Thunderbolt vs. SuperSpeed USB

Lucas123 writes "When it comes to performance, power and size, external I/O interconnect Thunderbolt handily beats SuperSpeed USB, but in the one critical category — ubiquity — it has an almost impossible uphill battle. Thunderbolt has a maximum 10Gbps signaling rate to SuperSpeed USB's 6Gbps and it offers more than twice the power to devices. To date, however, Apple is the only systems manufacturer to adopt Thunderbolt, and it has done so as an additional device connectivity port, keeping SuperSpeed USB on its computers. No other systems manufacturer has committed to Thunderbolt. In contrast, SuperSpeed USB has been installed on 10 billion pieces of hardware, with numbers continuing to grow."

Comments

TFA (-1, wrong)

[plover]

SuperSpeed USB has been installed on 10 billion pieces of hardware

No it hasn't. USB may have been installed on 10 billion pieces of hardware, but SuperSpeed USB is nowhere near as ubiquitous yet. SuperSpeed USB may be able to compatibly downgrade to full-speed USB communication, but that doesn't mean that anything you plug a SuperSpeed device into is magically SuperSpeed.

Anyway, I like the idea of Thunderbolt, especially the thought that it could become the holy grail of single cable interconnects. But just because I like a thing and it's technically better doesn't mean the world will adopt it. Unfortunately, I've learned that politics and money will drive the decision, not technology.

Re:TFA (-1, wrong)

[localman57]

I hope you were joking. Didn't they learn from Firewire?!

No. And they didn't learn from iLink either.

Re:TFA (-1, wrong)

[MBCook]

No, because they are active. That's what will allow people to transparently switch to optical cables in a few years. You won't have to replace any of your equipment, the cables handle that.

This is somewhat stupid though. USB has moved into hard drives and such, but it aims at the low end of the market. Mice, keyboard, etc. up through hard drives and scanners. On the other hand, Thunderbolt aims at the top of the market. It aims at displays, large RAID arrays down through hard drives and scanners. Thunderbolt is basically PCIe in a cable. This isn't an either-or. No one in their right mind would ever make a Thunderbolt mouse or USB SAN, there is no reason to think both ports won't be on computers in a few years.

So is the question "What will people use for connecting external storage in 2 years"? Because that's basically the only question people ever argued over with USB vs. FireWire. I'd say the answer is "USB for most, ThunderBolt for those who really care about performance".

Remember that since ThunderBolt is faster and PCIe, you can make bridge to let you plug USB SuperSpeed stuff into Thunderbolt ports, just like Apple's Thunderbolt monitors have USB2 and FireWire bridge chips.

Re:TFA (-1, wrong)

[Mister Whirly]

Big deal. I want to see Firewire explain why Steve Jobs is dead.

Re:TFA (-1, wrong)

[DrXym]

The funny part is if Apple, Sony could agree on a single connector and a single name for the tech they might have enjoyed a lot wider recognition and support for the tech than they did.

TFA (-2, wrong)

[Quick Reply]

Also, Apple has not have SuperSpeed USB on any of it's computers.

Re:TFA (-2, wrong)

[Sponge Bath]

They are holding out for LudicrousSpeed USB.

Re:TFA (-2, wrong)

[Lucas123]

Yeah, that was my fault in the Slashdot submission, which I always write up far too quickly. The article doesn't say Apple has Superspeed USB on its systems -- the Slashdot summary does. Doesn't anyone on Slashdot take time to actually read the article?

Re:TFA (-2, wrong)

[JabrTheHut]

Yeah, that was my fault in the Slashdot submission, which I always write up far too quickly. The article doesn't say Apple has Superspeed USB on its systems -- the Slashdot summary does. Doesn't anyone on Slashdot take time to actually read the article?

If you took the time to actually read Slashdot, you'd know the answer was no...

Firewire

[suso]

Hmm, this sounds just like the Firewire vs. USB competition with Apple pushing Firewire. We saw how that turned out. We all know that being better doesn't mean anything in this industry.

Re:Firewire

[chaim79]

Wow, how many points wrong can you get...

Actually I give up, you have so much wrong about firewire that it's pointless to correct you point for point...

The reason Firewire is more expensive is that it's a system that requires some processing on both sides, any device that plugs into firewire has to have sufficient smarts to know what it needs in order to operate, USB on the other hand is a dumb protocol, all the processing is handled on the Host (PC) side, and all the devices plugged into it need very little smarts, this directly effects chip/design costs of peripherals. Firewire was actually designed with the concept that a scanner with a firewire port and a printer with a firewire port could be connected together and pictures printed without using computer resources.

USB also has the limitation of regimented and inflexible bandwidth (at least as of USBv2, v3 might change that). Which means while USB 2 may have 480mb of 'bandwidth' only a small chunk of that is usable by any one device, Firewire however is flexible, not only can it portion the bandwidth to the devices need but it can also use "Isochronous" (regular dedicated) bandwidth, allowing high-priority/bandwidth systems to transfer information, such as video/audio streams and critical systems (some internal aircraft systems use 1394 bus).

You want lots of high-speed external storage access, check some benchmarks, firewire will beat out USB for real-world performance, even though they are fairly matched just reading spec numbers.

Firewire is both faster and better than USB, however it's more expensive in both hardware and design/implementation, which is why USB has won that fight, the majority of people are all about cheep, not better.

Acer and Asus signed up for Thunderbolt

[jmcbain]

Acer and Asus have signed up for Thunderbolt and are expected to deliver PCs with Thunderbolt next year. Except more motherboards to have Thunderbolt as well, and once that occurs, Dell and other has-beens will do the same.

It's not better though

[Sycraft-fu]

It is different, hence why Intel makes both (Thunderbolt is Intel's not Apple's). Thunderbolt is basically just an external PCIe bus. While that has a benefit of great speed and low latency, it has drawbacks. The client device has to be more complex (and thus expensive) since it needs a PCIe controller on it. Also a device can hose your system, being PCIe it has DMA and can write or read any memory.

USB is much simpler. Slave devices need little logic to handle it. Also it is handled through the CPU which, while slower, is safer meaning an errant device can't as easily trash your system.

Maximum cable length

[thue]

Thunderbolt is interesting because of the potential maximum cable length. The current cupper cables are limited to 3 meters, but once optical cables are available, "10s of meters" will be possible.

Since you can run both display, keyboard and mouse over one cable natively, this means that you can put your computer with its noisy fans into the basement, use a single thunderbolt cable, and just have an extremely thin client at your workstation.

How about giving Thunderbolt a few months first

[SensitiveMale]

Thunderbolt was just released a few months ago. USB3 has been out for almost 2 years and it is finally starting to get a little traction in the marketplace. Something else to keep in mind is that Thunderbolt is Intel tech, not Apple. Intel is pushing Thunderbolt so Thunderbolt will be on 95% of mobos in a couple years. Since Thunderbolt is Intel tech, Microsoft will support it as well. Don't discount how much damage was done to FW by shitty MS firewire drivers that barely worked. Intel, Microsoft, and Apple will all be pushing Thunderbolt to succeed.

One last thing, look for video card manufacturers to be pushing TB as well to get rid of DL DVI,DVI, and VGA cables.

Thunderbolt will succeed.