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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."
But literally, just hundreds.
Or are they also counting the computers with an unused thunderbolt port on them?
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
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.
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.
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.
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?
/dev/random
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbolt_(interface)
since im against the whole LMFGI thing i will just drop a wikilink for you.
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
Thunderbolt separates those who know how to use Google from the users.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbolt_(interface)
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.
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.
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.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
If you can't look something up you do not belong here.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
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.
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.
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
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.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Thunderbolt separates those who know how to use Google from the users.
No, that's porn.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
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.
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?
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.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
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.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
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 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.
"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.
Everything you know is wrong, Just forget the words and sing along.
Define: Thunderbolt ... paid too much for the hardware, though".
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
Quartz Extreme and Core Image. Are there any other real reasons to spend all that money on generic hardware?
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!
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...
C. A sexual act involving [censored, for the sake of the children].
Cowboy Neil?
Required reading for internet skeptics
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
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.
> 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.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
If Intel is going to push it, it'll catch on. So far they haven't, but looks like that may change.
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.
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.
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.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Will be new Apple computer, iDevices, and Intel notebooks. It won't be made by any other manufacturer than those two.
> 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.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
> 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.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
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.
..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?
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.
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.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
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.
How far do you want the summaries dumbed down?
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
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.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
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.
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.
USB 3.0 will have more devices than whateverbolt
Mendacem Memorem Esse Oportet
You really should read what something actually does before trying to make a joke about it and winding up looking like a muppet.
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.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
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.
The acceptance of new technology is always overestimated in the short term, and underestimated in the long term.
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.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
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.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
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.
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.
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.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
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.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
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.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
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.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
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?)
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
How many people have a keyboard and mouse on their desks? Those can also plug into the monitor.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
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.
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.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
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.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
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.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
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.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
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?
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
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.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
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.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
Intel owns the IP, not Apple.
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...
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.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
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.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
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.
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?
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
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.
Everything you know is wrong, Just forget the words and sing along.
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.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Literally now literally means "figuratively."
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.
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.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
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.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
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..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
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.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
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.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
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.
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.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
"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.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Apple had a one year exclusive on host ports which is why it hasn't been popular yet.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
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.
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.
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.
moox. for a new generation.
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.
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.
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.
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...
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
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.
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.
am I the only one who thought of broomsticks when he read the headline?
Never antropomorphize computers, they do not like that
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.
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.
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.
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.
"Life is short and in most cases it ends with death." Sir Sinclair
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).
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
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.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Maybe something like Thunderbolt is the future, if it has nothing to do with Apple.
Because Apple can't be trusted
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
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.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
E. The rollercoaster at Kennywood.
I do work in IT farmer boy.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
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.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
>> 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.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
> 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.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Another off topic link from Daniel Phillips 834 2nd st, Suite 6 , Santa Monica, CA 90403.. Failures include Tux2 and Tux3.
Another off topic link from Daniel Phillips 834 2nd st, Suite 6 , Santa Monica, CA 90403.. Failures include Tux2 and Tux3.
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.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
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.
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.