SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Promises 10Gbps Data Transfers, Coming in 2014

coolspot18 said:

If a pro had to handle that much data a Fibre Channel SAN might be a better choice than a DAS. Just saying... large local storage arrays is only a very specific application - and probably one that won't sustain TB for the long term.

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I was more thinking about freelance pro users / small businesses that may not have the technical knowledge or budget to configure a Fibre Channel SAN. I've met a lot of people who are very good at ProTools, Cubase, Photoshop or Maya, but are completely clueless when it comes to computer technology.

Bye Bye Thunderbolt...

It's good with alternatives.

throAU said:

true, but it was a hollow victory as optical media is dead and most people haven't bothered to upgrade from DVD.

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+1. When I use discs I use DVDs, and when I move on from DVDs it’ll be to the internet - Skipping out blu-ray entirely

Axemantitan said:

I much prefer Thunderbolt. It has much lower CPU usage, and can be used to connect displays. That's not the case for USB.

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If you have a 10Gbps data connection (even over USB) you can use that to connect multiple external HD displays The bandwidth for it is there.

throAU said:

It is early days yet, and it is a high end bus for high end non-consumer type tasks. Thunderbolt is essentially PCIe on a cable.

If you need thunderbolt, USB is not going to cut it.

Most people don't do anything high end so they don't need it.

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...And the future for Apple’s ”non consumer” customers doesn’t look the brightest, does it?

lunarworks said:

Both have different usage scenarios, so saying "I like this one better" is pointless.

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Bingo, for connecting a single SSD or HDD, the new USB would be better due to it being cheaper but for connecting a monitor or a raid system with many drives Thunderbolt would be better.

"Existing SuperSpeed USB cables are not certified to operate at 10 Gbps; it is possible that some existing SuperSpeed USB cables may be capable of operating at 10 Gbps"

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Wow, this reminds me of a story a friend tells about going into Lenin's Tomb on Red Square. The guard stopped them saying "You are not allowed to take a camera into Lenin's Tomb," then, after a pause, "But, it is possible to take a camera into Lenin's Tomb."

Clearly looking for a bribe. Wonder what the payoff is to the USB group to get the right sticker for your cable...

dblissmn said:

Doesn't look good for Thunderbolt.

Leave it to Apple to take a standard that is even farther ahead of USB 3 than Firewire was ahead of USB 2, and yet drive it even farther into the ditch than they ever drove FireWire.

The licensing fees, the Apple/Intel exclusivity for the first 12 months, and so on -- every move they have made has intensified the mistakes they made, and obvioiusly did not learn from, with FireWire.

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Hit.Nail.On.Head

Have an early 2012 MBP.

USB 2.0 and Thunderbolt ports

1 year on and I am yet to find a cheap Thunderbolt portable HDD.
Cheap USB3.0 portable HDD's. Yes, everywhere.

Elijahg said:

Well it didn't take two years for third party Lightning cables to appear, they were around in a matter of weeks...

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I'm not sure what you're trying to say. I wasn't talking about the generic rebranded third party cables, those cables bypass the certification process because they buy the same (already certified) controllers from Intel. Since everybody pays the same price, the cables will not be cheaper and going cheaper means decreased profit margins.

It's the controllers itself that is driving the price and they're the one that needs to be certified. There are no third party manufacturers of thunderbolt controller/chipsets at the moment or in the past two years, that's the core reason that there is no progress. There are simply not enough incentives to go into TB since TB isn't a large enough market and the profit margins are just not there when competing against Intel.

Once somebody can produce cheaper controllers (much cheaper than Intel and increase profit margins per TB chipset) to compete against Intel, you'll start to see the prices going down.

That Ars article that I mentioned explain such a startup who can compete against Intel with cheaper chipset that nearly halves the component costs but it's going to take time for them to validate and certify their controllers before they can mass-produce it. Thus, don't expect any progress in '13.

spl456 said:

1 year on and I am yet to find a cheap Thunderbolt portable HDD.
Cheap USB3.0 portable HDD's. Yes, everywhere.

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Because this isn't what thunderbolt is intended for.

For cheap peripherals that don't require very low latency and low cpu utilization, thunderbolt is pointless.

The market for thunderbolt is quite small and there's no real killer app for it for most people.

However, it does open up a heap of new design opportunity for peripheral manufacturers. It is expensive because it can do things USB can not (and never will be able to do, due to the nature of the protocol - no matter how many GB/sec they ramp it up to), due to being an extension of the PCIe bus.

As I said, it is still early days yet.


Thunderbolt and USB are not competitors. They solve two different problems: USB for cheap high latency, high bandwidth peripherals where the user is willing to waste CPU controlling them. Thunderbolt for the high end latency sensitive devices that traditionally would have required PCIe to operate. CPU usage is minimal as the device doesn't need the CPU to babysit everything it does.

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mrsir2009 said:

...And the future for Apple’s ”non consumer” customers doesn’t look the brightest, does it?

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Thunderbolt means that instead of needing to stick things INSIDE a machine you can run them in an external enclosure if/when required. And take your portable machine with you when they aren't required and you are on battery.

kendallb said:

Comparing thunderbolt and USB 3.0 is like apples and oranges. They are quite different in how they work. Thunderbolt effectively extends the PCI bus over cables (and now there are Thunderbolt fiber optic cables that can go hundreds of feet), so you can put anything on the end of the cable you can plug into a PCI slot. So far products using thunderbolt are more expensive, but they are way more flexible, especially for adding complex devices to laptops or mini's. I am actually surprised no PC vendors have not added it already since it is an Intel SPEC not Apple.

USB 3.0 on the other hand is just faster USB. Very flexible and great for high speed peripherals like external hard drives, cameras etc. The device driver model is completely different to Thunderbolt though.

The primary reason for a faster USB 3.0 spec is really for external data storage as the latest SSD drives (especially in RAID) can swamp out even the current USB 3.0 spec. And by the time super speed USB 3.0 arrives, the drives will likely be much faster and will need 10G connections to keep up.

At the end of the day they really serve different purposes, which is the reason the latest Mac's come with both. I doubt it will ever be one or the other.

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I really wish we could see some Thunderbolt GPUs. The Sony Vaio Z, while a giant pile of poo for numerous reasons (I own one, so I know), is WAY ahead of its time with its Lightpeak (Thunderbolt) connector integrated into the USB 3.0 port. This lets you connect the laptop to Sony's external ATI 6650M 1GB graphics card/Blu-ray drive (all-in-one) dock. It's a brilliant piece of kit, but where is everyone else?

How much would you all love that ultralight MacBook Air with a Thunderbolt GPU/dock for gaming when you're at home/the office? Be brilliant if you ask me...!

Personally, I really like Thunderbolt. Absolutely the prices need to come down, but it's a really great piece of tech.

avanpelt said:

This new SuperSpeed USB 3 will likely win out and we'll see the slow death of Thunderbolt just like we saw the slow death of FireWire. A committed following sung the praises of FireWire to the bitter end and that will likely happen with Thunderbolt, as well.

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MrRez said:

Bye Bye Thunderbolt...

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So much pessimism on this thread about Thunderbolt; if you can't see it's advantages, you probably don't need it. But that doesn't mean it's not a Godsend for many professional users, power users or anyone manipulating large-to-huge files. I'm absolutely not writing it off, and definitely think it has a solid future, even though that might ultimately only be a niche market.

WilliamG said:

I really wish we could see some Thunderbolt GPUs. The Sony Vaio Z, while a giant pile of poo for numerous reasons (I own one, so I know), is WAY ahead of its time with its Lightpeak (Thunderbolt) connector integrated into the USB 3.0 port. This lets you connect the laptop to Sony's external ATI 6650M 1GB graphics card/Blu-ray drive (all-in-one) dock. It's a brilliant piece of kit, but where is everyone else?

How much would you all love that ultralight MacBook Air with a Thunderbolt GPU/dock for gaming when you're at home/the office? Be brilliant if you ask me...!

Personally, I really like Thunderbolt. Absolutely the prices need to come down, but it's a really great piece of tech.

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Here here.

I'm hoping my next portable can have

- quad core
- integrated graphics
- 16gb ram
- thunderbolt
(essentially, an MBA)


paired with
- thunderbolt dock with PCIe slots for video, onboard gig-e, heaps of USB, etc. if apple put a decent GPU (or preferably, even a slot) in the thunderbolt display with thunderbolt v2, I'm sold.

It is not about theorical max speed but how it works. Thunderbolt is the perfection of data connection, it takes most of the advantage of FireWire (not packed based, daisy chain...). And remember Thunderbolt is 10Gbps in both directions.

ikir said:

It is not about theorical max speed but how it works. Thunderbolt is the perfection of data connection, it takes most of the advantage of FireWire (not packed based, daisy chain...). And remember Thunderbolt is 10Gbps in both directions.

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Everyone has forgot that Thunderbolt is still in the copper wire stage, it will be much faster (up to 100Gbps) once it switches to optical.

Tech198 said:

Obviously, somone out there is saying, " 5 Gig is just not fast enough, we need to race againt Apple"

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What a weirdly screwed view of the world .. while I am sure that folks at "USB headquarters" (whoever is in charge of the standard) are quite happy about the thunderbolt .. lets say .. underperformance. I am pretty sure they would have worked on getting the connection speed up regardless .. computers are getting faster, harddisk bigger and connections faster. If they would settle for the 5gig they had now, they would be replaced within a few years time. One has to move forward to stay relevant.

That said. Thunderbolt sucks big time. There is only a handful accessories available and those are super expensive. I don't see why any average joe would be interested in investing when they can have an USB disk at half the price.

T.

MrRez said:

Bye Bye Thunderbolt...

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Bye, bye, well informed forum users. ;-)

And thunderbolt is dead..... except as a very expensive display port at the moment, much like firewire USB kicks its ass by being cheaper, more modular and backward compatible with existing devices so you don't have to re-buy everything.

guess the two thunderbolts ports on the back of the iMacs will mostly have a thunderbolt to firewire converter in them for compatibility with existing devices you may have (in my case an older model drobo) and probably not a lot else if you can get 10gig speeds from USB 3 devices and cables at a fraction the price.

Sure TB "Could" be used for external GPUs, id like to see Apple roll out a display with built in mid or high end video card used in the iMacs for macbook users, plug in your air or mac mini and get a 680mx "added" along with the 27" display"

but then no one is really going to buy a display at this price when the iMac would probably cost a few hundred more for the full machine ... Thunderbolts pricing itself out of the market and hasnt learned from Firewire's experience

Rocketman said:

Hmmm. 2015. By then TB 2.0 fiber will be entrenched. Intel and Apple are both backing it and the other "standards" will be on the "many" PC's.

Oh wait. It's already shipping. 2013.

http://global-sei.com/news/press/12/prs105_s.html

Oops not 10gbps one direction. 20 Gbps two direction. Now. Services computers, devices, displays up to 7 daisy chained.

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Oops check the cost of cables (fiber) and equipment that will use this.

hfg said:

There is a reason those Thunderbolt cables are $50 ...

They are a tuned transmission line with active termination ....

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So by your argument ALL 10Gbit/sec cables should cost $50. 10G Ethernet runs at 10Gigabits/second and uses Cat6e cable that is cheap. It can go 100 meters over cheap cable that has no active termination. OK it might have "who knows what" at each end but the engineers were smart and built the expensive electronics in the devices at each end, not into the cable.

http://xkcd.com/927/

It always assuses me what people say "I don't needthis new widget to do my current job." Well of cource you don't because you have been doing that job without it for years. But just maybe with this new widget you can to a DIFFERENT job.

So you say "my current hard drive works fine over the current USB cable, why do I need a better cable?" The answer is that in the future parts of your computer will be distributed the display(s) computer and storage will need to communicate at well over 10Gb/sec. In other words the new faster cable let's you do things differently.

DJJAZZYJET said:

and we need 10gb data transfer for what exactly.

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Ahh.. I remember the days of 1200 baud modems when they just came out. Cost $300 at the time, and one would wonder why anyone would need something faster. Why on earth would anyone even consider the dizzying speeds of a 2400 baud transfer?



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I hope intel pushes this really hard, we don't need another standard again..