Expect Hundreds of Thunderbolt Devices, Says Intel

An anonymous reader writes "Thunderbolt ports have been spotted on a PC motherboard, but the reality is that the technology is far from mainstream outside of Apple products. Which is why it is interesting to hear Intel predict that 'a hundred' Thunderbolt devices are expected to be on the market by the end of the year. The comment was made this week at Intel's presentation at IDF in Beijing. Ultrabooks with Thunderbolt are expected to appear this year."

Comments

Not hundreds of different types

[Anonymous Coward]

But literally, just hundreds.

Re:Not hundreds of different types

[nicolastheadept]

That's exactly what I was going to write. Well done sir.

Re:Not hundreds of different types

[Anonymous Coward]

You could have helped out more by telling us what you've heard that "literally" literally means.

So three monitors and ninety-seven hard drives?

[Kenja]

Or are they also counting the computers with an unused thunderbolt port on them?

Re:So three monitors and ninety-seven hard drives?

[h4rr4r]

I use mine! For HDMI only. I hope splitter exist for this because only having one port is really dumb.

Re:So three monitors and ninety-seven hard drives?

[Anonymous Coward]

I see a Thunderbolt port as kind of like Sacagawea dollar. Just like I can trade my Sacagawea dollar in at the bank for a real dollar, I can go buy a converter for my Thunderbolt port to turn it into a real port.

Re:So three monitors and ninety-seven hard drives?

[AngryDeuce]

Best analogy ever.

Re:So three monitors and ninety-seven hard drives?

[chaim79]

From what I understand it's like Firewire, it daisy-chains instead of splitting. That being said I'm sure someone will come up with a thunderbolt hub at some point.

Re:So three monitors and ninety-seven hard drives?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Architecturally, this is true: with the ugly exception of the fact that a very high speed peripheral bus and a video-out interface were bodged into the same connector for no wildly obvious reason.

Because Firewire was a data-only thing, the probability that a given device would daisy-chain was actually pretty decent in the real world, and you could put the non-cooperative freak on the end of the chain. Thunderbolt more analogous to a port that sneaks firewire into your VGA-out(albeit in a way that makes splitting much more complex than a simple mechanical pinout adapter, is my understanding). Because there are loads of video-only devices in the world, the vast majority don't daisy-chain because video devices aren't expected to.

This is the trouble for Thunderbolt: As with classy firewire devices, most of the "thunderbolt peripherals" daisy-chain just fine. However, your Thunderbolt port is also your only video-out port, and something north of 99% of monitors, TVs, projectors, etc. have never heard of this 'daisy-chain' business.

Re:So three monitors and ninety-seven hard drives?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're not giving it proper credit here. Its not "bodged" it's multiplexed. It's a high speed data bus that can transport PCI express and Displayport data. This is helpful because it lets your GPU stay in your computer.

You're only going to connect a thunderbolt monitor to your thunderbolt port. If you're going to connect a non-thunderbolt monitor you're going to want some sort of breakout device that lets you continue the chain while providing a video out. However, sensible computers will have dedicated video ports as well as a thunderbolt port. (Unless thunderbolt eventually becomes the de-facto standard)

Re:So three monitors and ninety-seven hard drives?

[Gilmoure]

I use the Sacagawea dollars for the kid when she loses a tooth. Shiny!

Re:So three monitors and ninety-seven hard drives?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Oh, don't get me wrong, I have the greatest respect for the engineers who got a very fast bus working over cables that Joe User can be trusted with, for comparatively cheap. My point was merely that, because the bus is tied to the displayport, rather than just being an external 4x PCIe port, it is assured that most every use case already has a daisy-chain incompatible peripheral in the mix, the video device. Had the two not been combined, that wouldn't have been true.

The fact that getting the two signals into one connector is technically impressive is true; but it's still a handicap for all but terminal minimalists.

Re:So three monitors and ninety-seven hard drives?

[UnknowingFool]

"for no wildly obvious reason"
Except for a single cable that replaces a laptop dock. You might argue that there isn't much additional functionality that Thunderbolt has over a dock, the major advantage is that Thunderbolt will be universal while a dock is limited only to a manufacturer and even only to certain models from that manufacturer.

Also, DisplayPort or mini-DisplayPort is the the connector which is cable compatible with HDMI and you don't need to daisy chain it.

Re:So three monitors and ninety-seven hard drives?

[gman003]

You make a somewhat valid point, but think about it from the vendor's point of view:

You need to have computers support TB before you can really sell devices using TB. People don't buy a hard drive or monitor, and then find a computer that will use it; they find a computer they want and then buy a hard drive or monitor that will work with *that*, simply because it's cheaper to buy a new monitor than it is to buy a new computer.

The laptop I have on preorder has a TB port. I don't particularly care about that either way - it seems to have displaced the eSATA port, and the only eSATA device I have works as USB just as well. But, when I'm out shopping for [device] in a year from now, TB will be an option, and possibly the best option.

Vendors know, through long experience, to build up the supporting devices (ones that support the new standard as well as old ones) well before making devices that primarily or exclusively use the new standard. Even a decade after USB 1.1, computers had legacy PS/2 ports for keyboards and mice. Even years after DVI was itself made technically obsolete, computers were coming with VGA ports.

Remember when USB first came out? At first, nothing really used it. You'd see printers support it as an option, right next to the old parallel port; you'd see a few USB mice and keyboards, often packaged with a PS/2USB converter. But now, you have to look long and hard to find a computer *without* USB, and finding legacy PS/2 keyboards or parallel cables is rather difficult.

Thunderbolt isn't guaranteed to take off the same way (remember FireWire? Or the countless mini-DVI ports? Or any other failed standard?), but it *could*. And so device manufacturers throw it in, especially since Intel's chipsets support it *anyways*. It's another bullet point to put on the marketing, but it could be that small little edge against [competitor], right?

Re:So three monitors and ninety-seven hard drives?

[SuricouRaven]

"with the ugly exception of the fact that a very high speed peripheral bus and a video-out interface were bodged into the same connector for no wildly obvious reason."

Save space. With the trend towards smaller and smaller portables, expansion connectors are becoming a luxury.

Re:So three monitors and ninety-seven hard drives?

[UnknowingFool]

I wouldn't say FireWire failed as it was the best technology for large file transfers for a long time. It was superseded by better, cheaper technologies. USB is good enough for some situations and eSATA has taken over as the preferred method on PCs. Apple screwed up with licensing which affected adoption. As for the uptake of Thunderbolt, it isn't one computer maker (Apple) pushing it but Intel so adoption is more likely.

Re:So three monitors and ninety-seven hard drives?

[Anonymous Coward]

except that i have an hdmi port on the same machine that has a thunderbolt port

Re:So three monitors and ninety-seven hard drives?

[beelsebob]

There's a very simple reason –it's a universal, standardised, laptop docking port. One port, USB, ethernet, PCI, monitor, firewire, etc all connected.

Re:So three monitors and ninety-seven hard drives?

[A Friendly Troll]

Remember when USB first came out? At first, nothing really used it. You'd see printers support it as an option, right next to the old parallel port; you'd see a few USB mice and keyboards, often packaged with a PS/2USB converter. But now, you have to look long and hard to find a computer *without* USB, and finding legacy PS/2 keyboards or parallel cables is rather difficult.

The USB/PS2 thing causes some issues in certain scenarios. For example, mine.

I have a 2004-era motherboard, and it has a very useful feature: turn on PC via PS/2 keyboard. Can't do it with a USB keyboard. My old keyboard -- USB, actually, but connected through a PS/2 adapter -- died and I bought a new one. Unfortunately, it doesn't do jack shit with the adapter.

So, now I have to bend, open the case door and push the button on the computer case to turn on the PC. You might say it's not a big deal, and it isn't, but compared to a very quick keypress before, it's much more inconvenient.

I have no idea if newer motherboards can indeed power up the computer through a USB keyboard...

Re:So three monitors and ninety-seven hard drives?

[jedidiah]

A device that doesn't need a collection of dongles is the one that is smaller and more portable.

Re:So three monitors and ninety-seven hard drives?

[camperdave]

This is helpful because it lets your GPU stay in your computer.

I wasn't aware that my GPU was in danger of being evicted from my computer. I'll have to get some thuderbolts to make sure it stays put, because I like my graphics.

Re:So three monitors and ninety-seven hard drives?

[SuricouRaven]

Smaller and more portable has its costs, like smaller screens, fiddley controls and less storage. Many people want to have the convenience of a portable but also the ability to hook up to external peripherals when at their desk.

Re:So three monitors and ninety-seven hard drives?

[Shifty0x88]

There's a very simple reason –it's a universal, standardised, laptop docking port. One port, USB, ethernet, PCI, monitor, firewire, etc all connected.

True, I just can't find a reason why I really need it. I have ethernet, USB, pcmcia, hdmi port, etc. Who uses firewire(camcorders? Apple?)

This is all because of the Ultrabooks that Intel is pushing on manufacturers to get back at Apple(and take some of their business back) and the sexy looking macbook.

Re:So three monitors and ninety-seven hard drives?

[Anonymous Coward]

Universal? I thought that only machines with Intel CPU's could support it.

Re:So three monitors and ninety-seven hard drives?

[Anonymous Coward]

there will be thunderbolt ports on the monitor that you plug your peripherals into, just like the monitors with usb ports

Re:So three monitors and ninety-seven hard drives?

[AK Marc]

I have a docked laptop. Two of my three monitors are driven from USB video adaptors. About 1/4 of my video is on the GPU in my computer. I could turn that off and get by with the GPU evicted from my computer, but the layout of my desk has me using my laptop as a keyboard, so I have the screen open anyway, so no reason to not use it.

Re:So three monitors and ninety-seven hard drives?

[Anonymous Coward]

but I always by hard drives because of TB and then figure out which computer needs them. Course I usually prefer to buy the TB2 or larger variety (they tend to be more useful for storing things)

Re:So three monitors and ninety-seven hard drives?

[Anonymous Coward]

My point was merely that, because the bus is tied to the displayport, rather than just being an external 4x PCIe port, it is assured that most every use case already has a daisy-chain incompatible peripheral in the mix, the video device. Had the two not been combined, that wouldn't have been true.

The fact that getting the two signals into one connector is technically impressive is true; but it's still a handicap for all but terminal minimalists.

I'm not the same AC but I'm still not sure what your point is.

The TB protocol encapsulates packet-oriented protocols such as PCIe and DisplayPort. TB daisychain is just a matter of passing TB packets through to the next TB device in the chain, without worrying what's encapsulated inside.

The only Thunderbolt video output device I know of is Apple's 27" Thunderbolt Display, and it can daisy chain just fine. There's only one complication I'm aware of, and it involves this specific chain with a DisplayPort monitor at the end of the chain:

Computer --- Apple 27" TB Display --- any DisplayPort monitor

But it's not an inherent limitation in the Thunderbolt protocol. It's a limitation in the existing Intel TB chips.

A 1-lane TB chip needs to support one upstream and one downstream port in order to chain. Additionally, since you're supposed to be able to plug in a single TB-unaware DisplayPort device into the end of a TB chain, TB chips also need to be able to terminate at least one virtual DisplayPort channel from the upstream TB link, and present it as a physical DP interface on whichever connector happens to be acting as the downstream port.

However, the Intel TB chips to date can only terminate that minimum of one virtual DP channel. In the Apple TB Display, that channel is used internally (it's how video data gets to the display). So, even though chaining multiple TB Displays is no problem, you can't connect a DisplayPort monitor directly to an Apple TB Display.

To work around it, you can add another device:

Computer --- TB Display --- Any chaining capable TB peripheral --- DisplayPort display

There's no reason why a TB chip can't be designed to terminate two (or more) virtual DisplayPort channels, which would solve this without requiring an extra step in the chain. The lack of such a chip in the first generation of TB interface chips was probably an oversight.

Re:So three monitors and ninety-seven hard drives?

[Anonymous Coward]

USB mice and keyboards, often packaged with a PS/2USB converter

As a possibly irrelevant aside, those converters didn't actually perform protocol conversion. They were completely passive things which just wired USB pins to PS/2 pins. The mice and keyboards were actually dual-mode USB/PS2 devices which would autosense which type of port they'd been connected to.

Dual mode devices were a hack layered on top of USB, not anything required by the spec. Now that USB is ubiquitous and PS/2 is rapidly disappearing, I wouldn't be surprised if lots of recent USB mouse and keyboard designs are no longer dual-mode and thus cannot work through a "converter".

Re:So three monitors and ninety-seven hard drives?

[Anonymous Coward]

credit where credit is due: HDMI did it first, but it wasn't a VESA standard.

Re:So three monitors and ninety-seven hard drives?

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Thunderbolt used to be on USB 3.0. The USB consortium balked and apple came to the rescue with MDP

Re:So three monitors and ninety-seven hard drives?

[linhux]

I guess one point is that most people hooking up monitors to their Macs are in fact hooking up Dell monitors using DVI and a dongle, thus terminating the chain. Nothing that can't be fixed, of course, but that's how it stands at the moment.

Re:So three monitors and ninety-seven hard drives?

[Waccoon]

Remember when USB first came out? At first, nothing really used it. You'd see printers support it as an option, right next to the old parallel port; you'd see a few USB mice and keyboards, often packaged with a PS/2USB converter. But now, you have to look long and hard to find a computer *without* USB, and finding legacy PS/2 keyboards or parallel cables is rather difficult.

Yeah, PC vendors are really lazy. I remember the USB versions costing an extra $30-$50, too, and I also remember how log it took optical drives to convert to SATA.

However, it's worth nothing that USB had huge advantages over serial ports, much like the transition from VHS to DVD. Even if PC vendors were too slow, lazy, and cheap to make the transition until Apple kicked everyone in the butt, in the end, the move was a no-brainer, and USB didn't really have any competition at the time.

Thunderbolt is more like the move from DVD to Blu-ray, except DVDs are now at version 3.0 and still work in DVD 1.0 players. TB has to make some pretty spectacular claims before anyone will even look at it. Oh, fudge... Thunderbolt cables cost ten times as much as USB, and my USB seems to work just fine to me? No thanks.

Apple also isn't helping anything this time around, seeing how they like to switch video connectors every year or two. But of course, they will stop doing this the instant Thunderbolt is widely available (*cough*).

Re:So three monitors and ninety-seven hard drives?

[Anonymous Coward]

wrong, any device with TB chip can, but currently not every laptop has TB chip, the ones that do are Intel but nothing stops AMD from putting TB chip in (except their war with Intel, and them wanting to go against Intel that is pushing TB chips, so only reason you dont have AMD TB chips is because they dont like anything Intel made)

you can even have TB chip on ARM computer its not even limited to x86 so this has potential to replace a lot of connectors similar to USB at one point

Re:So three monitors and ninety-seven hard drives?

[Anonymous Coward]

my MB can do that using ordinary USB keyboard connected on USB port (it does not even have PS2 ports) bought it in 2011 from ASUS probably any MB will support wake on (USB) keyboard

Re:So three monitors and ninety-seven hard drives?

[Stuarticus]

I had a few problems with wireless USB wakeup in Linux, still not really as good as it should be, not sure whether to blame BIOS or OS makers...

Re:So three monitors and ninety-seven hard drives?

[MCSEBear]

True, I just can't find a reason why I really need it.

There are SSD's shipping today that are already bottle-necked by the throughput challenged USB3 and SATA/eSATA standards. Companies like Intel have moved to building performance SSD's on PCI cards because PCI is the only available bus that is fast enough.

If you have a laptop, PCI cards aren't an option, but Thunderbolt delivers an external PCI bus.

Re:So three monitors and ninety-seven hard drives?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a 2004-era motherboard, and it has a very useful feature: turn on PC via PS/2 keyboard. Can't do it with a USB keyboard.

That's actually an outdated motherboard problem, not a USB vs PS/2. Your motherboard is eight years old. New motherboards support power-on-USB in BIOS.

Re:So three monitors and ninety-seven hard drives?

[A Friendly Troll]

Sorry, fuckup on my part. It's not from 2004, it's from 2007. I know it's outdated, but I can't afford a PC upgrade. The point was more that PS/2 allowed me to do something, but USB doesn't.

Well, at least when I do upgrade I'll be back to powering on my computer through the keyboard, thanks for the info :)

Re:So three monitors and ninety-seven hard drives?

[benthurston27]

Next is 15 different kinds of mini thunderbolt to ensure no particular one will get momentum.

Re:So three monitors and ninety-seven hard drives?

[Shifty0x88]

...Thunderbolt delivers an external PCI bus.

But that is external, why would I want an external SSD?

100

[Anonymous Coward]

A hundred doesn't seem that impressive.

erm... what?

[FrozenFood]

call me 5 minutes old, but what is thunderbolt? a new x86 standard? a new arduino clone?

rate me down... again.. but I think the header should have had more info.

Re:erm... what?

[SJHillman]

Thunderbolt separates those who know how to use Google from the users.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbolt_(interface)

Re:erm... what?

[Jeng]

If you can't look something up you do not belong here.

Re:erm... what?

[Anonymous Coward]

He has a valid point though.

Noone is talking about thunderbolt.

Re:erm... what?

[ColdWetDog]

Thunderbolt separates those who know how to use Google from the users.

No, that's porn.

Re:erm... what?

[Jeng]

I also knew nothing about Thunderbolt, but I looked it up.

It wasn't that hard. In fact I would say it was easier to look up than it was to post.

Re:erm... what?

[bobbied]

Thunderbolt is a high speed device interface that has similar performance to PCI Express. It supports a wide range of devices that require very high bandwidth and low latency I/O operations, including displays, network adapters, mass storage devices (Disk Drives, RAID arrays etc.) and things like that. Like USB, the port can supply power to attached devices but it runs at much higher data rates than even USB 3.0. Currently it is generally only supported by Apple but the article is saying that it is starting to show up on more generic X86 hardware.

Looking at the comparisons I've found, seems that Thunderbolt is likely to put a spanner in the works for USB 3.0 support. Why bother with USB 3.0 when this port exists at about the same price? Yea there is the compatibility issue with USB, but I have a feeling they will leave the USB 2.0 ports and just add Thunderbolt until they can send USB to the same place printer and serial ports went. Given the bandwidth available on this port, you can put multiple displays and a hand full of disk drives on one port and do away with the VGA, DVI, and eSATA ports in one shot.

Re:erm... what?

[honestmonkey]

"Someone announced something really neat and cool and you'll want one. It'll be out soon, on every platform. What, you don't know? Google it, mother-fucker!" Yeah, real fucking informative. News I can use indeed.

Re:erm... what?

[Anonymous Coward]

... that wasn't the point.

Re:erm... what?

[Auroch]

Define: Thunderbolt
A. The Primary Weapon in Zeus' arsenal.
B. A loud noise, generally appearing (ha!) after a lightning bolt.
C. A sexual act involving [censored, for the sake of the children].
D. Some new port, similar to firewire, that won't catch on anywhere except with apple fanboys, who will claim is the second (third) coming of apple superiority while the rest of us just say "Nice OS, dude ... paid too much for the hardware, though".

Re:erm... what?

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing is, the wikipedia article doesn't explain why it's significant. Is it significant?

Re:erm... what?

[Anonymous Coward]

99% of us knew what this was months ago. It's not our fault you don't keep up with your own field.

Re:erm... what?

[AngryDeuce]

That's because it's the new Firewire. Even if it is technically superior to USB 3, everyone knows that backward compatability is going to trump the expanded features...

Re:erm... what?

[narcc]

C. A sexual act involving [censored, for the sake of the children].

Cowboy Neil?

Re:erm... what?

[jedidiah]

> Looking at the comparisons I've found, seems that Thunderbolt is likely to put a spanner in the works for USB 3.0 support.

I think you have that backwards.

Thunderbolt is NOT the same price as USB3. It is considerably more expensive. Forgetting the legacy support aspect for a moment, you've got the very real problem that TB is at this point mostly vaporware. There are few machines or devices available outside of the Apple reality distortion field.

USB3 is already being bundled with PC motherboards. USB3 add-on cards are cheaper than a Thunderbolt CABLE. USB3 devices are much cheaper.

You have to be a pretty dedicated Apple fanboy to really believe what you posted.

Re:erm... what?

[atrain728]

If Intel is going to push it, it'll catch on. So far they haven't, but looks like that may change.

Re:erm... what?

[Anonymous Coward]

But it would have been easier for TFS to explain it once than for thousands of users to each have to look it up, wouldn't it. And they won't ever learn to do that if nobody ever points out that that the summaries lack necessary information.

Re:erm... what?

[sexconker]

Thunderbolt is another shitty port and set of cables to confuse people, an external connection to the PCIe bus, and a controller to make it do things.

We do not need more ports and cables. Thunderbolt's claim is that by using it we'll have LESS cables. This is what they always say and it's always bullshit.

We've had external PCIe for 7 years. No one wanted it.

The only useful part of Thunderbolt is the controller. In theory, you should be able to pipe video, audio, ethernet, usb, firewire, serial, or any fucking thing your Thunderbotl chipset/frimware supports, over a single cable, as well as daisy chain devices like with firewire/SCSI. The controller basically has shit to handle all of those protocols, and then it just figures out how best to send the data over the link. You should be able to, for example, connect a monitor to your PC via a Thunderbolt cable, then chain a second monitor with a short cable from the first monitor, and again from monitor 2 to monitor 3. Monitor 2 (in the middle) could have the typical USB hub for your mouse, keyboard, whatever, and monitor 3's Thunderbolt out could go to your speakers.

In practice, there are almost no devices that use Thunderbolt, and those that do have different physical ports. The controllers also have varying capabilities with regards to throughput. In the above example, you need a Thunderbolt controller capable of handling all that data, then monitors with physical ports for chaining Thunderbolt devices, and cables that connect those (possibly different) physical ports. Then you need a hell of a lot of luck to not get fucked in the ass by having your audio downgraded to stereo because some HDCP shit failed along the way.

Thunderbolt used to be called Lightpeak, but then they realized they weren't ready to release it as such (and optical version), so now there will be Thunderbolt over copper and Thunderbolt over optical, meaning different sets of cables and different sets of ports that adapters will not work for (unless they're active and have an optical transceiver and cost $70).

They should have waited and got hardware manufacturers on board, but Apple needed another bullet point for their press conference.

TL;DR: Thunderbolt is the new Firewire.

Re:erm... what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except there will never be a USB 4. In order to get to the needed speeds USB 4 would need to do all the tricks that make Thunderbolt currently expensive (active cable, fiber optics, etc...). At that point Thunderbolt will already have a head start.

Re:erm... what?

[Anonymous Coward]

What a load of tosh. There are literally hundreds of mobos out there with USB3 right now. And also thousands of cases with USB3 front connectors to go with it, not to mention thousands of USB3 devices.

Let me know when Thunder-whats-his-face reach even 10% of that.

Re:erm... what?

[dgatwood]

I think Thunderbolt requires more silicon for a hard drive than USB. Of course, it is also faster, so it may be worth it, but it isn't quite open and shut.

Where Thunderbolt shines is for displays. It can replace your video cable, your audio cable, your USB cable, your eSATA cable, and your FireWire cable all with a single wire. Now, you can plug in all your hard drives (via USB or FireWire or eSATA) into the monitor on top of your desk instead of fumbling around behind the machine underneath.

Re:erm... what?

[jedidiah]

> 99% of us knew what this was months ago. It's not our fault you don't keep up with your own field.

In my field any TB device would be considered a cheap consumer toy.

Re:erm... what?

[jedidiah]

> Now, you can plug in all your hard drives (via USB or FireWire or eSATA) into the monitor on top of your desk instead of fumbling around behind the machine underneath.

I just use front facing hot swap drive bays. Doesn't matter if it is drives in the main chassis or drives in an external enclosure. They don't sit anywhere near the monitor. I would not want them to.

For "fumble-devices", I have a hub sitting on top of the desk.

PCs also tend to have front facing USB and Firewire ports.

You're trying to invent problems that don't actually exist.

Re:erm... what?

[Bengie]

I read about Lightpeak back in '05-ish.(epeen flex)

AMD announced that they have something to compete with TB, but there is no details and I have not heard anything about it since a small blip in an interview from months ago.

Re:erm... what?

[Bengie]

Intel plans on TB replacing PCIe ports, monitor connections, etc. One port to rule them all. 40/100gb fiber versions will be out in 2-3 years, at least the 40gb version, ma'b not the 100gb.

The speed listed already has overhead subtracted.

Also, since the fiber version should get cheap from mass production and maturity of the product, I would hope that fiber physical ports should start getting cheap for network devices also. I don't see why a network switch can't be made of a bunch of cheap 100Gb fiber TB ports that push Ethernet frames. They're good for 100m distances.

Re:erm... what?

[petermgreen]

The first mover has certain advantages in a market but they also have disadvantages. Namely that they get locked into descisions that made sense at the time but no longer do so. Afaict 10GBASE-T manages speeds comparable to thunderbolt without the need for active cables or fiber optics and over much longer distances, the hardware is expensive now but afaict it is coming down.

I'm pretty sure there will be a USB4, the main questions are 1: when and 2: will they decide to merely match thunderbolt or to surpass it.

Re:erm... what?

[Bengie]

Except there will never be a USB 4. In order to get to the needed speeds USB 4 would need to do all the tricks that make Thunderbolt currently expensive (active cable, fiber optics, etc...). At that point Thunderbolt will already have a head start.

This right here. USB 4 may make it near 10Gb, but TB is going way past that. USB will have to ditch backwards compatibility in order to keep up, which is the only reason to use USB.

Re:erm... what?

[bobbied]

You may be right on the price factor, but things get cheaper over time if they catch on with sufficient volumes. USB 3.0 does have the advantage of compatibility, price and number of fielded units, but it lags in performance by an order of magnitude. Given that an Apple championed port now is making its way into the main stream, there is already a demand and supply of devices that can be connected to this port. This means that there is already a low volume of production for this and helping the case for R&D dollars to be spent on this. With R&D, the cost of the silicon will decrease as will the power requirements as volume increases.

I think the real issue is if Apple has intellectual property in this technology or not. If they do, then everybody will have to license it from Apple and depending on how they license it (and how they price the licenses) they could easily kill it. But this doesn't seem to be a factor if we are now seeing non-Apple devices with Thunderbolt ports.

Re:erm... what?

[Bengie]

I agree and disagree with a lot of what you said. I like the later 2/3rds, but I think the 1/3rd calling TB "shitty" is a bit short sighted. I think TB is currently a bad option because the copper port will be replaced with a much better optical one, not to mention the price. But I think TB, or something like TB, is the future. In 5-10 years when it is cheap, having one connection to handle EVERYTHING will be best.

Nutshell: The idea of TB is great, but it is currently the Vista of Win7.

Re:erm... what?

[nonicknameavailable]

USB 3.0 will have more devices than whateverbolt

Re:erm... what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, you can plug in all your hard drives (via USB or FireWire or eSATA) into the monitor on top of your desk instead of fumbling around behind the machine underneath.

Sounds like something of a niche market. How many people want bunch of hard drives on their desk?

Re:erm... what?

[jedidiah]

Thunderbolt may be dead by the time all of the necessary tech catches up in terms of both performance and price. Faster cables are fine but you have to have something to plug them into. Preferably, that's something that is cheap enough to sell to people.

The main reason to use USB is cost and convenience. That is the reason it became "more standard" than Firewire. Cost and convenience won out over raw speed or lower system overhead.

That is the reason it is likely to remain more standard.

Re:erm... what?

[petermgreen]

Looking at the comparisons I've found, seems that Thunderbolt is likely to put a spanner in the works for USB 3.0 support.

The facts I see don't seem to support your assertion.

Firstly: thunderbolt gear has at least so far been EXTREMELY expensive. Yeah some of that is probablly the apple tax but other parts of it come down to design decisions and the sheer data rates of the protocol. It doesn't help that pretty much every device has to have two ports because most hosts only have one and it doubles as the monitor port.

Secondly: USB3 is already becoming pretty common. Afaict most current motherboards now have it.

Thirdly Panther Point (intel's latest chipset family) has integrated USB3. It does not have integrated thunderbolt (despite earlier rumours). So USB3 will be vitually free for computer vendors (just a few extra PCB traces and different sockets) while thunderbolt will require an expensive extra chip.

Fourthly we haven't seen any clear information on how thunderbolt will fit in with machines that don't use onboard graphics. Will the graphics functionality simply be disabled? will there be a way to route video from a graphics card to the thunderbolt cop?

Now don't get me wrong thunderbolt has it's uses, for example it can reduce the number of connectors a laptop user needs to hook up when they bring the machine to their desk to two (power and thunderbolt) while still providing plenty of bandwidth but I think it will remain a niche product.

Re:erm... what?

[Daniel Phillips]

It is based on mini Display Port, on which Apple owns a patent. Given Apple's history of bad acting recently, I do not feel comfortable with a proprietary connector that has anything to do with Apple.

Re:erm... what?

[SJHillman]

Considering all of the prior news stories on Thunderbolt, I don't see why they should have to explain it on every article any more than they have to explain what a browser is on every article about Chrome.

Re:erm... what?

[localman57]

IAMD announced that they have something to compete with TB, but there is no details and I have not heard anything about it since a small blip in an interview from months ago.

Yeah. it's called USB 3.0.

Re:erm... what?

[petermgreen]

We do not need more ports and cables. Thunderbolt's claim is that by using it we'll have LESS cables. This is what they always say and it's always bullshit.

Not less cables total but certainly cables in different places.

With thunderbolt you can have a single cable from your laptop to your monitor then plug all your perhipherals into your monitor. Much less hassle than hooking up every perhipheral directly and hopefully without the hugely model specific characteristics of existing docking stations.

Still I agree thunderbolt is the new firewire, apple users are being pushed into using it (apple has not yet adopted USB3) and some other niches will use it because of it's strengths but I don't see it ever becoming maintstream.

Re:erm... what?

[Daniel Phillips]

Maybe something like Thunderbolt is the future, if it has nothing to do with Apple.

Re:erm... what?

[Anonymous Coward]

HTC does have a decent phone... I'm sure there are more than "hundreds of devices" out there.

Re:erm... what?

[UnknowingFool]

DisplayPort is championed but not controlled by Apple. It is controlled by VESA. Apple did create the mini-DSP connector and VESA included it in the DSP v1.2 specification. I believe Apple offered mini-DSP royalty free as it was intended to be part of the DSP standard. As for why we are now seeing non-Apple Thunderbolt devices, there are two primary reasons. Apple worked with Intel on Thunderbolt and thus got at least a year head start on all their competitors. Apple with firm control of their hardware has been known to drop/adopt interfaces faster than their competitors. Most PC and MB makers still include PS-2 connectors and some still include LPT connectors on new hardware today. Apple dropped ADB with the original iMac 15 years ago in favor of USB and FireWire.

Re:erm... what?

[dgatwood]

How many people have a keyboard and mouse on their desks? Those can also plug into the monitor.

Re:erm... what?

[SuricouRaven]

It's more useful on laptops. Get home, plug your laptop into just two cables (Thunderbolt and power) and you're ready to go with your big monitor, keyboard, mouse, printer, scanner, external drives, network and that silly light-up snowman your mother bought you for Christmas. Just like you could do with a docking station, except not limited to just a few laptops by one vendor and without taking up a big chunk of desk.

Re:erm... what?

[UnknowingFool]

The flaw in this thinking is that USB 3.0 is a direct competitor to ThunderBolt. While you can use both to transfer some files, they are not intended for the same purpose. Thunderbolt is more like external PCIe and can encapsulate USB 3.0 in addition to ethernet and HDMI all in the same cable. USB has severe limitations that will never allow it to do that.

Re:erm... what?

[UnknowingFool]

First, VESA controls DisplayPort specification, not Apple. Second Apple has offered mini-DisplayPort royalty-free when they offered to VESA to include it in the latest spec. Lastly, nothing in the Thunderbolt specs says that companies must use the mini-DSP connector; they can use the full-size connector if they feel paranoid about it.

Re:erm... what?

[default luser]

If Intel is going to push it, it'll catch on. So far they haven't, but looks like that may change.

I can't see them pushing it with any zeal now that the 70-series chipsets feature native USB 3. It doesn't help that Intel has also shipped the best USB 3 controller in existence. When USB 3 satisfies your average user's high-speed expansion needs, there's not much reason for Thunderbolt on mainstream platforms.

Thunderbolt silicon probably won't be integrated anytime soon (adding cost), and the $50 active cables aren't helping things (you can get 6-foot USB 3 cables for around 10 bucks). Given that USB 3 is now universal on all mainstream PCs sold, it's going to be hell justifying the extra cost of Thunderbolt.

Re:erm... what?

[LDAPMAN]

Intel owns the IP, not Apple.

Re:erm... what?

[default luser]

but it lags in performance by an order of magnitude.

This is just not true. A single channel of Thunderbolt does 10Gbps bi-directional. A single channel of USB 3 does 4.0 Gbps bi-directional. That's a factor of 2.5x, not 10x.

And yes, thanks to the new bi-directional bus (USB 2 was shared) USB 3 can already reach 2.5 Gbps in real-world tests. Also being introduced right now are improved UASP (SCSI scheduling) protocols to utilize the same percentage of the bus as Firewire did. Support for UASP is already shipping in products like Asmedia controllers and Intel's 70-series chpsets.

Re:erm... what?

[Daniel Phillips]

I still don't feel comfortable with anything that Apple is involved in. Sorry, but Apple has worlked hard to create that perception.

Re:erm... what?

[UnknowingFool]

Your feelings are not mired in reality but flawed perceptions. Again, VESA controls the standard. This is some of the same illogical thinking when people listed Apple controlling AAC as a reason not to use iPods (Apple doesn't control that standard either). The fact that many, many devices are coming out with ThunderBolt says the manufacturers are not concerned about this or they would have objected to Intel.

I take it from your feelings that you avoid using any WebKit based browser like Chome, don't use CUPS, or any software that Apple contributes to Open Source.

Re:erm... what?

[UnknowingFool]

You do realize that USB and TB are not intended for the same purposes right? Can you run Ethernet, monitor, and PCIe x 4 over a USB connection simultaneously? Also you do realize that USB and TB are both Intel, right?

Re:erm... what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually TB can't do that either. The monitor connection will use up two of the four data-channels, and the USB/ethernet/misc hub will use the others. The PCIe x4 would require to run on its own, or run in 2x with either of the other connected.

Re:erm... what?

[honestmonkey]

The summary is 3 sentences. From it, we know:

Thunderbolt is a port.

That is it. They could have added "-- which promises higher speeds than USB 3.0" or something like that. My "field" is not to keep track of every promising type of computer port that might possibly come available. They couldn't have come up with one more sentence of explanation? Even, as someone mentioned above, if they don't explain what a browser is when talking about Chrome or Firefox, most often they say "the Chrome browser". And what am I going to find when I Google "thunderbolt"? I...
Huh.
Actually news about the damn port. It's got ten gigs, and Apple likes it and HTC and stuff. So, wow.
The point is, if the article had just said "a high speed adapter port that's the bee's knees", then I'd know more from, you know, READING THE FUCKING SUMMARY. That SUMMARIZES stuff. I.E. gives information (albeit in a condensed form). Rather than assumes that everyone knows everything about every new development that comes along.

I honestly think that is not too much to ask.

Re:erm... what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you run Ethernet, monitor, and PCIe x 4 over a USB connection simultaneously?

Ethernet and monitor I already have conventional connections for. Also PCIe, but more to the point... x4? I guess that's charmingly retro but uh... shouldn't the connector to replace all connectors support modern hardware?

Re:erm... what?

[bobbied]

You are correct. I was thinking the 12x increase was over USB3.0 when it was over Firewire 800. Thanks for correcting me. Thunderbolt does 10 Gbps (max per attached device) and USB 3.0 does 4 Gbps per port. This gets you (for a single device) a 2.5x increase. However, if you have multiple devices, you can use up to 20Gbps and achieve a 5x performance improvement per port for multiple devices. This is only half an order of magnitude increase.

Re:erm... what?

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that many, many devices are coming out with ThunderBolt says the manufacturers are not concerned about this or they would have objected to Intel.

Many, many? Intel are predicting 100. That's hardly taking the market by storm.

Re:erm... what?

[Anonymous Coward]

And then there is always the question of 'what requires this bandwidth'. Lets examine what USB is most commonly used for.

Mice? Nope, its very happy with 2.0, and most with 1.1. Trivial overhead as long as the polling rate isn't up in the kilohertz range.
Keyboard? Happy with 1.1. Only time higher is required is when the keyboard itself is a hub, or for devices like the G19. Trivial overhead.
Printers? Do just fine on 2.0 - or Ethernet/Wi-Fi. Little reason to invest in more a more expensive interface. And USB 3 will cover them likely for decades ahead.
Non professional Headphones/Headsets/Speakers/Soundcards - again do just fine on 2.0, as they've got all the bandwidth they need for the output/input. Unlikely to ever change.

So that more or less leaves us with storage devices, monitors, graphics cards, and hubs. And the only one of any real value in this department is the storage devices; and hubs for portable devices. Both which are already covered.

Re:erm... what?

[HapSlappy_2222]

I normally agree with you on looking something up, but the summary was 3 sentences long. There was plenty of room to say:

"Thunderbolt (Apple's latest data transfer protocol) ports have been spotted on a PC motherboard, but the reality is that the technology is far from mainstream outside of Apple products. Which is why it is interesting to hear Intel predict that 'a hundred' Thunderbolt devices are expected to be on the market by the end of the year. The comment was made this week at Intel's presentation at IDF in Beijing. Ultrabooks with Thunderbolt are expected to appear this year."

I don't mind looking things up, but at least give me very general idea about what type of info I'm about to read up on. I (yes, I am being serious) thought that these were ports to hook my Thunderbolt directly to my PC in some fancy new Intel/HTC project, and wondered what the hell Apple had to do with any of it. When I clicked the link, I was a little annoyed at just how wrong I was. If you're gonna use an ambiguous name, come up with a half sentence to disambiguate it, or at the very least provide a clarifying link.

Re:erm... what?

[Anonymous Coward]

The copper port is the final port. The optical transceivers will be on the *cable* to maintain backward compatibility between device generations.

Re:erm... what?

[UnknowingFool]

Are you suggesting that the adoption rate is influenced more by Apple's royalty-free connector? May be it has more to do with the fact that it's only been a year since Intel announced it. How long did eSATA become widely available after it was standardized in 2004? Years.

Re:erm... what?

[Daniel Phillips]

I don't feel comfortable about Apple's involvement in Webkit or CUPS either. And I am certainly not alone in that. See this for example. Also, note that KDE, the original developers of the KHTML project that Apple forked and renamed as Webkit also would appear to be unwilling to jump into the arms of Apple. KDE supports both Webkit and KHTML, and KHTML continues to be developed entirely independently from Apple.

"Not feeling comfortable" does not necessarily amount to "actively avoiding". While Apple mostly behaves themselves with respect to CUPS (which also was not developed by Apple) and Webkit, I would not trust my life to that. And note also that I feel the same way about Android, not without reason. Fortunately, the common thread that runs through all of these projects is that forking is easy and legal, and the credible probability that a forked project would soon eclipse its former corporate owners tends to keep the worst forms of of bad behavior in check.

Re:erm... what?

[gl4ss]

the external PCIe is the main point. allowing for ethernet and hdmi comes with that.

but in reality, you could run display data and ethernet through usb. you can actually buy such adapters today.. even for usb2.0 but video quality takes a hit.

the big question is will they make affordable gpu boxes for it - and does it have some limitation in that regard. for fun try to even find actual thunderbolt benchmarks! very few people give a shit about it being faster than usb3/esata in storage actually.

and currently just about the only devices you can buy for thunderbolt are storage devices so..

Re:erm... what?

[Jeng]

Your summary was indeed much better than what was posted and I agree with your comments.

I still don't think anyone who frequents this website should be asking for help for that which can be accomplished with 30 seconds of research.

It probably took the person longer to post than it would have for him to inform himself.

Re:erm... what?

[UnknowingFool]

What? Apple forked WebKit from KHTML because they probably wanted control over their own project. If they stayed within KHTML, they would have to rely on those developers for change control. They didn't want to do this and they had many changes in a short amount of time. KHTML developers didn't like that Apple didn't document their changes very well as they wanted to backport Apple's changes. Nothing in the GPL says that Apple has to do this and poor documentation isn't unique to Apple. As for KHTML not wanting to join WebKit, that's their choice. Google and others have contributed to WebKit.

As for cups, you've linked forum speculation from 2007 about what Apple might do with CUPS including make new laser printers. The most I've seen Apple do is not release the source code changes in a timely manner until someone asked about them.

Re:erm... what?

[AngryDeuce]

Exactly. Not only that, but the vast majority of people are not going to run out and upgrade all of their peripherals to utilize the new connection standards anyway. For instance, they still make mice and keyboards to this day that have PS/2 connections, and when I last worked in retail selling computer accessories and such (about 5 years ago), there were still people that came in looking specifically for PS/2 keyboards and mice. How long have USB keyboards and mice been around, 10 years? 15?

Take eSATA, how long has that been around? Technically speaking, it's much better than USB 2.0, but go look at external hard disk drives and count the eSATA drives as compared to the USB 2.0 and now USB 3.0 ones. Point is, something being "better" is immaterial to things like this. It's about what's in common use...and that's USB.

Until something is able to supplant USB we are going to be primarily dealing with USB, and nothing I've seen, not even Thunderbolt, seems like it's going to do that at this point.

Re:erm... what?

[gl4ss]

device manufacturers don't give a shit if they get a chance to sell their wares.

if they get a chance to sell another wave to early adopters when there's actual optical link involved sometime in the future(tm) they'll be just happy campers about that too(wouldn't be too surprised if they'll change their mind about that too for a few times, though they'll get patents on the chips doing the optical/electrical conversion in the cable. how fantastical business model that must seem to them, if the cheap optical strand gets damaged you'll be buying a new whole cable including chips. promised speeds are fantastic though but this bunch of pr dudes has stretched the truth and turned down their ambitious plans more than few times now already).

it's other computer makers who are reluctant. for good reasons too, many people, myself included, are more interested in having a hdmi port than a port I need an adapter cable to attach. if there isn't any devices I don't really give a shit. the macbook pro I got with thunderbolt is going to be too old and shitty to be rescued by a chained gpu soon enough anyways.

the reason why they went with putting it on the mini-displayport is that usb said no to messing with their port, they don't want people asking why a cable that fits isn't working as advertised.

Re:erm... what?

[gl4ss]

"except not limited to just a few laptops by one vendor".

umm that's what it is now, and that one vendor-duo doesn't sell a docking station nor do they seem to sell the necessary chips for 3rd parties to make a docking station puck so you could upgrade your old stuff to this. the promise is that it won't be like that always, but that's just a promise.

Re:erm... what?

[afidel]

Apple had a one year exclusive on host ports which is why it hasn't been popular yet.

Re:erm... what?

[Daniel Phillips]

Apple forked WebKit from KHTML because they probably wanted control over their own project.

You need to lay off that koolaid. KHTML was never Apple's project. Apple just decided to take a free ride on it. A good decision. But then attempting to dominate the project was an awfully bad decision, since reversed.

Re:erm... what?

[nightfell]

And you can continue to use front-facing hot swap drive bays.

But as usual, you keep using a fucking obscure nerd example to try to prove a general point. Most people don't have front-facing hot swap drive bays. Even *most hardcore nerds* don't have them. But you have them, therefore Thunderbolt is pointless? WTF?

Thunderbolt solves the problem of being the only port you ever need for now and into the foreseeable future. Sure, you'll have USB and audio for convenience, as well as ethernet. But all the other ports? SATA, eSATA, FireWire 400, FireWire 800, PC Card, VGA, DVI, HDMI, PCIe? Now you don't have to spec out your computer based on what you currently need or use, or what you think you might need or use in the future. And when a new port comes out, you don't have to buy a whole new computer to use it.

But you've got front-facing hot swap drive bays, so Thunderbolt is pointless. What a fucking jackass.

Re:erm... what?

[Hadlock]

I have read slashdot pretty much daily, for the last 10 years. The first time I heard about it was after some mac event, my mac buddy couldn't wait to tell me about how thunderbolt was ~THE FUTURE~. I can't recall a single /. article about the technology (though I'm sure someone with more time than me will do their best to prove me wrong). Thunderbolt is a pretty low priority for PC owners right now as you need a) a mac and b) a very expensive mac display to take advantage of it, and I can't think of any pc video cards that support the technology yet. As far as PC users are concerned it's still "theoretical vaporware" for us.

Re:erm... what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only that, but the vast majority of people are not going to run out and upgrade all of their peripherals to utilize the new connection standards anyway.

So you're saying there's no point in USB 3.

Re:erm... what?

[BasilBrush]

What Koolaid? The right to fork a project and do what you like with that fork is a fundamental freedom guaranteed by the free software movement. With the condition that if you distribute any binaries from that modified fork you also release the source. Which Apple does. There's no obligation to accept code to any such fork from anyone else. (They do, but they don't have to.)

You're complaining about Apple exercising the fundamental freedom of free software.

Re:erm... what?

[Daniel Phillips]

By the way, Apple still seems to use CVS, can it be true?

Re:erm... what?

[AngryDeuce]

For most people, right now, no, probably not. But the fact that it's backward compatible means that motherboard manufacturers are going to just start replacing USB 2.0 slots with USB 3.0 slots and it's still going to work with most peripherals out there right out of the box which will spur their adoption. Hobbyists may elect to get a TB peripheral but I'm betting almost everyone else is going to be happy with what they're used to so the standard is going to remain fringe like Firewire or eSATA have and eventually fade away.

Re:erm... what?

[HapSlappy_2222]

You're totally right, of course. Asking for others to tell him what Thunderbolt is is either dumb or a too-snarky way to say "Nice summary, brah.". Better to point out the issue directly.

Re:erm... what?

[ninetyninebottles]

Citation? I've heard this before but every time I look into I just find articles debunking that theory. Apple got a head start because they helped develop it and wanted to ship right away. Other vendors could have done the same.

Re:erm... what?

[ninetyninebottles]

Also, note that KDE, the original developers of the KHTML project that Apple forked and renamed as Webkit also would appear to be unwilling to jump into the arms of Apple.

They collaborated with Apple to integrate changes from Webkit into KHTML, but did not merge the projects because they wanted to go a different direction architecturally. Google and Samsung and numerous others don't seem to have any problem working with Apple to create OSS. Apple can be annoying and slow but i've never heard of them to be a poor OSS collaborator.

Re:erm... what?

[toddestan]

Why bother with USB 3.0 when this port exists at about the same price?

Because people are going to expect that your computer has USB ports, and since a USB 3.0 port won't cost any more than a USB 2.0 port you might as well make them USB 3.0 ports. Now that the latest chipsets introduced by Intel and AMD have built-in USB 3.0 support it's not like it's adding any real cost to the motherboards.

Re:erm... what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually TB can't do that either. The monitor connection will use up two of the four data-channels, and the USB/ethernet/misc hub will use the others. The PCIe x4 would require to run on its own, or run in 2x with either of the other connected.

Thunderbolt does not work the way you think it does.

In the first place, it doesn't have four data channels. It has two bidirectional (full duplex) 10 Gbps serial links, aka two channels.

The protocol running over those links is a packet-oriented encapsulation protocol. That is, you take packets from another bus, and encapsulate them inside Thunderbolt packets. At the other end, those packets are de-encapsulated and put onto a local bus of the original native protocol.

Today, the two busses supported for encapsulation are DisplayPort and PCI Express. Typical TB chips allocate one of the 10Gbps links to DP, and the other to PCIe. As far as I'm aware there's no technical reason why you can't multiplex both DP and PCIe on one link (packets are packets at the TB protocol level), it's just that the maximum throughput of DP is close to 10 Gbps so it kind of makes sense for current chips to be designed to allocate one TB channel to it.

To make UnknowingFool's scenario real, what you'd actually have is PCIe x4 and DisplayPort encapsulated that way, one 10Gbps channel apiece. At the remote end both of the encapsulated ports would be reconstructed. You'd attach a DP monitor to the DP channel, and a PCIe switch IC to the PCIe. You can then hang an arbitrary number of PCIe devices off that switch IC, possibly by cascading switch ICs.

Re:erm... what?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can get them wireless now; you don't have to plug them in at all.

Re:erm... what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ethernet and monitor I already have conventional connections for. Also PCIe, but more to the point... x4? I guess that's charmingly retro but uh... shouldn't the connector to replace all connectors support modern hardware?

Maybe you should try understanding PCIe before you try to make such critiques?

PCIe is a scalable link. Hosts and devices are expected to be capable of negotiating width during linkup. This means it's perfectly legal for either host or device to have the x16 connector while only implementing one lane electrically -- the other end is expected to negotiate down to one lane even if it implements sixteen. Which, in turn, means you can use a x4 link to talk to anything, including a x16 video card. It's fully modern, not charmingly retro.

(Why didn't they support full x16 bandwidth in Thunderbolt? Mostly because they're already pushing the limits of how much bandwidth you can cram through four copper pairs (two full duplex 10Gbps links), and to support x16 they'd need a much thicker cable and larger connector.)

Re:erm... what?

[Fjandr]

I don't get the supporters' hard-on for the convergence, especially video + ethernet. Those two things are going in the opposite direction for me. One goes to my desk, the other to the rack with networking equipment. Even if I had a more-standard setup it wouldn't make sense. Alright, use two separate ports? Sure. I can do that already. For cheaper. A LOT cheaper. Get a new breakout box if it's only one port? No thanks, don't need even more space eaten up off my desk.

It's got benefits, but this type of convergence (aside from docking portable devices) is not really one of them.

Re:erm... what?

[Waccoon]

I already have USB ports in my monitor, as well as the back of my keyboard and on the front of my PC. I don't even own a USB hub. What kind of garbage, bargain-bin hardware are you using?

If you use a laptop as your primary PC, which is getting increasingly popular, you probably have USB ports on both sides of your keyboard.

Re:erm... what?

[Anonymous Coward]

that is where fiber optic version of TB cables comes in, Intel will just replace copper cables with fiber and you can get 100gbit/s more than enough for full PCEI16, this is just first version of TB and it is already faster than display-port and as fast as PCIE4

Re:erm... what?

[UnknowingFool]

You need to lay off that koolaid. KHTML was never Apple's project. [wikipedia.org] A good decision.

You need to understand Open Source software fundamentals. One of the guiding principles of open source is that any one can contribute and fork as long as they follow the guidelines of the original license. In this case, GPL allows Apple to take KHMTL and fork it. So when I say Apple wanted their own project, they wanted their own flavor of KHTML just like Fedora, Ubuntu, etc were created because groups wanted their own Linux distribution.

Apple just decided to take a free ride on it.

As for free loading, when Apple started WebKit, KHTML code numbered in the 140,000 lines. This was one reason Apple chose it as it was small.

Melton explained in an e-mail to KDE developers[7] that KHTML and KJS allowed easier development than other available technologies by virtue of being small (fewer than 140,000 lines of code), cleanly designed and standards-compliant.

Being small, they could make the massive changes they wanted to make.

But then attempting to dominate the project was an awfully bad decision, since reversed.

Do you understand what forking means? If Apple forked their own version, then it is their version. As such they can make what ever changes they want including not accepting any changes from other people. If anyone didn't like it, they could fork WebKit (which people do).

Re:erm... what?

[Daniel Phillips]

Apple forked WebKit from KHTML because they probably wanted control over their own project.

You need to lay off that koolaid. KHTML was never Apple's project. Apple just decided to take a free ride on it. A good decision. But then attempting to dominate the project was an awfully bad decision, since reversed.

Hmm, the Apple moderators seem to be loose.

Re:erm... what?

[Daniel Phillips]

Maybe something like Thunderbolt is the future, if it has nothing to do with Apple.

Because Apple can't be trusted

Re:erm... what?

[Daniel Phillips]

By the way, Apple still seems to use CVS, can it be true?

Whoa, the Apple moderators seem to have some sort of aversion to the truth.

Re:erm... what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then stop working in agriculture and start doing IT.

Re:erm... what?

[cthulhu11]

E. The rollercoaster at Kennywood.

Re:erm... what?

[jedidiah]

I do work in IT farmer boy.

Re:erm... what?

[jedidiah]

It's funny you should mention ethernet since I had to buy a USB ethernet for my "superiour quality" Mac when the internal NIC on it died.

For what it needs to do, it does an adequate job.

I don't really care about the "one cable to rule them all" rhetoric. It makes some sense to segregate the "cheap slow" stuff from the "fast expensive" stuff. It doesn't unnecessarily make the cheap stuff more expensive.

Re:erm... what?

[jedidiah]

>> Not only that, but the vast majority of people are not going to run out and upgrade all of their peripherals to utilize the new connection standards anyway.
>
> So you're saying there's no point in USB 3.

USB3 won't force anyone to dump all of their old peripherals.

It will just "be there" until you are ready to take advantage of it.

Re:erm... what?

[jedidiah]

> But you've got front-facing hot swap drive bays, so Thunderbolt is pointless. What a fucking jackass.

It gets better.

Not only do I have accessible external drive bays, I also have expansion slots. I don't need an "external PCIe" cable because I already have internal PCIe slots. I can add any kind of interface you care to invent.

No. The jackass is the blindered fanboy that has to buy this years model of the fruity computer because last years model is woefully out of date already and there isn't any good way to upgrade it.

When a TB expansion card finally comes out, the cheapest crappiest real PC will be able to use it while Macs continue to be doorstops.

TB is a solution for a problem most people really don't have.

Re:erm... what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple had a one year exclusive on host ports which is why it hasn't been popular yet.

Intel has denied this. There was no exclusive, everyone was free to adopt Thunderbolt the same day Apple shipped its first TB port. It was never anything more than speculation which got turned into "fact" by tech pundits, bloggers, etc.

Re:erm... what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Explain your work as an IT farmer boy. What are your strength and weaknesses?

Re:erm... what?

[BasilBrush]

Another off topic link from Daniel Phillips 834 2nd st, Suite 6 , Santa Monica, CA 90403.. Failures include Tux2 and Tux3.

Re:erm... what?

[BasilBrush]

Another off topic link from Daniel Phillips 834 2nd st, Suite 6 , Santa Monica, CA 90403.. Failures include Tux2 and Tux3.

Re:erm... what?

[Daniel Phillips]

Do keep in mind that you what you have done right here is illegal, it is recorded on the internet forever, and you are not as anonymous as you think. And you are a great poster child for morally and ethically bankrupt Apple.

Re:erm... what?

[BasilBrush]

Hey Cartooney. Yes, it's there forever. How long do you want to keep this game up for? Do you want to fill the Google search for Daniel Phillips with it?

I'm responding to your morally and ethically corrupt campaign to astroturf off topic links, without ever being prepared to discuss them; to further the lies of Mike Daisey, even after you know they are lies. And not because you care about workers rights, but because you are a platform advocate for Linux and want to do competitors down.

I'll stop when you stop.

What is it again?

[Russ1642]

I understand it's just another port to plug things in. Just what we need, laptops with fifteen different input and output ports. VGA, DVI, HDMI, DP, USB3, whatever thunderbolt is, FW, eSATA, unique docking connector, Ethernet, unique power socket, and a card reader for eighteen different cards. I'm sure I've missed a few.

Re:What is it again?

[Anonymous Coward]

I understand it's just another port to plug things in. Just what we need, laptops with fifteen different input and output ports

You don't appear to understand it at all.

Re:What is it again?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's essentially an external PCI-E bus. Literally anything that can be built to use a PCI-E interface can be built to a Thunderbolt interface.

Re:What is it again?

[CanHasDIY]

I understand it's just another port to plug things in. Just what we need, laptops with fifteen different input and output ports. VGA, DVI, HDMI, DP, USB3, whatever thunderbolt is, FW, eSATA, unique docking connector, Ethernet, unique power socket, and a card reader for eighteen different cards. I'm sure I've missed a few.

Kinda makes you long for the days of PCMCIA cards, eh? Does me.

Re:What is it again?

[DurendalMac]

Ah, but this is one port to rule them all. Conceivably, this could be the only port (aside from the charger) on an ultrabook, maybe a USB port or two in addition. Add a Thunderbolt docking station and you can add ANY port that can be placed on a PCIe bus, even an external GPU.

Re:What is it again?

[Russ1642]

Ah, I get it. You pack around a docking station that has a hundred ports on it. That fixes the problem.

Re:What is it again?

[hoggoth]

Ah, finally we can have one port to rule them all! It's about time.

I think this is appropriate.

Re:What is it again?

[jedidiah]

Once you've gone to all that expense, you might as well have a separate machine. This seems to be a solution to problems that only Apple users have because of how Apple likes to design it's hardware.

Re:What is it again?

[CastrTroy]

Very much so. The only problem with PCMCIA is that People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms. Also Thunderbolt is an equally stupid name. There is no such thing as a thunderbolt, as thunder is the sound. I think what they were looking for was Lightning Bolt. Also I don't want lightning or thunder anywhere near my electronics. Tends to cause problems.

Re:What is it again?

[DigiShaman]

Interesting. So in theory, we could finally have universal port replicators on the market. Some may include their own dedicated graphics hardware. Or even better, perhaps a PC like breakout box (size of a shuttle PC) in which you can finally run GPU enabled Adobe products while in office while staying light footed on the road.

Re:What is it again?

[NJRoadfan]

Its a external PCIe 4x connector that can also carry DisplayPort signals... and yes external Thunderbolt to PCIe card cages exist.

Re:What is it again?

[Anonymous Coward]

No PCMCIA is legacy... and new computers are all about legacy-free, this way you don't have to deal with all these fucking ports -- you can just have one port for everything. Haven't you heard about the Singularity?? Well this is it! Repent or be left-behind, dumbass.

Re:What is it again?

[sexconker]

Ah, but this is one port to rule them all. Conceivably, this could be the only port (aside from the charger) on an ultrabook, maybe a USB port or two in addition. Add a Thunderbolt docking station and you can add ANY port that can be placed on a PCIe bus, even an external GPU.

But we've already had docks and ports for those docks that let you add ANY port that could be placed on ANY bus. Yes, they were proprietary, but they worked and had available accessories.

Furthermore, external PCIe came out 7 fucking years ago. Nobody (outside of people running Quadros and Firepros) cared.

Re:What is it again?

[Jawnn]

I understand it's just another port to plug things in. Just what we need, laptops with fifteen different input and output ports

You don't appear to understand it at all.

So..., you're saying it's not another port to plug things in. I don't believe you. To me, it appears to be exactly that. What am I missing, coward?

Re:What is it again?

[Jawnn]

Ah, but this is one port to rule them all. Conceivably, this could be the only port (aside from the charger) on an ultrabook, maybe a USB port or two in addition. Add a Thunderbolt docking station and you can add ANY port that can be placed on a PCIe bus, even an external GPU.

Until the next generation of "one port to rule them all" comes along. Not saying that those things shouldn't come along, but the insinuation that this one is the be all and end all is utter bullshit.

Re:What is it again?

[jeffmeden]

I understand it's just another port to plug things in. Just what we need, laptops with fifteen different input and output ports. VGA, DVI, HDMI, DP, USB3, whatever thunderbolt is, FW, eSATA, unique docking connector, Ethernet, unique power socket, and a card reader for eighteen different cards. I'm sure I've missed a few.

That's the real head scratcher. Apple, the king of "you won't see a port that isn't absolutely essential" is the one championing Thunderbolt despite it being far less useful than one of the many display options they have thrown away in recent years (no VGA, use DVI-mini!, no DVI-mini, use DVI-micro!, no DVI-micro, use Mini-displayport!) As many others have noted, it is basically the second coming of Firewire; it tries to out-do something that is widely accepted with something that is slightly superior but much more expensive. While you would think that Apple of all companies would be able to pull that off, it just doesn't feel like it has any legs.

Re:What is it again?

[Anonymous Coward]

Try google or wikipedia, unless you need someone to spoon feed you? Dipshit.

Re:What is it again?

[tlhIngan]

Ah, but this is one port to rule them all. Conceivably, this could be the only port (aside from the charger) on an ultrabook, maybe a USB port or two in addition. Add a Thunderbolt docking station and you can add ANY port that can be placed on a PCIe bus, even an external GPU.

Those exist. Sony uses it in one of their ultrathin ultraportable laptops - it comes with a "media dock" that adds blu-ray and a GPU, so when docked, you can play games and when undocked, rely on a less powerful graphics card that'll get you better battery life

And anyone complaining about Thunderbolt docking ports needs to remember how stuff like USB serial ports and USB parallel ports (err, "printer adapters") suck ass. A Thunderbolt dock with a real (PCIe-LPC bridge to serial/parallel) will be just like a built-in serial/parallel port. Or PS2. SO your legacy ports just became much better than the USB emulations of same.

Re:What is it again?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It's the one port that might be technologically capable of ruling them all(use cases that actually use 8x or greater PCIe lanes excepted); but the economics, not of Thunderbolt specificially; but of 'one port to rule them all' generally, have always been problematic:

There are, in broad strokes, three variables that matter for an interface:

1. Cost: What does having a host port of that flavor add to a device's cost? What does being a slave device of that port cost?

2. Speed: What is possible, and what is precluded, based on the bandwidth of this interface?

3. Power: How beefy does a host device need to be to provide spec-approved power to a slave device? What classes of slave device will be impossible without a wall-wart of their own?

It isn't obviously possible to win in all three camps: Cost and speed are usually at each other's throats, which means that you can have a massive ecosystem with no high-end/high-speed products(USB), or an expensive port that you can't even plug a damn mouse into(firewire, before it got cheap). Power is more of an internal contradiction: If you spec the bus to provide considerable power, all sorts of 1-wire-only slave devices are possible; but the cost and bulk of host PSU/battery systems bloat. If you spec the bus to provide minimal power, every peripheral has some janky little wall-wart or y-cable; but even tablets and phones and such can be host devices. If you fudge, and spec a range, you get messy uncertainty.

The 'one interface' problem isn't a technological one; but an economic one.

Re:What is it again?

[Hatta]

Will we be able to plug in actual PCIe devices?

Re:What is it again?

[Anne Thwacks]

If I will be able to get TB to external 16 bit scsi AND TB to parallel port adaptors from China that actually work, for less than $1, I will be a Happy Bunny!.

Otherwise, I may have to go on buying second hand laptops.

Come to think of it, unless they ditch those stupid high gloss letterbox screens, I will still have to buy second hand laptops from ebay.

Re:What is it again?

[CharlyFoxtrot]

That's the real head scratcher. Apple, the king of "you won't see a port that isn't absolutely essential" is the one championing Thunderbolt despite it being far less useful than one of the many display options they have thrown away in recent years (no VGA, use DVI-mini!, no DVI-mini, use DVI-micro!, no DVI-micro, use Mini-displayport!) As many others have noted, it is basically the second coming of Firewire; it tries to out-do something that is widely accepted with something that is slightly superior but much more expensive. While you would think that Apple of all companies would be able to pull that off, it just doesn't feel like it has any legs.

Apple plus a little company called Intel, you might have heard from them.

Re:What is it again?

[demonbug]

I understand it's just another port to plug things in. Just what we need, laptops with fifteen different input and output ports. VGA, DVI, HDMI, DP, USB3, whatever thunderbolt is, FW, eSATA, unique docking connector, Ethernet, unique power socket, and a card reader for eighteen different cards. I'm sure I've missed a few.

That's the real head scratcher. Apple, the king of "you won't see a port that isn't absolutely essential" is the one championing Thunderbolt despite it being far less useful than one of the many display options they have thrown away in recent years (no VGA, use DVI-mini!, no DVI-mini, use DVI-micro!, no DVI-micro, use Mini-displayport!) As many others have noted, it is basically the second coming of Firewire; it tries to out-do something that is widely accepted with something that is slightly superior but much more expensive. While you would think that Apple of all companies would be able to pull that off, it just doesn't feel like it has any legs.

Yeah, that drove me crazy. In grad school we had a rather Apple-friendly IT guy for the department, so he went out of his way to support Apple hardware (and actually ran our email servers etc. on Apple hardware). It was a little obnoxious having 5 different adapters attached to every projector, though - especially when you realize that at Apple prices it meant something like a $200 investment for each projector just to make it so you could hook your Apple laptop up versus zero cost for pretty much any PC laptop (because they all stayed in the dark ages and used plain old VGA adapters long past the time they should have moved to DVI or HDMI or something). Now I suppose they've probably added Thunderbolt adapters to the mix at some insane cost (of course, my newest PC laptop has finally ditched VGA and only offers mini-DP and HDMI).

Re:What is it again?

[Eunuchswear]

Ah, I get it. You pack around a docking station that has a hundred ports on it. That fixes the problem.

Duh, you don't pack around the docking station - it stays at home/in then office.

Re:What is it again?

[Eunuchswear]

Ah, but this is one port to rule them all. Conceivably, this could be the only port (aside from the charger) on an ultrabook, maybe a USB port or two in addition. Add a Thunderbolt docking station and you can add ANY port that can be placed on a PCIe bus, even an external GPU.

I have an external GPU on my thunderbolt connected docking station.

It's been available since 2011.

Sony Vaio TZ2. (And no stupid Apple crap with active cables and wierd connectors - it uses a fibre optic cable and a USB connector).

Re:What is it again?

[Eunuchswear]

(damn, meant Sony Vaio Z2, not TZ2, sorry).

Re:What is it again?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, I get it. You pack around a docking station that has a hundred ports on it. That fixes the problem.

"Docking station" is the part you leave behind. Either you are trolling or are a moron.

Re:What is it again?

[camperdave]

One port to rule them all, eh?

Re:What is it again?

[Kjella]

Personally I'm a bit surprised powered USB didn't make it into the consumer market... single cable external disks, printers, scanners and whatnot sounds like a good idea to me.

Re:What is it again?

[Formalin]

Powered USB, as a proprietary variant of USB, was developed by IBM, NCR, and FCI/Berg but is not endorsed by the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF).[1][2] IBM, who owns the patents to Powered USB,[3][4] charges a licensing fee for its use.[5]

Doesn't sound too surprising to me.

I'm pretty sure one of the Thinkpads I had in the past had this port, though. Can't seem to find anything on Google about that being true, though.

Re:What is it again?

[Hamsterdan]

They already exist (albeit in USB 3.0 form).

A friend of mine bought one that has Ethernet, Audio (analog + digitial), Video and a USB hub, and IIRC a serial port. (his is USB 2, but the second monitor is really not that laggy)

Looks kinda like that one

http://www.startech.com/Cards-Adapters/USB-Docks/Universal-Laptop-USB-Docking-Station-with-VGA-Audio-Ethernet~USBVGADOCK

Re:What is it again?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Is it possible that you are thinking of the 'IBM Ultraport'(Yup, IBM has at least two physically nonstandard USB variants...)?

One wonders if the almost-total invisibility beyond POS systems is because IBM is really nasty about the license fees(from what little I've seen, your basic semi-embedded wintel gets an impressive markup when it becomes a 'Point of Sale System', so it is conceivable that IBM has no real interest in cutting margins in that market) or whether the USB-IF got cold feet because of concerns about consumer confusion...

USB's power delivery capabilities are puny, and only fully standard in theory(y hello thar, laptop drives with 'Y'-cables, and devices that work with some ports but not others, never mind the entire genre of devices that use USB for data/tethering but use USB-shaped AC adapters pushing an amp or more, often at something other than 5volts, when they need to do some serious charging); but they are substantially more consistent than those of powered USB. I wouldn't want to be the chap in charge of choosing what mixture of standard, 5V powered, 12V powered, and 24V powered ports to put onto a motherboard's I/O plate, that's for sure... On the plus side, assuming no nastiness from IBM, the full data bus compatibility with normal USB would make it pretty simple to whip up a 'Powered USB hub' that turns 1 normal USB socket into 4 of whatever flavor your application requires.

Re:What is it again?

[rbenech]

Ah, but this is one port to rule them all.

Wireless thunderbolt, except for power xfer, why not use software defined radio to support *all* standards AND have a wideband "thunderbolt io" compatible mode as well. One wireless standard to rule them all...

Re:What is it again?

[DurendalMac]

"all that expense"

Yeah, because docks are $500, right? Oh, wait, they aren't. Ultrabook + dock is SUCH an expense for people who want an ultraportable laptop while being able to easily hook it up to everything when they get home!

Re:What is it again?

[DurendalMac]

So would you say that PCI serial/parallel ports were just as bad? Because TB is essentially a PCIe bus. It was built with things like this in mind. USB is a different ball of wax.

Also, I'm pretty sure that ultrabook is using Thunderbolt (albeit in a proprietary form factor) to connect to that dock. Sony is one of the few companies other than Apple currently using it.

Re:What is it again?

[DurendalMac]

Actually, I think you already can. If ViDock hasn't put out one of their external GPU cases for Thunderbolt yet then they probably will soon. I wouldn't be surprised to see breakout boxes with a few PCIe slots of varying speeds.

Re:What is it again?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now I suppose they've probably added Thunderbolt adapters to the mix at some insane cost

There are no new Thunderbolt monitor adapters, just the same old mini-DisplayPort to (whatever) adapters. They reused the mini-DP connector for Thunderbolt, and made the ports dual-mode, so you can still plug in ordinary mini-DP devices and adapters.

P.S. There's no need to spend $200 per projector on adapters, because you don't have to pay Apple prices for them; Monoprice carries pretty much every kind of video out converter dongle needed by Mac laptops. The simple ones (with no active circuitry) are usually about $5 to $6, and even some of the active ones are still pretty cheap. E.g. mini-DP to VGA is under $15.

Meh

[connor4312]

With Thunderbolt cables themselves costing $50 I don't think this will be an "incredible" impact. I predict it being the Firewire of the future: something that's great but not used much by the public. Just look at eSATA, which although its been around since 2004 you'd be hard pressed to even find an eSATA port on any mid to low end (i.e. not enthusiast) motherboard.

Re:Meh

[tscheez]

What self-respecting PC user is going to buy thunderbolt cables from apple?

Re:Meh

[Moheeheeko]

Well, we do know that Apple charges %200 for everything they make, im guessing the cables will come down in price when reasonable producers emerge.

Re:Meh

[DurendalMac]

Your point on eSATA may be due more to being able to simply run a PCI bracket with an eSATA port on it from your motherboard, and most people have unused SATA ports. Also, eSATA is not normally powered on 2.5" external drives. Yes, there are powered variants, but they never took off. USB is far handier for portable drives. As for Thunderbolt, I think it's safe to say that other vendors will bring that cable price down. I don't see Thunderbolt making a big splash on desktops, but it could be a great thing for laptops, especially ultrabooks. One tiny port to a docking station that can provide you with just about any kind of port, from more USB ports to a friggin' SCSI connector.

Re:Meh

[jeffmeden]

Your point on eSATA may be due more to being able to simply run a PCI bracket with an eSATA port on it from your motherboard, and most people have unused SATA ports. Also, eSATA is not normally powered on 2.5" external drives. Yes, there are powered variants, but they never took off. USB is far handier for portable drives. As for Thunderbolt, I think it's safe to say that other vendors will bring that cable price down. I don't see Thunderbolt making a big splash on desktops, but it could be a great thing for laptops, especially ultrabooks. One tiny port to a docking station that can provide you with just about any kind of port, from more USB ports to a friggin' SCSI connector.

How is that docking station use working out for all those thunderbolt-equipped macs? I think I remember the press conference went something like this:

Hey Mac fans, congratulations because your new Macbook will have another fantastically fast (and lonesome) connector on it starting in 2011! You can use it for all kinds of things, like a display (never mind the micro-displayport plug on there) or for really fast hard drives (never mind the USB3 plug on there) and of course the best part is that you can use it to plug really expensive cables in to! Let's open it up for questions, yes you sir, what, did you actually ask if it's going to be a good way to attach a docking station??? What. THE. FUCK. would a macbook owner want a docking station for? Are you out of your FUCKING mind? If they want a desk full of shit to do work on, they are going to buy a desktop Mac, not some motherFUCKING docking station! Where have you been for the past ten years??? Docking station! I think Steve Jobs just died a little on the inside...

Re:Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

Thunderbolt is a nice fast port, way faster than PCMCIA. I am using an eSATA Thunderboard to back up my Apple MacBookPro to external RAID-0 storage. I also use a Firewire 400 Thunderboard to interface to video equipment. It just works. I am patiently waiting fro the arrival of a LVD SCSI Thunderboard, and a GPIB Thunderboard to interface to other lab equipment. What's not to like?

Re:Meh

[necro81]

With Thunderbolt cables themselves costing $50

Well, if you're buying the cable from the Apple Store, that's your first problem.

Re:Meh

[nschubach]

It would be nice to have just a grid of these connectors on the back of a PC though. I was poking a USB cable around the back of my PC the other day trying to find the port I thought was up by the mouse and ended up sticking it in the "EVBot Connector" resetting my PC. (Apparently, I'm not the only one: http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.aspx?m=676801&mpage=1 )

Re:Meh

[bobbied]

Well... I don't think so. Apple cables may be expensive, but most of them can easily be purchased for a LOT less (with a few notable exceptions) if you don't go to Apple for them. Charging cables for an I-Phone run $20 each from Apple, but you can get them on E-bay for about $2 or less . I suppose that the devices that use this port may be expensive now, but that will change. Given the bandwidth and latency of Thunderbolt it will be hard for any existing technology to compete. Given that is runs basically at PCI Express speeds, even FireWire will have problems. Then add that you can connect a wide range of device types (Displays, Video Capture, Disk Drives, Raid Arrays, Network Adapters etc) to the same port and it's hard to see how even FireWire will make it. To be sure, FireWire will continue to see use in professional video/audio production equipment, but it's basically missed the consumer market in favor of USB.

Re:Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh.. that always worked out lovely....

At the IC level, there have been distinct eSATA and SATA drivers.. not all the motherboard drivers are really good for eSATA...
I dealt with a number of cases where hotplugging on the eSATA bracket would cause the internal drives (on the same controller) to get kicked off, or the controller to basically lose its mind.. Hilarity ensued...
One dude "lost" a raid-5 array. I was able to force it back together but told him he better have backups for all the corrupt parts.

Re:Meh

[jedidiah]

Then I suppose it's a good thing that with a real PC you can isolate things by using a different bus. You can use a different HBA. One might even be included gratis with your external device.

That's in contrast to a TB vendor not even including a cable.

It's hard to compare though. There aren't enough TB devices out there yet so there's simply not enough people around yet that could have war stories at this point.

Re:Meh

[nyctopterus]

[...] %200 [...]

Arg! It annoys me enough when people write "100$", but at least that is how you say it ("one hundred dollars"). But "percent two hundred"? Ouch, my brain!

Re:Meh

[Yaztromo]

Hey Mac fans, congratulations because your new Macbook will have another fantastically fast (and lonesome) connector on it starting in 2011! You can use it for all kinds of things, like a display (never mind the micro-displayport plug on there) or for really fast hard drives (never mind the USB3 plug on there) and of course the best part is that you can use it to plug really expensive cables in to! Let's open it up for questions, yes you sir, what, did you actually ask if it's going to be a good way to attach a docking station???

That's pretty rich, considering Apple calls their Thunderbolt Display "The Ultimate Docking Station" in their own marketing materials:

Apple Thunderbolt Display

It also doesn't help your argument that you suggest that users "ignore the micro-displayport plug on there", as a) it's actually Mini DisplayPort, and b) the Thunderbolt connector is the Mini Displayport connector. As such, there aren't two connectors, but just one.

Apple is fully supportive of using this technology as a docking station replacement. Their Thunderbolt display uses a single Thunderbolt connection on the Mac side, but on the display side provides video, audio, video in, microphone in, three USB 2.0 ports (AFAIK no Macs ship with USB 3 ports), one Firewire 800 port (which can daisy-chain multiple Firewire 400 and 800 devices), one gigabit ethernet port, and another Thunderbolt port for chaining yet more Thunderbolt devices.

That's a fine strawman you've built there, though.

Yaz

Re:Meh

[citizenr]

Just look at eSATA, which although its been around since 2004 you'd be hard pressed to even find an eSATA port on any mid to low end (i.e. not enthusiast) motherboard.

Do you realize you can use ANY sata port + $3 Esata bracket?

Re:Meh

[Daniel Phillips]

Well, we do know that Apple charges %200 for everything they make, im guessing the cables will come down in price when reasonable producers emerge.

If Apple doesn't troll their patents. If.

Re:Meh

[monkeyhybrid]

Cheaper than the Monster Thunderbolt cables that'll probably cost $5,000.

Re:Meh

[jedidiah]

My $200 Acer Revo has an eSATA port on it.

Re:Meh

[petermgreen]

How is that docking station use working out for all those thunderbolt-equipped macs?

The "thunderbolt cinema display" is basically a monitor with integrated docking station.

Re:Meh

[nightfell]

The only troll regarding Apple's patents on Thunderbolt here is yourself.

Re:Meh

[BasilBrush]

Patent trolling is the action of a company that does not themselves use an invention, creating patents for the sole purpose of extracting money from those who might inadvertantly tread on the patent.

A company that creates products and patents those parts of the products that they invent is by definition not a troll, but a company using the patent system exactly how it was intended. Regardless of whether they choose to license the rights out to others or not, and at what price. That's entirely their right, as is the intention of the law.

USB Redux

[ISoldat53]

Is this going to be like USB with V1.0 ,the crippled version to meet a GSA spec? Then later in the year v2.0 ,the real thing. Then next year V3.0 with all of the bugs out.

Re:USB Redux

[sjames]

No, it'll have all the flaws of USB, but will raise you a return to driver hell where there's no such thing as a generic hardware interface to anything.

schmuck

[ltwally]

Which is why it is interesting to hear Intel predict that 'a hundred' Thunderbolt devices are expected to be on the market by the end of the year.

Intel designed Thunderbolt in conjunction with Apple. Which probably means Intel did most of the leg-work on it. How exactly is it "interesting" that Intel is promoting something they invented?

Re:schmuck

[jedidiah]

You can forgive us for being confused. The last time Intel did something like this they included it for free on all of their motherboards. By the time Microsoft finally got around to support it, most of the machines out there already had support for it.

None of that is happening this time around.

TB gets confused for an Apple-centric followup to Firewire because that's what it looks like on the surface.

Re:schmuck

[Anonymous Coward]

You have to read the sentence before it: "...the technology is far from mainstream outside of Apple products."

The summary mentioned Apple, and Apple is like the Christopher Walken of /. summaries - it appears in a million stories and it always steals the spot light.

So temporarily, Apple stole the spotlight and it was "interesting" that the story also featured Intel

Re:schmuck

[f8l_0e]

The only reason Intel didn't promote it before, was due to the fact that Apple had a 2 year exclusivity clause on Thunderbolt. Now that it is up, Intel is free to put it into generic PCs.

Re:schmuck

[UnknowingFool]

Where did you hear about 2 year exclusive deal? ThunderBolt was announced Feb 2011 and is available on non-Apple devices right now with gads more launching by the end of the year. By all counts, it's been less than 2 years. The reason Apple was first is that they worked with Intel on the technology and got a head start. Just like with the ultra-low power versions of Core i Series on the MacBook Air, other companies can use the chips but Apple always gets a head start because they work with Intel to design them.

Re:schmuck

[f8l_0e]

My apologies. The last time I read anything about Thunderbold (Lightpeak), was back in February of 2011. A few of the articles I read said apple exclusive and my faulty memory recalled 2 years instead of one. The articles I previously read misconstrued the phrase "a year headstart" and claimed that Apple had 1 year exclusive rights. Intel has since refuted that. Thanks for making me go back an re-read it.

Re:schmuck

[rahvin112]

Intel did all the design. Apple paid Intel for a 1 year exclusivity on the port.

Wiki knows about it

[RobertLTux]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbolt_(interface)

since im against the whole LMFGI thing i will just drop a wikilink for you.

Re:Wiki knows about it

[Anonymous Coward]

since im against the whole LMFGI thing i will just drop a wikilink for you.

So, what's a "wikilink"?

what about video cards? AMD systems? servers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now the big part will be how will pci-e video cards tie into the TB bus?

Why no add in TB cards?

What about AMD systems?

what about server boards most of them have on board low end video chips on the PCI 33 bus.

Re:what about video cards? AMD systems? servers?

[DurendalMac]

I believe there are at least announced ViDocks or similar products for Thunderbolt, so the TB -> PCIe adapters are already out there or on the way. I'm not sure why no add-in TB cards, although it might be due at least in part to needing a 4x slot or better to get the most out of it. AMD might be able to license it from Intel at some point, but I don't think they'll bother unless it catches on sufficiently. As for servers...I'm not sure what you mean here. Video cards aren't the only thing you can put on a TB bus. Servers might use it for high-speed storage in some cases.

Re:what about video cards? AMD systems? servers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I'm waiting for the 4 sata drive raid boxes with a thunderbolt interface to come out. 4 x 3TB drives in RAID 10 or RAID 5 configuration would be nice to expand the local storage on the desktop/laptop/server in a relatively small footprint.

Re:what about video cards? AMD systems? servers?

[jedidiah]

They're already out. Just go to the Apple store and buy yourself one.

Hope you've got a limb to spare. They aren't cheap.

Re:what about video cards? AMD systems? servers?

[gl4ss]

there's some crazy dude who built express card pcie interface box for normal gpu cards. if you google you might find it.

and yes there's some announced products for boxes like that, but perhaps intel isn't shipping the chips yet, since they haven't materialised to any shops.

Re:what about video cards? AMD systems? servers?

[DurendalMac]

ViDock has done that for years. The problem is that you're running from a 1x PCIe bus. It's not exactly ideal for anything more than lower-end video cards. TB is closer to a 4x PCIe bus, so it's not bad for at least a decent midrange card without excessive bottlenecking.

What is it?

[Anonymous Coward]

In short, it's a combination of both Mini DisplayPort and PCI Express, multiplexed together and demultiplexed at the reciever, but the controller is smart enough to maintain backwards compatibility with regular old displayport 1.2, so your MiniDP adapters will still work.

Re:What is it?

[Anonymous Coward]

In short, it's a combination of both Mini DisplayPort and PCI Express, multiplexed together and demultiplexed at the reciever, but the controller is smart enough to maintain backwards compatibility with regular old displayport 1.2, so your MiniDP adapters will still work.

And DisplayPort seems to be an obscure video cable standard.

look at the cable teardown

[YesIAmAScript]

This isn't something that Monoprice can make for $1.

There's a CPU and a significant transceiver chip the connectors on each end of the cable.

They're going to be more expensive than USB 3 cables no matter where you get them from.

Re:look at the cable teardown

[nschubach]

Still, pretty cheap: http://www.monoprice.com/products/search.asp?keyword=thunderbolt&x=0&y=0

Re:look at the cable teardown

[PhrstBrn]

There is not a single thunderbolt cable on that list. It's just a bunch of displayport cables labeled thunderbolt. Thunderbolt is a combo displayport + PCIe, those cables just deal with the displayport signal and ignore the PCIe part.

Re:look at the cable teardown

[MightyYar]

I didn't see any thunderbolt-to-thunderbolt cables on that link. Those were all converters to a cheaper kind of cable.

Not that I think the Apple store is a place for good prices on accessories... :)

Re:look at the cable teardown

[nschubach]

Good catch, consider me corrected. It makes me wonder why they didn't just make a different connector so they didn't have to worry if it was DisplayPort or Thunderbolt though.

Re:look at the cable teardown

[PhrstBrn]

The Thunderbolt port is backwards compatible with DisplayPort, you can plug any DisplayPort device into the Thunderbolt port and it will work. The connector itself is the same as mini-DisplayPort, so any old mini-DisplayPort to whatever cables should work if all you care about is the video signal.

Re:look at the cable teardown

[Eunuchswear]

Good catch, consider me corrected. It makes me wonder why they didn't just make a different connector so they didn't have to worry if it was DisplayPort or Thunderbolt though.

The original plan was that the Thunderbolt connector would be compatible with USB and the cable would be passive optical. You can buy machines with that implementation of Thunderbolt from Sony.

Apple decided to stick it to Sony at the last moment by replacing the optical cable by an active copper cable and the USB connector by a displayport connector.

I've seen the inside of an Apple Thunderbolt cable - UGH!

Re:look at the cable teardown

[Anonymous Coward]

You've got the history completely wrong...

The original *prototype* implementations used a USB-like connector. The USB consoritium told Intel that the USB connector was *not* to be used for anything but USB. Apple offered up the Mini-Displayport connector (with a few, backward compatible, modifications to allow for the extra data lines needed for Thunderbolt's PCI-e signals). That's how Intel ended up using a Min-Displayport compatible cable for Thunderbolt.

Why Sony decided to use a one-off, never standard, bastardized USB-like connector for their *only* 'Thunderbolt' device, even *after* the MDP-compatible port was chosen and announced? That's anyone's guess.

Re:look at the cable teardown

[Anonymous Coward]

The original plan was that the Thunderbolt connector would be compatible with USB and the cable would be passive optical. You can buy machines with that implementation of Thunderbolt from Sony.

Apple decided to stick it to Sony at the last moment by replacing the optical cable by an active copper cable and the USB connector by a displayport connector.

Uh, no. This is just... wrong. I mean, some of the facts are vaguely truthy, but your spin on them? Ridiculous nonsense.

The optical Thunderbolt physical layer was based on the work of a group inside Intel (not Sony, not Apple) which has been trying to develop commodity high speed optical transceivers. These use a bunch of new technology, because you have to in order to get cost, power, and size down compared to the high performance (10+ Gbps) optical transceiver modules used in high performance networks.

By 2010 or so, the Thunderbolt layers above the physical layer had shaped up nicely. However, Intel's optical transceivers weren't quite as ready. (Didn't meet price targets, or production yield, or something like that.) Rather than make the entire standard wait, Intel chose to do something akin to the old Ethernet AUI standard. They pushed the media transceiver ICs outboard, into the cable heads, making the port media independent, and had another company design a copper media transceiver chip:

http://www.gennum.com/products/thunderbolt-cable-transceivers/gn2033

Note that the requirement for a special chip just for copper Thunderbolt means your tale of it being a last minute decision to screw Sony is total nonsense. You can't just wake up one day, snap your fingers, and get a working chip next week. I wouldn't be surprised if it took at least 1 year to take that chip from concept to volume production.

Oh, and that "original plan" Thunderbolt connector? I've found old stories and images around the web showing that it actually dates back to an early USB3 proposal. It ended up getting abandoned in favor of the USB3 we actually have today because they couldn't get optical costs down. (You may notice a theme there.)

In fact, I'm just guessing here, but it might really be a theme. It wouldn't surprise me if the optical USB3 proposal came from the exact same group at Intel responsible for optical Thunderbolt. Intel has a lot of influence on USB, and Intel also thinks optical is an important strategic direction. (They're convinced that someday, even chip-to-chip connections on boards will be optical.) They've been doing basic research on this for years and years. Maybe they struck out on trying to productize their research in USB3, and tried again with TB.

It's not clear to me whether they ever seriously intended for Thunderbolt to go into production with the old USB3 hybrid connector. It may have just been something which was convenient to reuse for prototyping. Amusingly enough, a couple years ago the USBIF standards committee actually made a press release to preemptively come out against it, complaining that USB is supposed to be USB and only USB. (Which makes sense if you think about it. No standards body wants to lose control over its own port by letting somebody else set up camp, even if the connector was originally proposed for their own standard. I bet you the USBIF also hates those shitty hybrid USB/eSATA connectors.)

Regardless, by using that connector in a shipping product, Sony is doing something nonstandard. It doesn't matter a hell of a lot since they're using it exclusively in the Vaio Z, and they're not bothering to even advertise it as a Thunderbolt port (presumably because you'll never be able to plug a standard peripheral into it). It's just designated as the one USB port you can plug Sony's proprietary Vaio Z only dock into.

I've seen the inside of an Apple Thunderbolt cable - UGH!

Yeah, I bet you've seen the insides the same way I have -- as a picture, on the web, posted by someone who took one apart. As for your opinion, it's pretty much a waste of electrons. Oh noes there's a chip inside the molding at each end of the cable!!!

External GPU

[jones_supa]

I've been dreaming about the possibility of connecting a beefy external GPU to a laptop and running things like Folding@Home on it. Why not other GPGPU stuff and games, too.

Re:External GPU

[Anonymous Coward]

Or.... you could buy a stationary computer with _TWO_ beefy GPUs in SLI/CF for a lot less money and a lot more performance :-)

DMA Attack - so sorry, Intel

[Lazy Jones]

Thunderbolt will become famous for its potential for unauthorized access (DMA attack) and nothing else. Let's hope the media outcry will be heard far enough for everyone to disable these ports completely and for vendors to stop using them. These are difficult times for privacy and we do not need such ill-designed interfaces forced down our throats.

Re:DMA Attack - so sorry, Intel

[NJRoadfan]

Isn't PC Card and ExpressCard also vulnerable to this style attack?

Re:DMA Attack - so sorry, Intel

[Hatta]

And Firewire.

Re:DMA Attack - so sorry, Intel

[Ogi_UnixNut]

No, they learnt from the old DMA Hacks on Firewire. Now Intel CPU's have an IOMMU to prevent those DMA attacks from succeeding. Whether a way to break that will be found in future remains to be seen.

If they do find a way to break it, then we are back to where we were before. Physical access always wins with hacking. DMA Attacks can be done via Firewire, thunderbolt, PCI, PCI express, PCMCIA, ExpressCard, etc... Basically anything that is connected to the bus. Yet we will still use it due to its performance/efficiency advantages, and the world will not end.

Re:DMA Attack - so sorry, Intel

[jaymemaurice]

If you are worried about this... you better disable your pci-express bus...

Re:DMA Attack - so sorry, Intel

[jaymemaurice]

Or your PCI bus

Re:DMA Attack - so sorry, Intel

[jaymemaurice]

Or your VESA bus, or your MCA bus, or your EISA bus. Or your firewire...

Re:DMA Attack - so sorry, Intel

[MightyYar]

Don't we have a saying around here about having physical access to a device?

Re:DMA Attack - so sorry, Intel

[Sez Zero]

Or your VESA bus, or your MCA bus, or your EISA bus. Or your firewire...

But what about my short, yellow bus? Can parent still use that?

Re:DMA Attack - so sorry, Intel

[HeavyDDuty]

afaik, iMac models with Thunderbolt have new-enough CPUs with IOMMU support - devices can have private VRAM. Whether or not Lion and PCI device drivers make use of it, dunno!

Re:DMA Attack - so sorry, Intel

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I'm not sure about PC Card; but ExpressCard depends: that connector is 1x USB2 + 1xPCIe. Most of the lower speed devices are actually just USB dongles designed to fit inside your laptop. The ones that are actually PCIe peripherals? I hope you brought your IOMMU....

Re:DMA Attack - so sorry, Intel

[Megane]

I have a solution for that. It's called a locked room.

Now I have visions of a spy movie where they hack into someone's computer by taping a TB connector to a rod, pushing it through a cage wall in a data center, and connecting it to a computer's port. Except that there's not much special about TB that you couldn't do with ports we already have. (Remember how one hack for the PS3 was a buffer overflow in a USB device descriptor?)

Re:DMA Attack - so sorry, Intel

[Lazy Jones]

My PCIe bus isn't accessible (physically) from outside the case, especially not on laptops etc.. Also, I'm not so sure that my OS supports PCIe hotplugging.

Do cables count?

[oneiros27]

As the drives don't ship with them, and there only seems to be one on the market right now ($50 from Apple), there's lots of room to say, make more than one length available, or maybe other manufacturers. I mean, they're active cables, so that should count as a 'device' right?

Then there's all the mini-DisplayPort adaptors now rebranding themselves as 'thunderbolt' adaptors ... so there's a couple dozen right there ... (VGA, DVI-D, DVI-DL, miniHDMI, etc .. and those are already available from more than one company).

See? I'm sure we can even get to 200 if we count it right.

The God Cable

[Anonymous Coward]

I understand it's just another port to plug things in. Just what we need, laptops with fifteen different input and output ports. VGA, DVI, HDMI, DP, USB3, whatever thunderbolt is, FW, eSATA, unique docking connector, Ethernet, unique power socket, and a card reader for eighteen different cards. I'm sure I've missed a few.

The point is, it's a "God cable." It can, without exaggeration, replace all of those you listed, except the power socket one.
(For example, A MacBook Air has a thunderbolt port and one USB port, and can connect to all the other peripheral types you mention with just those. And that USB port is just for convenience.)

Unfortunately, it's currently priced accordingly. Also, it suffers from the Competing Standards problem.

Re:The God Cable

[berashith]

the power socket one will be out in two years and called the thunderbolt 2+ ultrafast. It will not be compatible with current installations.

Re:The God Cable

[h4rr4r]

No a macbook air has two USB ports, one on each side.

Re:The God Cable

[Anonymous Coward]

can connect to all the other peripheral types you mention with just those*.

*when using an extra adapter

Don't forget that existing peripherals have USB, HDMI etc. connections, not Thunderbolt. So if I wanted to use those devices through Thuderbolt it would be just more inconvenient for me, since I'd have to use an extra device, a "hub" of some sorts.

But maybe someday.. Although I don't see USB going away for the next 15 years at least.

Re:The God Cable

[Uber Banker]

Experience: Substitute PS/2 for USB, God Cable, PCI-E, whatever. The human aspect.

Will it allow team members, after shift when they think no one is looking, replacing their PS/2 mice and keyboards with the brand new USB mice and keyboards the new desktop units, idle and waiting for imminent arrivals, that are sitting on desks have? The new desktop units do not have PS/2 style sockets.

New keyboards and mice are included with a desktop order. All in one box.

Will it mean a filing cabinet is not accidentally opened a few days later by a team member revealing stashed and perfectly working PS/2 keyboards and mice while the new desktops are robbed bare of their input accessories?

Will it mean that team members pledge full "I have always used this: allegiance to their USB keyboards and mice despite them having their PCs for 1+ years and new desktop model roll-outs with USB, no PS/2, only setup only appeared 3 months ago and before 3 months ago there was not a single USB mouse or keyboard in the entire site? Will it mean team members may cry when one suggests replacing their slightly used USB mouse with a slightly used PS/2 mouse?

Will it mean there is a store room containing 200+ PS/2 keyboards and similar number of mice that have been returned with their PC unit? Accessories still work but PC unit was returned and scrapped because of a critical failure, usually power supply or hard drive. Replacement PC does not have PS/2 ports and comes supplied with USB keyboard and mouse, which are swiftly robbed bare.

That store room contains 2 spare USB key boards and 1 spare USB mouse as a contingency measure.

More are ordered... constantly.

Re:The God Cable

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, adapters to let you plug PS/2 mice/keyboards into USB ports are dirt cheap. If you have 200 PS/2 keyboards, buy a few adapters and you can use them on a newer computer.

Re:The God Cable

[HapSlappy_2222]

You'll still have to plug all the devices into the system somewhere the line, right? Whether the current hub or a good old fashioned "daisy chain" setup (shudder), the devices still need to hop onto the Thunderbolt train somewhere.

Really it seems to just be moving the cable/port clutter to the end of the Thunderbolt line instead of right at the computer. This is helpful for a laptop that functions as a desktop, I suppose, but that problem was already solved with laptop docks. I really don't want to buy all new peripherals when USB 3.0 will be backwards compatible; I think I'd rather just buy the damn proprietary dock when I buy my new-every-5-years laptop.

The big gains seem to be in terms of transfer speed and the dual channels to do it in, though it seems like all those daisy-chained devices sharing the same bandwidth* might not guarantee that much of a gain, depending the speed requirements of the peripherals.

*"You also have more than enough bandwidth to daisy-chain multiple high-speed devices without using a hub or switch. For example, you can connect several high-performance external disks, a video capture device, and even a display to a single Thunderbolt chain while maintaining maximum throughput. (apple.com/thunderbolt):

Re:The God Cable

[Anonymous Coward]

For example, A MacBook Air has a thunderbolt port and one USB port, and can connect to all the other peripheral types you mention with just those.

A laptop with HDMI and USB can connect to all the other listed peripheral types, too. Plus, there are actual HDMI devices on the market.

Wow, Slashdotters have gotten stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Thuderbolt just extends the PCIe bus to external devices, with all the speed and flexibility that entails, no biggie, right? Sure, it means you really could get rid of all the other ports completely and use a breakout cable if necessary (only in the interim as other types of ports might just go away), making devices much smaller and simpler. But we don't want fantastic new things, we just want solid legacy support for 10 - 20 year old standards.

Really. All a geek should need to know is "externalize PCIe". All the speed of an internal bus (and more) without having to physically put the card into the machine, and even being able to do it at a distance. Greater modularity, better performance. But apparently it's bad to have newer, better things, when we could just stick with the older, crappier. Right?

Re:Wow, Slashdotters have gotten stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

external video cards that you can plug into your laptop, siiick, imagine the possibilities for internet cafes. when you want to do some gaming rent a spot with a high end video card!

Re:Wow, Slashdotters have gotten stupid

[narcc]

You see "legacy". I see something that is standardized enough to be used with just about any machine still running.

Well said!

Re:Wow, Slashdotters have gotten stupid

[pla]

All a geek should need to know is "externalize PCIe". All the speed of an internal bus (and more) without having to physically put the card into the machine, and even being able to do it at a distance.

You left out "insanely expensive active cabling, safely locked up under patent for its entire realistic lifetime".

This will survive right up until people actually take notice, buy something using it, then shit a uranium brick when they go to buy a longer cord.

Re:Wow, Slashdotters have gotten stupid

[Hatta]

Sure, it means you really could get rid of all the other ports completely and use a breakout cable if necessary (only in the interim as other types of ports might just go away), making devices much smaller and simpler.

Perhaps, if you like the idea of having 8 different boxes on your desk and a rats nest of cables. Does that sound smaller and simpler?

All a geek should need to know is "externalize PCIe".

Exactly, there's nothing new to be excited about here. It's just the same old shit on an external port.

All the speed of an internal bus (and more) without having to physically put the card into the machine, and even being able to do it at a distance.

Which would make physical security of your system somewhat more difficult to ensure. Server cages are going to need a finer mesh to ensure that no one can stick a cable into a machine they don't own.

But apparently it's bad to have newer, better things, when we could just stick with the older, crappier. Right?

I like better, but newer doesn't necessarily mean better. The higher speed of Thunderbolt is nice, but it comes with too many drawbacks. I'll be disabling Thunderbolt on my devices just like I disable Firewire today.

Re:Wow, Slashdotters have gotten stupid

[Anne Thwacks]

Isn't that what "legacy" means?

Re:Wow, Slashdotters have gotten stupid

[Megane]

when you want to do some gaming rent a spot with a high end video card!

Don't most high-end video cards use a 16x slot? TB is only 4x. It won't be quite so high end with only 1/4 of the bus bandwidth.

Re:Wow, Slashdotters have gotten stupid

[jedidiah]

Legacy is usually meant as a term of derision for something that is old and a burden.

It's a way of dismissing something without giving any real reasons.

Re:Wow, Slashdotters have gotten stupid

[CharlyFoxtrot]

Which would make physical security of your system somewhat more difficult to ensure. Server cages are going to need a finer mesh to ensure that no one can stick a cable into a machine they don't own.

If you've got untrusted personnel walking around in your server room a thunderbolt cable is the least of your worries.

Re:Wow, Slashdotters have gotten stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:Wow, Slashdotters have gotten stupid

[Amouth]

the problem i have with it is that it is meant to be daisy chained vs a hub and spoke design.. with networks we learned that token ring wasn't the best design, we need to apply the same logic to the internal bus.

Re:Wow, Slashdotters have gotten stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll take this one as a positive, TVYM. Perhaps you don't quite fathom the importance of signal integrity in something that's passing that much data and is more or less an extension of your internal system bus. Considering this the prices are pretty damn reasonable, and will only go down.

Placing the transceivers in the cables also ensures future proofing against future physical layer changes. There may passive cabling standard in the future, and all your old devices will just need is a transceiver that is 100% bus powered. We've already seen solutions shown off by various vendors replacing the copper wire with fiber optic cables, giving virtually unlimited range complete immunity to EM interference. This is possible because of the external transceivers.

Think of the current situation as a transitional necessity. Remember when AUI ports were common for ethernet? It was a great option when you didn't know what sort of physical medium you would be connecting to. Eventually UTP won out. Something similar will happen for thunderbolt.

Re:Wow, Slashdotters have gotten stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

What?
TB is 20Gb/s *aggregate*, same as PCIe gen1 x4.
gen1 x16 is 40Gb/s full duplex = 80Gb/s aggregate.
gen2 is twice that.
and gen3 doubles it again.
so TB has the same peak throughput as a PCIe 3.0 x1 slot, just with way higher latency...

Re:Wow, Slashdotters have gotten stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Any new technology comes with a more expensive entry price. Have you even taken one iota of effort to examine WHY thunderbolt cables cost more? Each end of the cable (which explains their bulky ends) contain micro-PC boards to handle all the communication. There's serious tech going on in there. Eventually when TB goes fiber, they'll be replaced by optical transceivers in those cables.

Re:Wow, Slashdotters have gotten stupid

[gl4ss]

externalize PCIe is what geeks seem to know about it.

and then they ignore the lack of devices that do that. it's not interesting what it could do in theory according to marketing specs..

and really, the apple under steve would have let hell freeze over before they would have started pushing it for that kind of use. fuck no, they might sell you a new monitor with a gpu included for two thousand but a generic expansion card box? fuck no. they wouldn't even sell the cables for that kind of use. they could have made the cable so that they wouldn't be sitting with intel on patents covering the active cable but they chose not to. because their philosophy is that it's good business to own everything like that, just like they'd like to get a cut of all ipod-connector devices too.

Re:Wow, Slashdotters have gotten stupid

[gl4ss]

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.

Re:Wow, Slashdotters have gotten stupid

[LDAPMAN]

TB supports either hubs or daisy chaining. The hubs have to be active though.

Re:Wow, Slashdotters have gotten stupid

[Osgeld]

just what I want, to pull out my laptop and proceed to build it up at the conference room, for me its useless in a desktop, and all I really want my laptop to do is be a anywhere dumb terminal for my desktop. but its not just about me, look at the history, we had PCMCIA and CARDBUS before which were more or less ISA and PCI slots on your laptop and most people did fuck all nothing with them aside from a modem or maybe network cards.

E-SATA? anyone use that? most people dont know what it is. Display port, great if you want to hook up 6 projectors no one owns, and even more savy people are asking "what is that for", Anyone use firewire outside of mac people for hard drives? Every time I pop open a new laptop I look at all the new ports that no one hardly uses and think to myself, "jee a basic RS232 port would get more use"

Re:Wow, Slashdotters have gotten stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

IEE 1394 has DMA, it can screw things up royally if something goes wrong, yet the cables don't cost an arm and a leg and aren't patented.

Re:Wow, Slashdotters have gotten stupid

[sjames]

Legacy implies obsolescence. That doesn't really fit the current perfectly functional and well supported interfaces. There's just not much call for a keyboard with DMA capability.

Re:Wow, Slashdotters have gotten stupid

[Amouth]

Thanks, that's good to know

Yeah...

[Culture20]

Baron Zemo said the same thing, then he sold the whole team out to S.H.I.E.L.D.

less speed then pci-e x4 cuts into EXT video cards

[Anonymous Coward]

less speed then pci-e x4 cuts into the video card data and will max out the bus to get data to the video card. And in the laptop only using on board video + TB will have 8 pci-e left over likely unused that is a much better fit for a video card.

why wait for an off brand "ultrabook"

[Anonymous Coward]

when you get the real thing, a macbook air, right now?

Re:why wait for an off brand "ultrabook"

[Mojo66]

..plus, by the time Intel expects Ultrabooks with Thunderbolt to hit the market, Ultrabooks will be dead already. Who wants to buy an Macbook Air clone for the same price but with all those silly stickers on it and the illuminated Apple logo missing?

Re:why wait for an off brand "ultrabook"

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention when you buy PCs there's always a ton of shovelware that takes three hours to fully remove. Last time I bought a PC I it took forever to clean all the crap that came "preinstalled" out of it, would have been faster to reinstall but the cheapskates only gave a "restore disc" so I couldn't even do a clean install. Total waste of time. Now I realize it's worth it to spend the cash on Apple. PCs are only cheaper if your time has no value.

Computer Monitors as an attack vector?

[Tanman]

With direct pci access, how does this open up computer monitors as a new attack vector? I can see it now:

Step 1) Buy computer monitor
Step 2) Modify and return said monitor
Step 3) Someone plugs "open box" or "refurbished" monitor into their computer
Step 4) Profit!

Re:Computer Monitors as an attack vector?

[Anonymous Coward]

Many keyboards already have USB ports on them, so there is no need to be so elaborate.

Re:Computer Monitors as an attack vector?

[jedidiah]

> Many keyboards already have USB ports on them, so there is no need to be so elaborate.

No. Not really.

The idea of plugging a mouse into your keyboard is very much a non-PC idea. A keyboard isn't going to have it's own hub unless it is made to be sold to Mac users. PC users simply are not used to plugging mice into their keyboard.

Re:Computer Monitors as an attack vector?

[Hatta]

USB doesn't provide DMA access.

Re:Computer Monitors as an attack vector?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The difference is that PCI devices can do DMA, which means that they own you(classy systems with IOMMUs potentially excepted).

There are some cute demos with Firewire(which had the same drawback), of doing neat stuff like drawing arbitrary things on the screen by scribbling over the target's framebuffer, or modifying, live, bits of the kernel or other security-related components to escalate permissions. Also quite handy for debugging, since you can be reading the memory even as the host is puking up its brain; but dangerous...

USB, by contrast, essentially has to ask nicely and trick the host device into doing something stupid(ie. loading a mass storage class driver, mounting the volume, and autorunning haxxor.exe).

Re:Computer Monitors as an attack vector?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah but they do use a USB interface; which is what I assume the GP intended.

Re:Computer Monitors as an attack vector?

[Anne Thwacks]

The idea of plugging a mouse into your keyboard is very much a non-PC idea.

I know Sun invented the idea, but surely PCs have been doing this for over 10 years?

Re:Computer Monitors as an attack vector?

[demonbug]

> Many keyboards already have USB ports on them, so there is no need to be so elaborate.

No. Not really.

The idea of plugging a mouse into your keyboard is very much a non-PC idea. A keyboard isn't going to have it's own hub unless it is made to be sold to Mac users. PC users simply are not used to plugging mice into their keyboard.

Totally. PC users plug their mice into their monitor's USB ports, not those filthy keyboard USB ports. Only an animal would do that.

Re:Computer Monitors as an attack vector?

[jedidiah]

>> The idea of plugging a mouse into your keyboard is very much a non-PC idea.
> I know Sun invented the idea, but surely PCs have been doing this for over 10 years?

Nope.

You wanna do that and you will need to buy yourself a Mac keyboard. While you can still plug it into a PC, it will still have those funky Apple keys on it.

Re:Computer Monitors as an attack vector?

[Billly Gates]

Gamer keyboards do.

I have one but I use my headset with the USB hub keyboard on it and not the mouse though. People do not like the wires all over if the mouse is plugged so close to the keyboard and the hub does not have enough watts to support flash drives or wireless mice.

Re:Computer Monitors as an attack vector?

[CharlyFoxtrot]

A keyboard isn't going to have it's own hub unless it is made to be sold to Mac users. PC users simply are not used to plugging mice into their keyboard.

My Solaris workstation has USB ports on both the monitor and the keyboard. My company PC does not, mostly because it's a cheap POS.

Re:Computer Monitors as an attack vector?

[gstrickler]

Woosh...

Buy USB keyboard, modify firmware, return. Next user gets infected with whatever you implanted in the keyboard. No USB hub, and no Thunderbolt required.

Re:Computer Monitors as an attack vector?

[Jahava]

> Many keyboards already have USB ports on them, so there is no need to be so elaborate.

No. Not really.

The idea of plugging a mouse into your keyboard is very much a non-PC idea. A keyboard isn't going to have it's own hub unless it is made to be sold to Mac users. PC users simply are not used to plugging mice into their keyboard.

Nice statement there. Any other truths to share?

Here are some anecdotal counter-claims (that don't make the mistake of overgeneralizing): I've seen several major stores that stock PC keyboards (read: non-Apple, and marketed to Windows users) with integrated USB hubs. I have been plugging my mouse into my keyboard for years on both Linux and Windows systems. Plenty of people I know plug all kinds of peripherals into keyboard hubs on Linux and Windows systems.

A simple Google search shows thousands of non-Mac keyboards that meet these criteria. Additionally, Dell and HP both sell them bundled with their systems. Keyboards with built-in USB hubs are not even remotely uncommon in the PC world.

Re:Computer Monitors as an attack vector?

[Anonymous Coward]

The idea of plugging a mouse into your keyboard is very much a non-PC idea.

I know Sun invented the idea, but surely PCs have been doing this for over 10 years?

Sun did? You have a year on that?

Re:Computer Monitors as an attack vector?

[jedidiah]

Available perhaps. "Common" is another matter.

It's not something that is considered standard and is seen as missing if it's not there. THAT is an important distinction.

You can find all sorts of weird things on Google. That's kind of the point of it.

Re:Computer Monitors as an attack vector?

[Anonymous Coward]

A keyboard isn't going to have it's own hub unless it is made to be sold to Mac users. PC users simply are not used to plugging mice into their keyboard.

Um... these days mac users aren't used to plugging anything in.

Re:Computer Monitors as an attack vector?

[zigfreed]

plugging a mouse into your keyboard is very much a non-PC idea

It's a human idea. To the computer, it is plugged into a hub, with one hub port always taken up by the keyboard. For equivalency, a 4 port hub would only add $6 to the cost, and allow you to plug in 1 more device.

Re:Computer Monitors as an attack vector?

[jedidiah]

> For equivalency, a 4 port hub would only add $6 to the cost

That kills the idea right there.

PC users haven't been doing this since the 80s. So they won't miss it. Leave it off and save yourself $6.

Quadrupling of design wins?

[QuincyDurant]

In January, Intel said 24 manufacturers embraced Thunderbolt, Lenovo, Acer, ASUS, MSI, Gigabyte, Seagate, Western Digital and LaCie among them.

Intel now says that the number of design wins will reach 100 this year.

http://www.wirelessdesignmag.com/ShowPR.aspx?PUBCODE=055&ACCT=0000100&ISSUE=1201&RELTYPE=CES&PRODCODE=000000&PRODLETT=IS&CommonCount=0

Those newer things need power right?

[Marrow]

So by taking the stuff out of the computer, and putting it into other "stuff", we are going to create an explosion of soul-sucking, space-sucking, power-sucking transformers and cheap little crappy enclosures for externalized ports.
That is until some vendor says: "Hey, let me put all those external ports you need into one box for you!"
And then the next vendor says: "Hey, let me put those ports in the monitor for you"
And then the next vendor says: "Hey, my monitor and computer are the same box, so lets put it all back inside"
At that point we will be right back where we started, but will have spent tons of money we didnt need to spend.
And what happened to DisplayPort. Thats gotta be the shortest obsolescence cycle on record.

Wow!

[PPH]

What a concept! Extending an internal bus to the outside of a computer to enable peripherals access.

(Turns around ancient 286 laptop and stares at the docking bus connector sticking out the back.)

Re:Wow!

[dave420]

You really should read what something actually does before trying to make a joke about it and winding up looking like a muppet.

Re:Wow!

[gstrickler]

Technically correct, but a a huge miss.

The docking connector on your existing laptop is proprietary to one manufacturer, and model specific (might be shared among a few models for a few years).

Thunderbolt gives you a faster connection, that is a standards compliant (4xPCIe) connection. So, in theory, you can get a third party Thunderbolt docking station for your laptop. And you can use it with your next laptop, even if you switch vendors.

Thunderbolt hasn't taken off yet, but how many years did it take for USB to take off? A lot longer than TB has been out.

TB is not a complete replacement for built in ports, laptops/notebooks/ultrabooks/etc. still need some common ports, such as USB 2/3, video out, and maybe an SD card reader. But most other ports aren't needed all the time, and frequently aren't needed while portable, so having them exist only on an external dock isn't a problem for 95+% of users.

The Hundreds of devices...

[jesseck]

Will be new Apple computer, iDevices, and Intel notebooks. It won't be made by any other manufacturer than those two.

I thought Intel designed the USB spec.

[Anonymous Coward]

If Intel MADE USB why the hell are they competing with it? I see this going the firewire route.

Re:I thought Intel designed the USB spec.

[gstrickler]

Because USB is about to max out, and it's a relatively "dumb" interface. That makes it great for low cost, but also limits it's performance. Thunderbolt doesn't really compete with USB. First gen TB is 2x as fast as USB 3.0, so there is some competition, but USB 3 is probably EOL for USB, while TB will get faster in later generations. It does replace external PCIe. It's much more scalable than USB, and uses existing PCIe protocols making it relatively easy to implement in hardware and software (e.g. PCIe drivers should work with a PCIe device whether it's an internal PCIe, or connected over TB and physically in a separate dock.

Re:I thought Intel designed the USB spec.

[LDAPMAN]

Because Intel also made ThunderBolt. It's an Intel product, NOT an Apple product. It is also not a direct competitor to USB. It can do all the things USB can but it can also do a whole lot more. Want to connect your laptop to a fibrechannel SAN?...USB won't do that. Want to connect your laptop to multiple external monitors?...USB won't do that. Etc...

Re:erm... what? how dumb do you want it?

[Jeng]

How far do you want the summaries dumbed down?

Right because I want all my devices having DMA

[Sycraft-fu]

You realize a device on the PCIe bus can do ANYTHING to a system, right? At that low a level it has complete access to memory, it can crash your system, or worse, and there's shit you can do about it. That's part of the reason for USB to be like it is. It provides very high level access, it is all controlled through the CPU. Means a lot of overhead, but also more security.

Also there's the fact that TB costs a whole lot more to implement in devices. USB slave devices are dumb, most of the logic is on the master, the computer. Not the case with PCIe, you need more logic to work on the bus, so shit will cost more.

It has its place, potentially, don't get me wrong. But this idea that it'll replace everything is silly. You don't want a TB mouse. You want a USB mouse.

Re:Right because I want all my devices having DMA

[rsborg]

At that low a level it has complete access to memory, it can crash your system, or worse, and there's shit you can do about it. That's part of the reason for USB to be like it is. It provides very high level access, it is all controlled through the CPU. Means a lot of overhead, but also more security.

You say these words, but in reality it means little... poor and flaky driver support (Win2k and even XP) meant that 10 years ago when USB was announced, plugging in a keyboard with bad drivers meant it blue-screened your PC. The Mac wasn't much better - many USB devices just didn't work in the early days.

Thunderbolt is much much faster, and the once optical interconnects and cabling is supported it will really shine. In the meanwhile any hardware addition to your system, whether it's a PCI card or USB device can potentially mess up your system.

Re:Right because I want all my devices having DMA

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why we got IOMMU long before we got Thunderbolt, but no one implements it.

Re:Right because I want all my devices having DMA

[Anonymous Coward]

USB devices can access memory via DMA, so those are insecure too.

Your other points still stand.

Re:Right because I want all my devices having DMA

[Lord_Alex]

But can I not daisychain some TB monitors together, perhaps with their own integrated GPUs (or not, consumers choice)? And have the USB ports on the monitor too? Maybe eventually, your "PC" will be your iFad or other mobile device and how you use it will be determined by the current accessories available.

Graphics++ gaming rig? Phone? Plug it in at home to your projector, sound system and HDD array to realize your home theater.

Re:Right because I want all my devices having DMA

[Anonymous Coward]

it can crash your system

I heard power cables can do that as well.

Assuming physical access, anything could happen to your system. The real concern is with crypto keys in memory, and unattended systems that are not physically secured (IE corporate desktops/SMB servers). To the first concern.. ok.. it comes to PC vs. HSM. Just stop pretending that PC can win that fight. To the second.. physically secure your equipment / workplace. Don't leave systems running unattended that perform software key management with physical access to strangers. Derp.

It's also foolish to think you're that much safer with live USB ports on your system too, because you'd be _amazed_ at what a keyboard or mouse can do after a user logs in.

Re:Right because I want all my devices having DMA

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's boycott until PC manufacturers remove PCI slots from their motherboards!

I'll believe it when I see it

[Sycraft-fu]

Intel has said a TB will be all over. So far, it is only on Apple devices. That is really going to limit the things made for it. While there are a lot of Macs out there, there are even more other computers.

Part of the problem I think is Intel giving in to Apple's fetish for a single port. Originally Light Peak (what it was called at first) was just a PCIe extension. So not only would it be simpler, but you wouldn't need mobo integration. It would be feasible to have a PCIe card that just did the necessary encoding to send the signal over the TB cable. It could be easily added to systems.

However Apple wanted a single port for everything, and Intel went for it. Not only does this create problems for the future planned optical move (the interface is supposed to change to optical in the next gen for more speed) but it also pretty much makes it a mobo only thing. Have to have an integrated GPU to work with.

I'm kinda thinking it is not going to go anywhere. It'll end up being the new firewire. Apple will use it, until they get bored and jump on something new, you'll see it on a few PCs (probably mostly Intel boards) and some devices will support it but it'll never catch on due to lack of widespread support.

Re:I'll believe it when I see it

[Anonymous Coward]

Part of the problem I think is Intel giving in to Apple's fetish for a single port. Originally Light Peak (what it was called at first) was just a PCIe extension.

How do you know this?

Everything I've read about it says that TB was designed from the ground up to encapsulate other protocols. As in, it can easily be extended to handle more than just DP and PCIe. It may have already been done, IIRC a lot of the old articles used to talk about tunneling things like USB and FW and Ethernet over TB.

So not only would it be simpler, but you wouldn't need mobo integration. It would be feasible to have a PCIe card that just did the necessary encoding to send the signal over the TB cable. It could be easily added to systems.

You can still do this. There's no law which says you MUST tunnel DP over every TB link. That'd be silly.

In fact, Intel's standard Thunderbolt adapter chips can do exactly what you're talking about. You just don't bother to connect anything to the DisplayPort inputs on the chip. Done and done.

However Apple wanted a single port for everything, and Intel went for it.

I suspect Intel went for it because a single port for everything fast (note: not quite the same as "everything", you really do still want USB for mice etc.) is actually pretty cool. Especially for increasingly small portable computers with less room for a wide variety of ports. With Thunderbolt and Sandy Bridge / Ivy Bridge CPUs you can now put an increasingly credible desktop replacement in the "ultrabook" form factor, and a real DTR in normal thickness 15" or 17" notebooks.

Not only does this create problems for the future planned optical move (the interface is supposed to change to optical in the next gen for more speed)

No, it doesn't create problems for that move, because they planned for it. They standardized the interface based on having a transceiver IC between the port and cable. Today's copper Thunderbolt cables have two chips in them, one on each end. Replace the wires with optical fiber and the copper media transceivers at the cable ends with optical transceivers, and voila, you've got optical Thunderbolt. Better yet, it's backwards compatible with literally any Thunderbolt port in existence.

but it also pretty much makes it a mobo only thing. Have to have an integrated GPU to work with.

Nope. See above.

I'm kinda thinking it is not going to go anywhere. It'll end up being the new firewire. Apple will use it, until they get bored and jump on something new, you'll see it on a few PCs (probably mostly Intel boards) and some devices will support it but it'll never catch on due to lack of widespread support.

This might be true, but I hope it won't be.

Here is how it will happen...

[Polo]

The acceptance of new technology is always overestimated in the short term, and underestimated in the long term.

Re:Here is how it will happen...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm. Intel surely wished this would be true about Itanic...

Re:erm... what? how dumb do you want it?

[Anonymous Coward]

So that they are informative enough to allow one to decide whether or not to read the applicable article.

Re:erm... what? how dumb do you want it?

[Jeng]

So that they are informative enough to allow one to decide whether or not to read the applicable article.

What is an article?

What does applicable mean?

Should we explain what a port is?

How much information is enough? Is this a website for morons or for nerds?

If you don't know what something is look it up first, and then if you still don't understand put up the information you have found and post your questions regarding the sections you don't understand.

Re:erm... what? how dumb do you want it?

[Hognoxious]

We don't want them dumbed down, but we don't want sloppy, lazy journalism either.

For the record I hadn't heard of it either. And when you're tired of feeling so smug & superior maybe you could consider that there might be things out there that even you aren't aware of.

Re:erm... what? how dumb do you want it?

[Jeng]

Read my posts, I did not know what it was before, but I did look it up and informed myself.

It's amazing how that works.

For those who don't know

[CAIMLAS]

For those who don't know, Thunderbolt used to be called LightPeak before it was finished. (Personally, I like the old name better, but that was when the spec defined it as running over fiber instead of copper.) It's been a long time coming, and many of us have been waiting anxiously for it: once it's mature, it'll enable us to do away with pretty much every current high bandwidth bus and will be incredible for storage networks and attached storage.

As for the submitter's claim of it being " far from mainstream outside of Apple products"? Really? How about "far from mainstream". As of right now, it's well outside mainstream: it's even more marginal than, say, Fiberchannel at home. There are literally no significant devices available for it, and the single biggest use case is for a monitor. Apple has no 'claim to fame' in this regard, other than maybe infamy for charging such crazy prices for their Thunderbolt displays. ($1,000 for a 27" LCD? Seriously?)

Re:For those who don't know

[UnknowingFool]

Did you look up the specs on that 27" LCD monitor and compare them to similar models before proclaiming the price "crazy"? Hint: it's not a 1920x1080 monitor for consumers. The Apple Display is not meant for consumers; it's meant for professionals and thus will cost more. A search on newegg shows the cheapest price is $680 with $850-1000 being the largest range. The NEC model is $1600.

Re:erm... what? how dumb do you want it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Read my post (GP AC); adding a subclause to the initial sentence mentioning Thunderbolt explaining what it was would've saved thousands of people from looking it up themselves. /. can't even fall back on the old "oh we're not real news, this is just CmdrTaco's personal site" anymore. Taco is gone and either this is "news for nerds", in which case they need to scrape up at least some base level of editorial competence, or they should stop pretending and change the tagline to "where in the world is Timothy Lord today?".

Audio Gear

[Anonymous Coward]

It's anticipated that some higher-end audio gear may go to this connector so laptops can be used with rackmount audio interfaces and hard drive RAID arrays.

An example is the Universal Audio Apollo that was very recently released:

http://www.uaudio.com/interfaces/apollo.html#tab=features;scroll=features

Re:erm... what? how dumb do you want it?

[Jeng]

Your ignorance is not the submitters fault.

Why should I look something up for someone who hasn't done the most basic of research?

I'm not sure if you noticed since I have no idea how long you have been visiting this site, but if you read the posts you can usually not only find out what the article is about, but you will get more information than you would by just asking or even googling what is.

Re:erm... what? how dumb do you want it?

[Jeng]

adding a subclause to the initial sentence mentioning Thunderbolt explaining what it was would've saved thousands of people from looking it up themselves

Is thousands of people informing themselves of something a bad thing?

"Remember when USB first came out? "

[Quila]

Yes, I do. And you are right, almost nobody was using it.

Until Apple came along and dumped their legacy ports for USB. There's a reason a huge number of early USB devices were translucent Bondi Blue (like my first USB scanner) or tanslucent striped white (like my first external USB hard drive).

The same thing is happening here. Apple is moving to Thunderbolt, which will instantly create a pool of millions of devices ready to use Thunderbolt peripherals. The PC world will follow.

Re:"Remember when USB first came out? "

[gl4ss]

what apple shop you live in?
"until apple dumped their legacy ports".. wtf man. during that time period apple didn't mean jack shit, they didn't sell too much.
by the time they dumped firewire as the way to connect your ipod the "pc world" had been usbed up for years, most machines just didn't have explicit need to drop the extra legacy ports. but around where I lived no, "early usb devices" didn't have apple style plastics. the early devices were stuff like diamond rio, game controllers, mouses, printers, kb's and other stuff, mainly hid devices because you really need usb 2.0 speeds for it to make any sense at all for attaching hd's, 32mbyte usb keys of course weren't really that much of a problem to use at even those speeds.

just because apple moves to it doesn't mean much either, firewire being case in point.

(yeah, I got a tb'd up apple. usb 3.0 would be more useful. it's not like i'm going to pay 999 for a 27 inch monitor to get it to act as a dock. if they had been selling decent gpu's to be attached with tb I might have skipped buying a new wintel machine).

there's millions of tb enabled laptops already, but the only stuff I could buy would be monitors(that would provide usb etc too) and hd enclosures. oh and one sound in/out device. that's all there is available. for the sound device usb would work just fine, it's essentially just apples dock connector now. but do they sell just a dock that had hdmi out, usb ports etc, so I could just buy that and avoid attaching different connectors when I want to work with it as if it were a desktop? hell no, they got a nice 999 monitor they want to sell you and me.

(it would be extremely nice to just buy more gpu power in boxes you could daisy chain though. not seeing such boxes actually for sale...)

Re:"Remember when USB first came out? "

[gman003]

I was with you (the iMac definitely proved the viability of the legacy-free PC) up until you said "the PC world will follow".

The PC world doesn't follow Apple. Never really did.

Remember how long it took Apple to even support multi-button mice, let alone make one? Yeah, how'd that work out?

Remember FireWire? I have never seen a non-Apple computer have a single Firewire port, except via an add-on card. The only Firewire devices I've ever seen were external hard drives used by a Mac-exclusive print shop, and a pro-grade video camera. It may not be a dead tech, but it's dead on the desktop.

Remember GeoPort? AAUI? Yeah, neither does anyone else.

Remember PowerPC? How that was supposedly "so much better" than x86, both faster and less power-hungry? Yeah, about that...

The list of technologies Apple introduced that became ubiquitous in the PC world is small - and most of them weren't even invented by Apple. EFI? Invented by Intel for their Itanium servers.

Apple doesn't lead the way in introducing new technologies - it leads the way in killing old technologies. And it can do that because half its customers are blind zealots like yourself.

Posted from my Mac Pro.

Re:"Remember when USB first came out? "

[hobarrera]

Firefire isn't uncommon.
My PC has a firewire port, and so have the last couple of PCs I had.
I never used it though. To be honest, I only once met someone who had, some time ago, used firewire.

Re:"Remember when USB first came out? "

[ninetyninebottles]

what apple shop you live in? "until apple dumped their legacy ports".. wtf man. during that time period apple didn't mean jack shit, they didn't sell too much.

According to PC report, Apple iMacs accounted for 7% of all consumer PC sales in the US and were the top selling consumer PC in 98 (the year it was introduced and Apple dropped legacy ports for USB). That was more than enough to have a significant influence on the peripheral market, albeit a a niche one.

Re:"Remember when USB first came out? "

[hairyfish]

Of course it had nothing to do with the release of the USB2 standard which overtook every other interface on the market at the time for both speed and compatibility. It also just so happened that the other major OS supplier, you know the one with 2000% the market share that Apple has in the PC space, released a new converged OS that had full native USB support. Dream on Apple Fanboys...

Re:"Remember when USB first came out? "

[Fjandr]

Yeah, FireWire ports are decently common-ish. FireWire devices? Not so much. And that's really a shame.

I'm not really an Apple fan, but I hope that Thunderbolt takes off more than FireWire did. Meaning, something more than random A/V equipment and external hard drives. So you can actually buy reasonably standard, decently-priced desktop equipment that uses it as an interface. I'm not holding my breath though. The biggest reason is USB3 is here, it's standard, and it's cheap. Unless they can price Thunderbolt identically, it's unlikely to take off any more than FireWire did. The ports will be there; the devices (other than the above mentioned) will not.

Re:"Remember when USB first came out? "

[Quila]

The PC world doesn't follow Apple. Never really did.

Ditching the floppy, flat screen monitors, DVD writers as included equipment, EFI, machined cases, GUI (yes, Xerox made it originally, but Apple made it work in a low-cost consumer system), track pads in laptops (remember the scroll balls before that?), integrated wireless in laptops.

Remember how long it took Apple to even support multi-button mice

Since at least the early 90s. Kensington mice were popular with Mac users.

Remember FireWire? I have never seen a non-Apple computer have a single Firewire port

Standard on many Sony models under the name iLink. It's a very cheap way to transfer data as fast as the hard drive inside the enclosure could, not equalled until eSATA and USB3.

Remember GeoPort? AAUI? Yeah, neither does anyone else.

GeoPort was good for its day, but doomed for its purpose because of telecom vendor lock-in. Nobody wanted a universally compatible product. AAUI's problem was cost, but it was a good standard.

Apple has had failures, too. Remember the Macintosh Portable, the Pippin, the hockey puck mouse? They have been behind too. OS 9 was far technologically inferior to Windows 2000, and even to Windows 98 in some ways. They have other quasi-failures though. Newton was a failure due to PHB managment and lack of a cohesive vision for the product, but it did usher in the era of the PDA.

Remember PowerPC? How that was supposedly "so much better" than x86, both faster and less power-hungry?

It was. Apple was difficult to work with, and IBM/Moto/Freescale didn't want to put development money into a product with such low volume compared to the competition, while Intel poured billions into R&D. It lives on though, powering many embedded applications including all three current-generation gaming consoles.

Apple doesn't lead the way in introducing new technologies - it leads the way in killing old technologies

Killing old technologies is part of it, since the industry is very slow to adopt new until the old is killed.

It will probably kill you to know that ARM was supposed to be yet another low-cost processor in the form of Acorn RISC, which means it would have died by the early 90s. Back around 1990 Apple worked with Acorn to spin off ARM Ltd, and Apple dictated design changes to create a processor for the Newton. The rest, of course, is history.

And it can do that because half its customers are blind zealots like yourself.

That USB scanner and hard drive were for a PC.

Re:"Remember when USB first came out? "

[Quila]

Of course it had nothing to do with the release of the USB2 standard which overtook every other interface on the market at the time for both speed and compatibility.

USB2 at 480 Mb/s was slower in real world use than the Firewire 400 that was already out due to inherent inefficiencies of USB, which was designed for low-speed connections. Firewire also used a superior P2P architecture and provided more much power for peripherals.

USB won because it was much cheaper to implement, but it is a technologically inferior product in every way for high-bandwidth connectivity. Within only a couple years of introduction, it was looking painfully slow compared to Firewire's second-generation 800 Mb/s.

Re:"Remember when USB first came out? "

[hobarrera]

Yeah, FireWire ports are decently common-ish. FireWire devices? Not so much. And that's really a shame.

"not so much"? They're ultra-rare. I've worked in IT for years, and have never seen a firewire device, ever. Not even a cable!

Re:"Remember when USB first came out? "

[Fjandr]

I didn't want to stir up any Mac or A/V zealots, not to mention the one aviation nut out there who thinks aircraft control systems count for the purposes of this argument. But yes, I agree.

USB 3.0 is faster

[Anonymous Coward]

In latest real world tests, USB 3.0 is faster than thunderbolt so I see no use for it at all. It is just another way for intel to get money out of people.

Re:USB 3.0 is faster

[LDAPMAN]

Citation please. Real world tests of USB 3 are peaking at about 2.5Gb/s right now. TB WILL do 2 channels of 10Gb/s. The overhead has already been figured in for TB while the rated 4Gb/s for USB 3 is before overhead.

Re:erm... what? how dumb do you want it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should I look something up for someone who hasn't done the most basic of research?

Nobody's saying you should; the editors should put some context into the summary.

Figuratively.

[mosb1000]

Literally now literally means "figuratively."

Thunder-wha?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's "lightning bolt"
there's "thunderclap"

wtf is a thunderbolt?

I want TB

[Ralph Spoilsport]

If TB can really do 10Gb a second, that about 1.25 GB a second. I don't know of many hard drives that can write data that fast. If they can (pretend) then I can dupe my 500 GB of music in 4,000 seconds, just over an hour. So, my neighbour comes by with a bottle of wine, I click on "My Music" drag it to her drive and we drink the wine and right around the time I'm fucking her silly on the couch, the music has finished copying, and later, she leaves with 47,890 songs. Next week, I have the girl who lives around the block do the same thing. I get drunk, I get laid, they get more music than they will probably have time to listen to, so, what's not to love? What did I pay? Whatever the cost of rubbers was that afternoon...

Re:I want TB

[LDAPMAN]

I have a ThunderBolt RAID array. While it's not quite fast enough use the full bandwidth, it can hit about 700MB/s. An SSD array could be even faster. But the point is not how fast can I move data from one device, the point is I can be moving data to multiple devices without a slowdown. I can be running video to a monitor and data to multiple RAID arrays all on the same cable.

Re:I want TB

[MCSEBear]

Anandtech reported hitting just over 1000MB/s when they tested a Promise Pegasus R6 RAID array of SSD's.

Harry Potter Thunderbolts?

[youn]

am I the only one who thought of broomsticks when he read the headline?

Bring it on.

[Crass Spektakel]

Yeah, bring it on.

But I am not holding my breath for it and continue to use USB3 for everything in the meantime. And I am happy with that.

Becoming a Thunderbolt developer isn't easy

[Anonymous Coward]

We applied to become Thunderbolt developers months ago and have had no luck hearing back from them about our application. We've been ready to drop the hammer on HW development for supporting it but we've had to design around not getting the documentation, approvals and part samples in the meantime. Thunderbolt would be a perfect fit and we do about $50M a year in hardware sales but apparently we aren't "important" enough for Intel.

We've tried to use our connections in other parts of Intel to try to get to the Thunderbolt group without much success. We're planning to burn some silver bullets to get to them through the CEO's office soon. Not happy about this.

Re:Becoming a Thunderbolt developer isn't easy

[tzanger]

I too applied for the Thunderbolt development program over a month ago (actually in early January if I remember) -- haven't heard a peep out of them.