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Why Thunderbolt Is Dead In the Water
adeelarshad82 writes "In the same way that Apple championed FireWire for the replacement of parallel SCSI, Thunderbolt is meant as the next big thing in video and audio peripheral interfaces. Plus, it's Apple's move to beat USB 3.0. However, Thunderbolt is off to a slow start, for a number of reasons — from cost to the technology's features in comparison to USB 3.0 — which is why it may be dead in the water."
New technology is expensive and uncommon a couple months after release. News at 11.
The first thought when I read that was "... is this a P-47 or something?"
Is it possible this thing's major failing is that few people have heard of it? (ignoring that if it comes from Apple, it's probably a proprietary standard with licensing fees to match...)
The title and the summary seem to be in disagreement. How do i know which to trust?
Let's not turn all the world into a pro wrestling match...
Apple built Thunderbolt with Intel, not against them. If it was only about fighting USB, they wouldn't team up.
It seems these days any new technology which Slashdot takes a dislike to goes on to enjoy huge success. Take for example the iPad, Facebook, Twitter... I am almost tempted to predict that Thunderbolt will be a huge success :)
The article reads like a big Apple bash, even though Thunderbolt is Intel's tech. The points about cost are probably valid but the whole thing comes off as a big unsourced bitchfest.
People have been saying this since the beginning of Apple. If you're going to bash Apple, you are going to have to try harder.
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Apple tech is too expensive. Other tech is cheaper and almost as good.
Hurrr.... You just made the case for why Apple products have a price premium.
Trolling is a art,
But this is Intel tech, not Apple.
If you think theres no compelling difference between the CPU-bound USB 3.0 and what is essentially an external PCIe connector, you need to go back and do some more research. LightPeak /Thunderbolt is just plain better than USB3.0; downsides do include lack of backwards compatibility, and that may prove to be its biggest obstacle, but to argue that "USB3.0 is good enough" is just wrong.
As for price, USB3.0 has been out for about a year now, with Thunderbolt only having rolled off the shelves-- and this, only in Apples computers so far-- a few months ago. Right now, on newegg, im only seeing USB3.0 on highend multi-hundred-dollar motherboards, so it seems to be a wash in that regard.
Its way too early to tell, and anyone saying otherwise is full of it.
I doubt Apple really wants to undercut USB. As someone above pointed out, if that was truly the case, Apple and Intel wouldn't be partners for Thunderbolt. You can easily predict, though, that Thunderbolt will become the preferred / default connection for iOS hardware, and probably no shortage of specialty devices for those willing to pay. Can't say for sure, of course, but "dead in the water" is clearly premature if not wholly misguided, given the broader outlook.
It's always confirmation bias!
No it won't. USB will be the next USB. The connector is too common now to ever be replaced as the default digital interface for most things. It's on the front of my car radio, for damn sake.
A good parallel is the 3.5mm headphone jack. Frankly, it's stupidly large and poorly designed for what it needs to do (USB isn't). But it will never be replaced by another (wired) connector in it's application space. There's just too many of them, and it's hard to make a compelling case for replacement for 98% of users.
A standard which I can currently only plugin to an Apple computer but not PCs? DOA.
Portable HDDs are supposed to be portable. Part of portability is working on multiple platforms. Until Intel gets their PC release in line it's only going to be used by those who know they'll only ever want their data on a Mac.
In the same way that Apple championed FireWire for the replacement of parallel SCSI
Hmm... I've been in the datacenter a LONG time... and a photographer even longer. I don't recall many devices in the datacenter replacing their parallel SCSI with firewire, and I don't recall many cameras/camcorders using parallel SCSI and transitioning into firewire.
...they shall pick the standard. as always.
Faster for what? That's the question. Hard drives? They're already slower than USB 3.0. Video? Why should I choose thunderbolt over HDMI? Scanners? Printers? Input Devices? Video Capture? USB 2.0 is good enough for lots of this, and 3.0 will be even better. Like firewire, there's a small problem space that's better solved by Thunderbolt than USB, but not enough volume there to drive the cost low enough to be adapted by the mainstream.
Intel did. Intel designed and developed the tech, and Apple just came to them and said "Hey, here's some ideas for the final implementation, and we'd like to put it in our devices soon." It is an Intel technology, and one in development for quite awhile.
It is targeted at something of a different market from USB3. It is more expensive for devices to implement, and less secure, since it is really just an external PCIe port. However that means full DMA, low latency and so on.
They are complimentary technologies.
...with USB providing a wide range of functionality and compatibility and Thunderbolt providing extremely high bandwidth for certain applications like audio interfaces and digital audio workstation.
a zillion usb devices already available, work with usb, even if not at full speed
almost nothing works on thunderbolt
same thing happened with firewire, although at least cameras are using it
thunderbolt and usb are both techs of intel so there isnt a lot of real competition anyway. the advantage of thunderbolt being that you can use it like a pci express lane.
yeah - but. by the time there's enough devices that make sense, usb4 might be around (just like usb "killed" fw)
where are the data only Thunderbolt cards?
How Will Thunderbolt tie in to desktop video cards?
Thunderbolt needs to get into more systems and Pci-e x4 cards will help that big time.
As for video I don't see ATI / nvidia putting pci-e switches + Thunderbolt chips on there video cards so will there be voodoo 1 like loop back cables to tie the chipset or on MB TB chip to the DP bus or will desktops just have build in data only TB ports?
Will the new mac pro go to on board video chips / MXM slots for video?
There, happy now?
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I have neither the time nor the inclination to research this, but I'm sure someone said the same thing in the early days of USB.
We'll see if "rumors of its death are premature". I am just happy we are moving towards a faster local I/O standard and applaud Apple for having the guts to champion the technology it thinks is best.
No it won't. USB will be the next USB. The connector is too common now to ever be replaced as the default digital interface for most things. It's on the front of my car radio, for damn sake.
A good parallel is the 3.5mm headphone jack. Frankly, it's stupidly large and poorly designed for what it needs to do (USB isn't). But it will never be replaced by another (wired) connector in it's application space. There's just too many of them, and it's hard to make a compelling case for replacement for 98% of users.
That is a bad analogy. The 3.5mm jack is easy to use because there is no wrong way to plug it in. Now the USB connector on the other hand is crap because a lot of people probably have to make two or three tries before then can plug something in. It is a really poor design which is only marginally better than those stupid PS/2 keyboard/mouse ports.
Now the Thunderbolt connector, on the other hand, has just one right way that you can try to even plug it in. It is easy to see which side is up.
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Thunderbolt is tied to the old DisplayPort v1.1.
DisplayPort v1.2 is faster.
And they'll never replace 5.25" and 3.5" floppy drives
The 5.25 and 3.5" floppies had significant drawbacks that begged for an improvment. First it was the Zip drive. Then some people used CDR/CDRW's. Finally, the thumb drive became king. Each was a significant improvement. USB will remain forever as a wired interface, because it's too close to the perfect port for a mouse, keyboard, etc to be replaced. That means volume, and volume means cheap. Device makers go where the volume is for most of their products.
yeah, this seems like a pretty ignorant post. Thunderbolt is not Apple (It's almost entirely Intel). It's not them trying to undermine USB3 (which is also largely Intel). And new tech is always slow to start. Who writes this crap?
Thunderbolt looks like a very useful technology. Unfortunately it will add several dollars to the cost of the PC, so probably only Macs will support it, so it'll be hard to find good, cheap monitors etc., and ultimately it will fail. Unless the PC manufacturers decide to grow a pair and do something useful for a change. The PC industry seems committed to the worst possible technologies that people will buy.
What does "shot themselves in the foot" even mean in this context? Is it not "cool" enough for you or something?
Faster for what?
Cameras. 4K is coming, and FW 800 wasn't going to cut it. Also, being able to have 100 meter cables when they go optical is a huge advantage.
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Now the USB connector on the other hand is crap because a lot of people probably have to make two or three tries before then can plug something in.
Who exactly are you hanging out with? I'm picturing those infomercials, where they try to convince you that straining spaghetti is really hard, then cut to a clip of some moron accidentally dumping spaghetti on the floor. Fortunately, they have a new spaghetti strainer which will help you avoid this, and they have it for sale.
Hmm, if that's all it costs, I want one. Seriously, a good SATA card will set you back more than that. Granted that is like double the cost of a USB 3.0 card, but given that this is a somewhat different type of interface with other uses, that doesn't seem to be unreasonable. Especially given that Thunderbolt isn't being manufactured at scale yet.
Scanners?
Yes--my particular area of specialty. 300x300dpi x 24 bits x 8.5x11 x 130 pages x 2 sides / minute = 875Mb/s of actual data. You have to compress that a decent amount to shove it down a USB 2.0 pipe. (Especially considering that these scanners' protocols were typically designed ages ago for SCSI and slower models, and fall about 15% short of USB's actual max ~300Mb/s throughput by virtue of back-and-forth comms with transfer sizes that are not all that large.) Anyway, I'd really like to get the raw data and be able to compress as I want, rather than have the scanner subject it to lossy JPEG on the way out...
Now granted, USB 3.0 should be able to handle that no problem, but at what burden on the CPU? It's a challenge to keep up with a data firehose like that already, without having the CPU micro-managing (harhar) every byte of transfer...
I just hope you're wrong about driving the cost of Thunderbolt down through volume. Apple is obviously not repeating the mistake that really killed Firewire, demanding too-high royalties for its use (not entirely Apple's doing of course since there was a consortium). Intel will be providing chip sets with support for this, and I expect not gouging for it relative to USB.
What is this magic that they would have been able to do with fiber?
Ever worked with it? For a consumer connector it sucks. It's delicate, futzy about cleanliness, and really not much gain over copper. Hell, without huge waste and high expense it can't even carry power.
Those are both niche markets. That only proves my point.
The speed to a camera only matters if you're streaming data in real time. If you're moving stored video from internal storage to a PC, the average consumer will pick price over throughput, which means USB.
The longest cable an average household has is ouside the house used for transmitting water, not data, and even that's far shorter than 100 meters.
I often have to try two or three times to get a USB connector into my laptop; either it's upside down or I'm pushing it at a bad angle and it just won't go in. Since the connector looks almost the same on top and bottom there's no immediately obvious way to tell which way up it should go; at least firewire was an asymmetrical connector so the shape alone told you which way it connected.
From the article " Thunderbolt hardware, we've been told, cost no less than $90"
Reality check: Apple is putting Thunderbolt into each single MacBook Pro and iMac, with some iMacs getting two Thunderbolt ports. Once MacBook, MacBook Air, and Mac Pro's are all updated, they will ship about 20 million Thunderbolt ports every year. Do you really think Apple would spend $1.8bn (1800 million dollars) every year for Thunderbolt?
I don't know about you, but I purchased a lot of expensive gear to explicitly inhibit the propagation of Thunderbolt to my PCs.
Even more dangerous is allowing Thunderbolt to connect to my PCs directly from the cloud (hence, the newly installed lightning rod).
The USB logo goes "up", Brainiac.
Neither of my Flash drives have a USB logo on them. I've no idea about my other USB devices.
In any case, even if that was true it's a piss-poor substitute for a properly designed connector.
I have neither the time nor the inclination to research this, but I'm sure someone said the same thing in the early days of USB
Funny you should say that: USB ports were dead in the water for a while - these funny oblong sockets showed up on PC motherboards but Windows didn't support them, PCs still had RS232 and Centronics ports, scanners still came with SCSI cards and so nobody used USB much.
Then someone bought out a popular all-in-one computer that only had USB, and (by some strange coincidence) USB printers, keyboards, mice etc. started to become available. Who was this brave company? Hint: the first wave of mass-market USB peripherals all tended to have translucent blue plastic cases reminiscent of the original "Bondai Blue" iMac...
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You're quite right. And beyond that, because it has over a decade as the port of choice, I suspect later iterations will expand it in other ways. USB is so ubiquitous now, on everything from smart/not-so-smart phones to tablets to PCs that the logical next step is not yet-another-peripheral-standard but to extend USB, speedwise and in the number of peripherals.
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The proprietary vs open argument mostly only holds water with (other) nerds.
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Wrong. It's about value. If USB3 provides 75% of the value of LightPeak at 50% of the cost, that's a economic win.
You're treating technoloy like a religion, as though purity, superiority, and elegance have intrinsic value. They don't.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
There's no "up" when the connector is sideways, dumbass.
Actually, yes there is. The port only connect one way.
Hard drives are not slower than USB3, unless you mean in a BS max theoretical speed. In reality USB3 will be CPU bound just like USB2.
Just look inside the connector, it's painfully obvious which way to plug in a USB cable. You'd have to be an idiot not to be able to figure it out after all this time.
I was about to post a link to a pic of me trying to plug into a port with the USB logo pointing "up"... ALL of my USB ports are sideways. I rarely see them any other way.
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You haven't been paying attention. The "tech geeks" in the families of "non-tech savvy consumers" have been telling them for a few years now, "sell it on eBay and buy a Mac." Thunderbolt will do fine, even if only Mac users get to connect their iPad 3 or iPhone 5 to it and get Thunderbolt 10 Gbps transfer speeds. They won't care what all y'all are doing, and won't be interested in how long it takes you to sync your iPad. "You know how long it takes? Mine is so quick, I never thought about it."
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I can't help thinking you mean the 1/4, not the 3.5. The 3.5mm is the right size for its typical use, with 1/4 being retardedly large for everything but the direct connection to i.e. a guitar. No need for that in the amp/speaker connection, but there's some significant abuse going on at the guitar end. Some silly phone manufacturers have gone to a 2.5mm plug, which is ungodly fragile....
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FireWire isn't dead, yet. I use it to migrate from one Mac to another about once a year, and to connect hard drives. USB is sorta like gruel. You could eat it. But I've got whole modern cuisines, why would I give that up?
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Frankly, it's stupidly large and poorly designed for what it needs to do (USB isn't).
Uh, sure it is. Micro-USB is smaller, just as sturdy (actually I've broken several usb ports, never a micro-usb port) and it's obvious which way the connector goes. I don't know why everyone hasn't switched to micro-usb for everything.
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Of course, my next migration will be via Thunderbolt.
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Do your research. They're still looking onto optics. Copper was just simpler to implement. When they get the optics side done, it's expected to increase the bandwidth of the technology by a factor of 10 (10Gb/s to 100Gb/s)
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As Thunderbolt is basically an external PCIe x4 port + DisplayPort, the article basically says that USB is better than PCIe. That doesn't make any sense. Thunderbolt will enable a few things that might be extremely useful, like docking stations that are not tied to a specific laptop model, external GPUs and lots of other things.
On the desktop - mass storage side of things, I always found USB 1 and 2 somewhat sucky, with compatibility issues (I had to force some ports to USB1 for some of my supposedly USB2 gadgets to work at all), so-so real throughput, and high CPU usage with some chipsets. FW never had any of those issues, but was indeed more expensive especially on the peripheral side, and less prevalent. I'm already having problems with USB3, so I'm guessing the situation could very well repeat itself, with TB being more reliable, somewhat faster, and more efficient, but more expensive and not ubiquitous.
But, I think the crux of the matter is that TB can be that lone connector on our shiny smartphones and tablets; while USB3 can't. TB can do it all: video, mass storage, LAN, keyboard, mouse, sound, in theory even GPU...and USB... **all at the same time**, and with minimal interfacing upheaval. USB can't do most of that, let alone simultaneously. I really hope 2 years from now, my phone and tablet will have TB, and I'll be able to buy, and re-use, cheap standard TB docks for them.
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I mean the 3.5mm. The 3.5mm is huge, when you look at the footprint it takes up inside something like an ipod shuffle. Obviously, this wasn't an issue when sony created the walkman, but the point is we won't replace it, even if it means it's the limiting factor in how small you can make an mp3 player.
You have to look inside both the plug AND the jack. If your USB ports are on the back of your PC, on the floor, under your desk then it really is easier to just try it both ways. On top of that, it doesn't provide much tactile feedback, so you might have to try it both ways to figure out which is right and then plug it in the right way. So it takes 3 tries to plug in a USB connector.
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It's easy to see which side is up on a USB cable as well. It's just that the computer manufacturers can't seem to decide which of the four ways they want to orient the damn ports. If you reaching blindly behind the box trying to plug in a Thunderbolt connector you still wouldn't be able to tell which way the port is facing without feeling it.
If that scenario pans out (and the recent HP blathering about why they are not interested in Thunderbolt provides some evidence that it might) then you'll see Apple's share of the consumer market growing even faster over the next couple years, when Mac users are loading their iPad with movies to take on the plane in about 90 seconds, and HP users are spending a non trivial part of an hour to do the same.
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Thunderbolt is NOT intended as a replacement for USB. Yeah, USB3 is supposed to be fast and sexy and all those superlatives, but the reality is that USB has always taken a while to mature, due to shoddy controlers and host-based processing. Thunderbolt is closer in spirit to Firewire, which, contrary to common belief, is still very much alive and kicking in the pro multimedia segment. Firewire video, firewire audio, firewire storage. It's still the hotness, and it will be a very long time before the bargain-basement USB3 with its batallion of corner-cutting taiwanese supporters even catches up to FW800.
Would it have been cooler if Thunderbolt were backward-compatible with USB2 and/or 3 ? Cooler, yes, but it would have enticed manufacturers to limit the number of ports due to cost, or have a half-assed setup where some ports are Thunderbolt, and others are just plain USB hanging off some slaved controller.
The way it is now, I can look forward to new, faster audio/video/storage gadgets that will benefit from the 10gbps interlink. Heck I want to look into designing a fat RAID enclosure that connects via Thunderbolt - it would beat the crap out of point-to-point FC, at a much lower price point, and the daisy chaining feature implies easy expandability. Need more storage ? Chain another RAID box, no need for a wider HBA or port multipliers. That right there is worth five figures to a ton of my clients.
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There seems to be a misunderstanding of what thunderbolt is.
It is not a competitor with USB, Firewire, Displayport. It is more of an umbrella technology that can deliver each of these peripheral technologies and others over one cable.
Thunderbolt is an external PCI Express connector. If you want to use a PCI Express connector to plug in a mouse or external HD, you might be able to in the near future, but thats not the intent. I doubt many people will be buying Thunderbolt HD's in the near future (beyond high speed raid systems) even if the
The most imminent Thunderbolt products are monitors that are more like laptop docks. A single cable between your computer and your monitor, where you monitor can have its own graphics card, usb, firewire, eSATA...
Go ahead, buy your USB, Firewire, eSATA hardware. One day you might be connecting them all to you computer though a thunderbolt dock.
Also with thunderbolt the number of port types on laptops could be reduced to 3.
1. Power
2. USB 2.0 (keyboard, mouse or other)
3. Thunderbolt (monitor, ethernet, USB 3.0, Firewire, eSATA, PCI, everything else)
... with what? MicroUSB, which is also huge? Look I can put a 3.5mm thick connector in something that's barely 3.8mm thick: it's a ring with a few flexible pins. Most of the ones you see in actual devices are a plastic brick with that stuff in it, but ...
http://store.acousticom.com/image/cache/stereo_1-4inch_jack-500x500.jpg
This is the common 1/4 Stereo jack. For a 3.5 stereo jack, something similar but quite a bit smaller is doable, and in fact SMT onto a circuit board is easy, with elements directly above and below so they press against the case and the PCB. You can even cut a ditch in the PCB so that the parts that flex and move go right through and touch case-to-case rather than case-to-PCB.
MicroUSB is about 3 times as wide, and almost as thick. Much smaller and it gets too fragile.
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If your USB ports are on the back of your PC, on the floor, under your desk then it really is easier to just try it both ways.
Or on the side of a laptop. Am I really supposed to have to pick up the laptop and look at the side of it to figure out which way the USB connector is supposed to fit?
What is this magic that they would have been able to do with fiber?
Ever worked with it? For a consumer connector it sucks. It's delicate, futzy about cleanliness, and really not much gain over copper. Hell, without huge waste and high expense it can't even carry power.
The "magic" is that current electrical cabling is reaching the limits of speed and cable length, something Light Peak would have been able to circumvent if they hadn't moved it onto a copper-based solution. It had a theoretical throughput of up to 100Gbps when it was based on fiber tech. That means you could have, theoretically, transferred a Blu-ray movie in as fast as 3 seconds. With file size continually increasing, this is the direction that peripheral connections should be moving in.
Also, as someone who works with Fiber every day, it is not has brittle as it used to be. And there is also fiber now that can bend and be handled close to what Ethernet could handle (sure you can't pinch it in your fingers and squeeze with all your might, but only an ass would do that), although it is more expensive. And while standard fiber connectors such as LC or SC are "fussy" about cleanliness, it usually isn't a huge issue unless it is really dirty, and the connector for an end user on a tech like LightPeak would have kept that in mind and not had the raw connector exposed like on standard fiber cables.
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Just look inside the connector, it's painfully obvious which way to plug in a USB cable. You'd have to be an idiot not to be able to figure it out after all this time.
Yes, but what about the other end? Suppose it's on the back of your computer which is back up against the back of your desk? You can't see it without pulling the computer out (or using a small mirror, I guess) and can easily damage it by trying to force the USB in anyways.
USB A plugs, especially the female version, are quite fragile, and you can ruin them pretty easily, requiring that a new plug be soldered into the device (if being shorted out didn't damage it beyond just the plug) or the port just be given up on (and covered up, because if you do try to use it, the odds are good you'll crash the computer when you accidentally short it out.)
Micro-USB is far better.
Not that any of this really has anything to do with the bus itself, only the plug chosen, but for most purposes the two are married.
No it won't. USB will be the next USB. The connector is too common now to ever be replaced as the default digital interface for most things. It's on the front of my car radio, for damn sake.
I can imagine someone making this kind of argument for the serial port just a couple of years ago and that's almost completely disappeared.
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What does "shot themselves in the foot" even mean in this context? Is it not "cool" enough for you or something?
No. I mean they created what is essentially another proprietary copper-based connector where there wasn't a need for one. Hence why nobody is picking it up. What is the purpose of this tech when USB 3.0 just came out? Exactly, there is none. It even costs more than USB 3.0 (about $2 a controller vs. more than $10 fir ThunderBolt). Nobody is going to use Thunderbolt on a USB 3.0 equipped mobo. Also, in the past when Intel had created standardized connectors (such as pioneering USB, SATA, etc), it created standards bodies and licensed it's designs royalty-free, and built coalitions before moving forward. There are no such standards bodies or coalitions for Thunderbolt and no 3rd party chip. Details of the protocol are still under tight wraps. Which can only suggest they intend to keep it as a proprietary connector.
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Except there's next to no legacy support for older devices on the standard. People actually do get tired of upgrading technology at some point. And people will no upgrade technology when budgets are tight. This all comes across as poor timing in bad market conditions.
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Thunderbolt is designed more to replace eSATA and FireWire than USB.
Neither one of which has taken the world by storm... Frankly we don't really need a replacement for either of those. They're fine but niche. There is more to having a successful interface than transfer rates. Cost to manufacture, legacy hardware compatibility, current equipment needs, licensing terms, customer demand and more all play a role. The opportunity for Thunderbolt is if it can combine the video (usually VGA/DVI/HDMI) and peripheral ports (usually USB) into a single interface. USB replaces several types of cables but it isn't quite capable enough to replace dedicated video cables. It's not clear that USB3 will be fast enough either. If Thunderbolt is cheap enough to manufacture and has a performance advantage that lets people further reduce the number of different cables they need, then it will have a chance.
What is wanted is something that is fast, cheap, compatible, reliable, easy to configure and minimizes the number of different cables we need. Frankly most PCs should ideally have no more than two cable types - one high power cable to power the device (when needed) and one type of data cable that can also handle low voltage DC power needs. Nothing wrong with using specialized cables for specific performance needs but that doesn't apply to most of us most of the time. I don't really care if the data cable is USB, Firewire, Thunderbolt or something else entirely but there is a lot to be gained by standardizing on a suitable general purpose data cable. USB comes closest to this ideal right now. (Yes Firewire could do the job but it's too expensive and lost that battle with USB long ago) Perhaps Thunderbolt will take it the next step. Only time will tell.
thunderbolt is only pci-e x4 so why put E-net on it when just about all boards have E-net in the chipset or on it's own pci-e x1 bus?
TFA says the hardware is ~$90, compared to ~$3 for USB, so I don't think this is correct.
I don't know what the real numbers are but I'd expect Thunderbolt to be more expensive for some time simply due to economies of scale. There is a LOT of USB equipment out there, lots of people who can make it, and the equipment to make USB connections is long since depreciated so the fixed costs (development, capital equipment, etc) have been significantly/fully amortized. It will take a while for Thunderbolt to get to the same point even if it does catch on big. USB isn't about to go away any time soon. It's too cheap and too ubiquitous.
Will desktop video cards have thunderbolt ports?
or will you have on board video + thunderbolt ports on the MB with your display on the DVI / HDMI / display port's on the video card?
Will you be able to use unused pci-e slots / lines for Thunderbolt cards to add more Thunderbolt buses?
Will systems have 2 Thunderbolt ports X8 pci-e split to 2 X4 for TB and the other X8 pci-e for the video card? Or will intel make Thunderbolt more in the chipset and give video the full X16?
I've been wondering this, and maybe someone here knows the answer. I think a big part of why USB is successful is because of the standard "profiles", which all OSes have drivers for. If every Mass Storage device is going to need manufacturer drivers, that headache seems like it would kill this standard. Since it is essentially PCIe, I would think this would be true. Anyone know for sure?
Many USB devices have the USB Trident on one side. This side is the "up" side.
Now, the problem starts if you have USB receptacles that are turned sideways, like on this Dell monitor I have at work... on that one, the "up" side goes away from me, rather than towards me.
Which is annoying since that's the side my USB flash drive's activiity light is on.
Speaking of Flash drives, activity lights also tend to be on the "up" side.
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Does this mean I can quit waiting for Apple to upgrade the MacBook Air and just pick one up?
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depends, what the trademark deal they are making with intel regarding this?
Apple may get a deal others won't.
also, they might. It would just mean a slight increase in there prices. and 90 dollars isn't a show stopped for people in the Apple rel^H^H^H product space.
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Thunderbolt has support for lightpeak cables anyway. The switch to optical and back is done in the cables. Sure that makes for a pricey cable, but this solves all those dirt issues. 100Gbps is not yet in the reach of the consumer gear. I have a 10GbE network at work, for my house 1GbE is still fine.
I never knew anyone with a serial port on their car stereo, did you?
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
USB has support for bulk data transfers which can be performed just fine using DMA. It's just that DMA is performed by the USB controller, not by device itself.
USB is kinda cool in that regard, it completely separates logical data delivery and processing from physical implementation. You can work with your device using simple polling-style bitbanging or you can use a dedicated controller which can offload data transfer from CPU[s].
FireWire, on the other hand, assumes that device can work directly with the host's RAM. It has a few advantages, for example, it's possible to make dumb devices without microcontrollers in FireWire.
What of this analysis doesn't apply to initial use of USB 1.0 on the original iMac? I'm not saying that Thunderbolt will succeed, just wondering what the evidence is that Firewire and not USB 1.0 is the right parallel.
USB's main competition when it came out with SCSI. And SCSI couldn't connect things like keyboard and mouse.
Essentially, USB replaced SCSI, Serial, Parallel, and PS/2 ports, even if it took a few years to do so.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
USB can be used with DMA just fine. You just need to do it in your USB controller chips - where it rightfully belongs in any case.
I believe apple has a head-start on the technology, not an exclusive. Intel's stock parts do not include thunderbolt, stock video cards do not support thunderbolt and I believe most PCs have HDMI or at best Displayport, not Mini-DP.
Until PC vendors want thunderbolt enough to get it integrated into third party video cards, or until Intel ships Ivy Bridge which is supposed to include Thunderbolt for its integrated video, Apple will be the only vendor producing computers with Thunderbolt.
Even then, it looks like Sony is interested enough in the technology to try to create a proprietary version of Thunderbolt which uses additional connects on a USB port, and most likely does not support the DisplayPort video channel.
What you are describing is a typical niche market. Actually, scanners are becoming a niche market and you describe an extremely specialized application of scanners. 99,99% of the scanners sold doesn't have this problem that you face - for these "normal" scanners a USB2 port is enough and the USB3 will be overkill.
Professionals don't care about wide availability, price points and so on they want performance at any price. Users of Logic Studio and Final Cut will welcome anything that is faster than Firewire.
USB3 is the same old cheap half baked serial bus technology, it requires more CPU intervention than Firewire and Thunderbolt.
Is USB 3.0 suitable for connecting 1080p 3D-enabled TV? I know earlier USB hardware had trouble with excessive host CPU use and thus realtime performance guarantees apart from theoretical bandwidth limits. If not, the author is missing the point, which is to have a single connector for ALL devices. As for optical, I don't see any reason to use more expensive controllers and cables if Intel was able to achieve their target bandwidth with cooper.
This is OK by me, if Apple will stick with LightPeak/Thunderbolt for at least as long as they've stuck with FireWire. I don't want to buy a bunch of devices that are obsolete in 2-3 years, but I can still use my FireWire 400 drives from 10 years ago, along with my FireWire 800 drives from this year. Who cares if Thunderbolt doesn't wipe USB3 off the face of the earth? It's cool, it' works well, and as long as it isn't forcefully obsoleted, I will be happy with it for years to come.
I'd say Apple won't care; the port will be seen as a useful feature that is unique to Macs (or at least most heavily used in Macs). Intel probably doesn't mind if Thunderbolt stays a Mac niche thing either, as they are making money off Thunderbolt and USB3 both. No matter which way the hardware makers go, Intel is making sales and/or collecting royalties.
So what's the big deal here? Does every new connector type have to become a universal standard to be considered a success? If you want a drive that will work on Mac/Win/Linux, get USB.
:q!
SATA is a storage device protocol. Thunderbolt, USB3 and Firewire are general purpose.
Anyone wanting to connect external video gear, audio interfaces and so on has to currently choose Firewire or the inferior USB.
How is the 3.5mm TRS plug too large? Sure, the 1/4in TRS plug was too large, but most equipment doesn't use it anymore, and it's electronically compatible with the 3.5mm plug. Frankly, I don't think you could make a plug much smaller that most people would be able to use.
Ethernet ports are definitely nice on laptops, but with wifi the are not essential, especially when trying to limit the size and number of different ports.
An extra thunderbolt port with an ethernet adapter may be more useful than a single function ethernet port on a laptop since whenever you may want to plug into an ethernet port, you also would likely be at a desk where you could plug in all your other items through a thunderbolt dock connector.
More multi use ports are better than fewer sole purpose ports on a laptop.
fixed ports are better then lots of Adapters that can cost up to $30-$100 and are easy to forget also you may need a hub as well.
And in this case, I am referring to the submission. Yikes. Hook, line and sinker...
Uh, sure it is. Micro-USB is smaller, just as sturdy (actually I've broken several usb ports, never a micro-usb port) and it's obvious which way the connector goes. I don't know why everyone hasn't switched to micro-usb for everything.
Really? I agree with you that USB takes 3 tires to plug in, but Micro-USB takes 6, at least on my phone. I get zero tactile feedback from it. Heck, a Centronics looks downright ergonomic in comparison. Mini-USB works pretty well for me.
I don't get why the world hasn't adopted easy to plug genderless cables yet.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
My ports are oriented vertically, shithead.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
You know what, you're right. I had mini-usb mistaken for micro-usb.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I'm just being pedantic here, but some car stereos used a serial connection to control a disc changer...
"In the same way that Apple championed FireWire for the replacement of parallel SCSI"
So the assumption is that because Firewire didn't replace SCSI, it's going to fail again? Firewire became the common communication port for video and audio devices, exactly as intended. Thunderbolt just came out. Instead of using dramatic phrases like "dead in the water," how about we wait a while and see?
I'm looking at my Dell GX960, cutting edge in December 2009 and still in production, with parallel and serial ports. I'm pretty sure the HP I just bought has them too, but could be wrong.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
People actually do get tired of upgrading technology at some point.
Yes, but those people are old and getting out of the market. The new young'uns will gladly adopt the new hotness, and laugh about your old RS232 and Centronix connectors! :) "Haha look at that old dinosaur - he's still using WIRES!!
Also, budgets generally cycle from tight to loose. Back in the day, I worked at a major electronics company. Their plan was - when going into a recession, start designing new high-end stuff, because it will be ready to go to market about the time that folks are ready to open their wallets again. Then when things are looking good for a while, design the new low-end stuff, to be ready for the next downturn. It worked pretty well in part because they had a long development cycle, but the timing can be adjusted accordingly.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
Haha I was just replying with essentially the same point!
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
I get more bandwidth over my VGA cable - that is to say, upwards of about a foot the bandwidth is unlimited and purely dependent upon the DACs capability (what is it, about 400MHz for 2048x1536 over VGA?)
Even with a single connector, at 30 feet I can get a clean 2048x1536 signal at 85Hz. Is thunderbolt going to do that? What, it requires two links for something not even as high resolution or refresh rate on supposedly SUPERIOR technology? Oh well. Still using VGA then.
Better stick with hard drives and network cards for this tech, guys.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Funny you should mention hard drives. A friend of mine used to work for Seagate, and told me that they have been trying to get the other makers to adopt a faster I/O technology standard (not a particular one - just SOMETHING), but with no success - other makers just don't see the need. As density goes up, with constant rotational speed in hard drives the potential throughput goes up essentially at the same rate (as the square root of the density?) but it's all being held up by max channel throughput.
I'm too lazy to work out the numbers, comparing channel I/O throughput and hard drive linear bit read rates over the last 10 years, so I'm enclosing a small scratchpad area for someone else to work it out:
===== start =====
==
====== end ====== :D
Thanks!
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
You know what, you're right. I had mini-usb mistaken for micro-usb.
It's easy to remember - Micro-USB is the one that's horrible so the EU mandated it on all phones. ;)
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Err, not to be snarky, but surely after twice at random orientations you've tried all possible permutations, considering it's always one way or the other? And most cables I use lately are at least somewhat marked (I understand that some, such as Apple, decide not to mark the connectors for style-over-substance reasons, but that's clearly not entirely the spec's fault).
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
Wrong. It's about value. If USB3 provides 75% of the value of LightPeak at 50% of the cost, that's a economic win.
Value assumes it has qualities fit for purposes, you have not defined what you consider fit for purpose for this use and so that argument on it's face means nothing. To some light peak could be utterly useless because of the reliance on the cpu and timing issues and so even at half the price it is like paying for a motorcycle wheel as opposed to the appropriate car one.
I see lights peak being used for purposes where usb3 would utterly, utterly fail
How some of your friends only buy Firewire external disks, your other group of friends buy the cheap USB ones. Those USB guys will never get it why you get the more expensive ones, no matter how you explain it to them, that you can daisy-chain them and they do not make your machine into a crawling piece of crap when you are copying something. They will buy USB 3 because some paper will explain a theoretical speed never achievable because of the lack of a dedicated controller.
N0 improvements 99.999 percent of used need or will see.
I currently use USB 3.0 and am chomping at the bit waiting for good Thunderbolt storage devices to appear - I do a lot of photography and as others have noted USB 3.0 is really not that much better than eSata. Thunderbolt is a clear step up.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Absolutely. However, the people here who think that Thunderbolt is going to dominate peripheral interconnects are missing that point, I think. For the vast majority of interconnects, the things you mentioned are not an issue at all, and thus Thunderbolt offers literally nothing. Right? If I am buying a wheel, it would be silly for me to buy one rated up to 200 miles per hour, when I will only ever need to drive 85 mph, tops. Even if the 200 mph wheel is superior technology, more carefully crafted, has more thoughtful design, if I don't need the benefit it provides, then that has no value to me.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
Although Firewire was technically far superior to USB, it failed for a variety of reasons that Apple is mostly not repeating.
It was Apple Vs. Intel. Apple developed Firewire, Intel designed USB. Intel was able to push its chip purchasers toward USB. This time Apple went to Intel and had them develop the standard.
Apple did not let other users use the Firewire name, causing fragmentation of the brand and thus a watered down marketing push (ie1394, iLink, Firewire).
Cost. Apple wanted a cut of every firewire port put on a device. USB was designed to be cheap to build, Firewire was designed to perform. Apple is not taking a cut at least, but have no idea how cost compares to USB3. This may be an issue.
Many people believe USB 3 is faster. Thunderbolt is twice as fast as USB3 x 2 channels, plus video in/out.
Dunno about you... but I want it.
The problem with that is people do buy in excess. Word processing and typesetting can still be effectively done on a 486 or other embedded class device and yet even purpose defined machines are typically some ghz behemoth monster. Why? for future uses. You don't buy a top of the line machine in order to keep up with the neighbours, you buy it for extra growing room for any capacity you may require that is not presently known.
While it is true usb3 exceeds capacity and will likely be useful for quite some time, at present implementations of it are cpu bound so thunderbolt is not only faster, but you can actually utilize that speed, with todays hardware. Should your needs change faster than cpus can adapt, it will prove useful.
For things like mouse/keyboard/other low end device usb will always win, but thunderbolt serves different needs, similar ones to what firewire serves just at a much higher rate. These needs do exist and people will pay for it if they require it. Only the people who see no utility in fast low latency transfers would not be interested and while there are quite a few I doubt there would be enough to doom the new connector, especially if it replaces hdmi and dvi as the dominant video connector on intel motherboards (since intel is pushing it).
If we ever MAKE an mp3 player so small that the 3.5mm jack is limiting, might as well sell it integrated with the headphones...cut out the jack entirely. Of course, now you're (potentially) looking at a truly disposable device, as (most) headphones tend to die. At least my wired kind do.... (the wire breaks internally, or the ear covers wear out on the good pair of DJ headphones I picked up 5 years ago...)
Gosh, thunderbolt sounds just super fine. I'll go out and buy a Thunderbolt expansion card today! Oh, yeah, I CAN'T.
Second, it's entirely unclear to me why anyone supports USB 3 at all. For hard drives and similar, USB 3 offers no advantages over eSATA. For almost all other devices, USB 3 offers no advantages over USB 2. So ignoring portable devices that only have room for one port, USB 3 is a solution in search of a problem.
I'm guessing that you haven't used USB3 then? eSATAp is rarer than Thunderbolt, and a big benefit of USB3 is the additional power that is available to the connector. I've just installed a USB3 card into my desktop PC, and it requires a molex power feed to power the downstream devices. The backward compatibility of USB3 means that the new external drive I just bought will also work on my older computers. With the USB3 card on the desktop I am getting sustained 100MB/s transfers, which USB2 or FW400 won't achieve.
I think the multi-device thing that Thunderbolt offers and the ability to make external PCIe connections is fantastic too, but it is still early days. If Thunderbolt external drives are made that support USB or Firewire then great, but in the mean time you are limited in the devices that can use the protocol. USB3 is here now, with a lot more motherboard, laptop and external device support.
Power supply from a USB3 port is limited to 6 load units of 150mA, giving a port total of 900mA at 5V. This is an improvement over USB2 which was limited to 500mA. The eSATAp ports are generally eSATA/USB2 ports, and so there is less power available. The other problem with eSATAp is that there isn't an official standard. That's where USB3 wins out -- and the fact that I can buy USB3 stuff right now.
Bad troll!
Apple has not abandoned Firewire (it is still on the most recent iMacs that added Thunderbolt) and provided an upgrade path for when/if it does (Thunderbolt/Firewire adapters).
You are hereby evicted from you current premises. Begone by the break of day or we will send Billy Goat Gruff.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
Now the Thunderbolt connector, on the other hand, has just one right way that you can try to even plug it in. It is easy to see which side is up.
how is that different from a usb connector?
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
yeah, i love the new UNIVERSAL laptop dock, except right now it works only with apple laptops.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
Where is this "there" called "old people" & what exactly is it? A county in Florida?
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
I have neither the time nor the inclination to research this, but I'm sure someone said the same thing in the early days of USB.
We'll see if "rumors of its death are premature". I am just happy we are moving towards a faster local I/O standard and applaud Apple for having the guts to champion the technology it thinks is best.
The funny thing is, USB replaced about six ports (PS2, RS232, LPT and others) whilst Thunderbolt does half of what USB does. The USB flash drive killed the floppy drive.
USB was cheap, simple and ubiquitous, it's also got a massive head start with the first USB ports appearing on PC's in 1996.
We'll see how far this technology goes. Intel developed this for LightPeak which is Optical (which competes with well established Fibre Channel in reality) but Thunderbolt is copper, that eliminates most of the advantages over USB and does nothing to combat the ubiquity of USB. So we'll see how far Thunderbolt actually gets.
Just another case of Apple trying to be innovating by ignoring how real people use their computers.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
No different than any other physical access.
Maybe you don't bring the connectors out to a shield on the back in that case, but we already fill usb ports with epxoy so no change.
You're also forgetting that for some reason the USB type A plugs are pretty much exactly the same width as a ethernet plug. Luckily you usually won't damage an ethernet port by "plugging" a USB cable into it though.
Why does it have to take the world by storm to be successful?
Depends on your definition of success. I don't see a whole lot of point to Thunderbolt unless it replaces some current cable type(s) and thereby reduces the types we need. We already have other data cables available that are plenty fast. I'm sure Thunderbolt will sell plenty with Apple and Intel backing it but if it achieves the same level of "success" as IEEE 1394 (Firewire), I'd consider that a failure. Few of us really need yet another type of data cable unless it does something our current cables do not. Nothing I've read about Thunderbolt is particularly interesting or novel except for its ability to combine what we presently (usually) use USB and video cables for.
All your talk about what the market wants isn't incorrect, you're just incorrect in assuming that Apple actually cares about replacing USB with this technology.
I didn't mention a single thing about Apple or their intentions. Frankly I don't really know or care what Apple does. I'm certain Apple would appreciate the elegance of using a single cable type but who knows what is being planned in the House of Jobs. Whatever happens will take years to achieve and will depend on more companies than Apple.
A lot of people consider Firewire a failure b/c USB is so standard, but Firewire achieved all the goals Apple set out for it.
Unless you work for Apple you cannot possibly know that. Furthermore, Apple was not the only backer of IEEE 1394 - Sony and Texas Instruments also released branded implementations of it and lots of PCs came with IEEE 1394 ports. As a general purpose data cable, Firewire (IEEE 1394) was a modest success and remains useful in niche applications to this day. Nevertheless, few people consider it a very successful interface when compared with the success of USB. A pity because I really like IEEE 1394 better than USB from a technical perspective - just not an economic one. They were too similar for both of them to become ubiquitous and USB turned out to be the one more widely adopted.