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Thunderbolt vs. SuperSpeed USB

Posted by Soulskill on from the battle-of-connectivity dept.

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."

3 of 327 comments (clear)

  1. TFA (-1, wrong) by plover · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    John
  2. Re:TFA (-2, wrong) by Sponge+Bath · · Score: 5, Funny

    They are holding out for LudicrousSpeed USB.

  3. Maximum cable length by thue · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.