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Intel Working to Boost Thunderbolt Speeds with Move to PCI-Express 3.0

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macrumors bot
Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
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IDG News reports that Intel is currently working on shifting its Thunderbolt standard to the PCI-Express 3.0 protocol, a move that could allow the company to double data transfer speeds over existing implementations based on PCIe 2.0.
Intel in the future will support the PCI-Express 3.0 protocol to shuttle data faster between host devices and peripherals, an Intel spokesman said in an email. Computers with Thunderbolt interconnect currently communicate with external devices using the older PCI-Express 2.0 technology.

The company will incorporate PCI-Express 3.0 in Thunderbolt, but could not provide a time frame for when it will be accomplished.
Click to expand...
PCIe 3.0 offers a 60% boost in raw data transfer speed compared to PCIe 2.0, going from 5 gigatransfers per second (GT/s) to 8 GT/s. But significantly lower overheard requirements in PCIe 3.0 mean that the effective bandwidth can be doubled by moving to the latest standard.

thunderbolt.jpg



PCIe 3.0 is already making an appearance in Intel's chip products, including the just-launched Xeon E5 chips that could power updated Mac Pro models, as well as the forthcoming Ivy Bridge chips for notebooks and desktops. It will, however, take some time to move Thunderbolt over to PCIe 3.0 and get peripheral manufacturers onboard with the standard.

Apple and Intel debuted Thunderbolt technology with a MacBook Pro update in February 2011, and the standard has rolled out to Apple's entire Mac product line with the exception of the Mac Pro, which has not been updated since mid-2010.

Article Link: Intel Working to Boost Thunderbolt Speeds with Move to PCI-Express 3.0
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2012/03/09/intel-working-to-boost-thunderbolt-speeds-with-move-to-pci-express-3-0/
smileyborg

smileyborg

macrumors 6502
May 12, 2009
267
0
I think Thunderbolt is a great spec. But until there are more peripheral devices to use with it, it really doesn't matter how fast it is...

The existing PCIe 2.0 spec is lightning fast, if only we could get it showing up on docking stations, external hard drives, external graphics/physics cards, etc.
 
Renzatic

Renzatic

Suspended
Aug 3, 2011
9,561
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Gramps, what the hell am I paying you for?
Liquinn said:
Two thousand pounds would be a lot to spend on a machine that could be out of date next month. :/
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Welcome to the wide wily world of computers, man. There's ALWAYS something new around the corner. :p

Though look on the bright side. Any new feature that comes out, such as faster Thunderbolt in this instance, doesn't automatically make your computer obsolete the instant it shows up. Though the feature exists, it usually takes a year on average before you start seeing any hardware that takes advantage of it. You won't start feeling the pinch until way later.
 
E

Exhale

macrumors 6502a
Sep 20, 2011
512
145
mopatops said:
I assume this will be backwards compatible?
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They're just talking about the TB Chip to Processor connection, not the TB chip to device part which would determine such compatibility.

The output will be the same, ergo, the user won't be able to notice outside of benchmarks. (most likely)

PCI-E itself is cross version compatible. The latest Radeon HD7xxx series of cards for example are PCI-E 3.0 based, but have no problems mounting in all existing systems. Note that only the new Xeons have PCI-E 3.0 themselves, all other systems on the market ate PCI-E 2 based.

Further, many wi-fi cards and sound cards are PCI-E 1 based so version mixing is going on even now.
 
M

Mr. Wonderful

macrumors 6502a
Feb 19, 2009
571
34
Nice. With this, it'll make a lot more sense to get a external GPU, as you won't have to worry about bandwidth being a bottleneck 5 years down the road. The current external GPU enclosures I've seen, last I saw were going for ~$800, with which you might as well get a new laptop than buying an $800 accessory that wouldn't last you 5 years because of bandwidth concerns.
 
nuckinfutz

nuckinfutz

macrumors 603
Jul 3, 2002
5,539
399
Middle Earth
Wikipedia.org said:
PCIe 2.0 delivers 5 GT/s, but uses an 8b/10b encoding scheme that results in a 20 percent ((10-8)/10) overhead on the raw bit rate. PCIe 3.0 removes the requirement for 8b/10b encoding, and instead uses a technique called "scrambling" that applies a known binary polynomial to a data stream in a feedback topology. Because the scrambling polynomial is known, the data can be recovered by running it through a feedback topology using the inverse polynomial. and also uses a 128b/130b encoding scheme, reducing the overhead to approximately 1.5% ((130-128)/130), as opposed to the 20% overhead of 8b/10b encoding used by PCIe 2.0. PCIe 3.0's 8 GT/s bit rate effectively delivers double PCIe 2.0 bandwidth. PCI-
Click to expand...

Very effective upgrade. Well done Intel. I have added emphasis
 
E

Exhale

macrumors 6502a
Sep 20, 2011
512
145
Mr. Retrofire said:
Unlikely, because:
"With Lynx Point, Intel still has not been able to solve the bottleneck issue with the DMI interface, so the PCIe ports running off the chipset (not the CPU) will still be running at PCIe 2.0."
from
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Intel-Haswell-Lynx-Point-LGA1150-leaked-slide,14713.html

;-)
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Thats just the CPU <-> Chipset connection, not the CPU <-> GPU/TB/Sound/SATA connection.
Mr. Retrofire said:
That requires at least 20-40 GBit/s in both directions. Dream on! ;-)
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Its been well documented and tested that GPUs can reasonably on 4x and even 2x connections. There is a noticeable performance loss with higher end GPUs, but for mid-low end GPUs, which will still be much faster than 98% of laptop offerings can run on it without much loss.

Bandwidth availibility is far ahead of the actual requirements of the GPU. The big danger if anything is the latency that a TB connection would add, not the bandwidth.
 
mopatops

mopatops

macrumors regular
Jul 21, 2011
159
32
UK
Exhale said:
They're just talking about the TB Chip to Processor connection, not the TB chip to device part which would determine such compatibility.

The output will be the same, ergo, the user won't be able to notice outside of benchmarks. (most likely)

PCI-E itself is cross version compatible. The latest Radeon HD7xxx series of cards for example are PCI-E 3.0 based, but have no problems mounting in all existing systems. Note that only the new Xeons have PCI-E 3.0 themselves, all other systems on the market ate PCI-E 2 based.

Further, many wi-fi cards and sound cards are PCI-E 1 based so version mixing is going on even now.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the well explained post! :)
 
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