an Expresscard slot; or the one provided by a mini-PCIe slot.

Here you go. Good luck with the PCIe x1 bandwidth limit.

Considering TB has 20Gb/s bandwidth that puts a lot faster than a PCIe 16x slot. You sure you don't mean it's slower than PCIe 4.0 which isn't even coming to market till late 2014?

considering that the actual now out TB doesn't seem to have 20Gb/s bandwidth, no, that's not what he means. finding benches on actual throughputs is a bit hard, which tells how niche-niche this really is.

still plenty fast for a lot of gpu stuff though.
still, to save googling for those interested http://www.magma.com/thunderbolt.asp - it's UNDER THOUSAND DOLLARS! great bargain if you want to have a hipsteriest hipster desk! (and you'll need to run windows on your macbook if you want gpu drivers...). if you're a normal guy you _might_ want to buy a real pc with that thousand bucks.

Magma is the company: http://magma.com/thunderbolt.asp

It doesn't however state anything about video cards, but everyone (including God himself) hopes and wishes that it will be possible

There's actually an entire(rather obscure) industry of external PCI and PCIe connector products: ATI had their stab with the XGP, which unfortunately foundered because it only ever appeared in a few systems of no particular interest. Nvidia, to this day, has an external PCIe connector card for their higher-end Tesla products, for their legacy D870 enclosure or their current S2050 rackmount(both of which used a 16x PCIe interface card+proprietary cable to allow a normal desktop/workstation to connect to an external enclosure containing up to 4 Tesla cards). Various smaller outfits have had external PCI backplanes available for users who absolutely needed to run specialized ADC cards or similar industry-specific stuff on SFF workstations or laptops in the field. The Magma guys have been at it for a while now...

The question is not of Apple being innovative, which they wouldn't be; but whether Apple will, through force of just deciding that this is the new baseline, create a market large enough that such expansion gear won't be obscure, expensive specialty hardware...

And I suppose Magma or Lava were already taken ?

http://www.magma.com/
http://www.creative.com/products/mp3/

There have been various ad-hoc solutions to the problem, nothing standardized has yet hit the field, though the PCI-SIG has an initial standard. These guys are representative enough of the sort of products actually available, usually break-out boxes to allow laptops or undersized desktops to run a few more cards. A few more specialized instances, for the laptop market, have consisted of basically your usual docking station; but with a cable that plugs into an expresscard port, rather than a proprietary connector.

mobility electronics limited have a product that will solve that problem for you. Unfortunately it's not cheap.

http://www.magma.com/products/pciexpress/expressbox7/index.html

External PCIe x1 isn't that expensive: http://www.magma.com/products/pciexpress/expressbox1/index.html

The x8 version starts to get expensive, though: http://www.magma.com/products/pciexpress/expressbox4-1u/prices.html

External PCIe x1 isn't that expensive: http://www.magma.com/products/pciexpress/expressbox1/index.html

The x8 version starts to get expensive, though: http://www.magma.com/products/pciexpress/expressbox4-1u/prices.html

There have been and still are a few implementations of external pci express. But they have all been prohibitively expensive and somewhat "special purpose". Besides ones already mentioned there is also several product options from http://www.magma.com/ Be prepared to drop a Grover Cleveland to get one.

ExpressCard is external PCIe.

Asus showed off an external video card a couple years ago, but it seems to be vapourware. You could also get one of these if you have a lot of money to burn for such a thing.

I wonder if it would be possible to use a PCMCIA -> PCI Card adapter with a normal SCSI RAID card and two of those 15k drives to complete the expirence. Note: This is a joke! (In theroy it should still work though!

Personally, I previously used a Toshiba Tecra 720 with an Expansion Station V (PA2710U). This is a lower older Pentium solution, however they can be had for really cheap on ebay. The PA2710U works with most Tecra models up through the 8000 as well as some of the Portege models (requires an adaptor [PA2714U]).

I currently use a Tecra 8100 (PIII) with it's expansion station (PA3018U). This is much more current and not as inexpensive, (most of the cost is the 8100!! but what a sweet machine).

There are however more generic solutions to allow you to add PCI slots to PC's and Mac's. Magma Offers PCMCIA/CardBus to PCI adaptors in the 1 slot full or half length card as well as a 2 slot and 4 slot solutions with built in drive controllers.

Getting all the way to the extrememe, companies like Baber.com sell a Universal Expansion Stations like the PCIDock 5000 that will adds a mini-tower including a second screen display, IDE controller, USB, Serial, Parrellel ports all in one unit. Basically a PC without a CPU.

Personally, I previously used a Toshiba Tecra 720 with an Expansion Station V (PA2710U). This is a lower older Pentium solution, however they can be had for really cheap on ebay. The PA2710U works with most Tecra models up through the 8000 as well as some of the Portege models (requires an adaptor [PA2714U]).

I currently use a Tecra 8100 (PIII) with it's expansion station (PA3018U). This is much more current and not as inexpensive, (most of the cost is the 8100!! but what a sweet machine).

There are however more generic solutions to allow you to add PCI slots to PC's and Mac's. Magma Offers PCMCIA/CardBus to PCI adaptors in the 1 slot full or half length card as well as a 2 slot and 4 slot solutions with built in drive controllers.

Getting all the way to the extrememe, companies like Baber.com sell a Universal Expansion Stations like the PCIDock 5000 that will adds a mini-tower including a second screen display, IDE controller, USB, Serial, Parrellel ports all in one unit. Basically a PC without a CPU.

You may want to take a look at Magma's solution : an external box with pci slots that you'll connect to your laptop using the pcmcia ports. You maqy even put a scsi harddisc inside !

Imagine this coupled with a Yamaha SW1000XG soundcard...

The iBook is nice (look: computers meet Tupperware!) but it doesn't do CardBus. I have a Magma PCI card cage attached to my Pismo, which means that I can gig with the Pismo running something like MOTU Performer or Max/MSP, and use a PCI-based synth/effects processor like the OasysPCI. It makes a really powerful rig.

Try searching the web for "PCI expansion chassis" one example is Magma but there are plenty of others. Basically you get a PC or rackmount case with a PCI backplane (containing about 6-10 slots) installed. A PCI to PCI bridge card connects your PC with the expansion chassis. These are especially nice because you can orient the expansion chassis facing forward where you can easily reach the connectors. Or the chassis can be placed a dozen feet away from the PC in a rackmount enclosule with your other equipment. Not cheap, but a popular solution for people in your situation.

No idea how well these work - I believe this was the model I saw being hawked at Siggraph, and the salesman had no idea about latencies, cable lengths or similar. But he suuuuuure wanted to sell me one today!

MAGMA makes this for Powerbooks-- a pcmcia card that extends to sort of a PCI backplane -- it's patented, too! (gulp)