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

DJJAZZYJET said:

and we need 10gb data transfer for what exactly.

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Video editing for one...
Backing up your system in minutes instead of hours another...

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Tech198 said:

If they start calling it "Superspeed USB" that will confuse me like crazy.
"Now faster"


FYI.. You can get cheap TB cables from other sources. MonoPrice.

But i still agree, lack of hardware support by manufactures.

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Yes but lack of hardware support really doesn't matter the tech is BACKWARDS COMPADABLE which means your USB puck mouse from your original iMac along with any USB printer, scanner or camera will work NO PROBLEM.

This is why USB works! The technology can evolve and not be a problem to the end user and you don't have to force users to adapt to a new interface and $50 cables to use with devices that don't exist!

MadDawg2020 said:

I am now taking bets as to which will actually hit the market first.

1.) Superspeed USB 3.0 at 1:5 odds

2.) An affordable Thunderbolt hard drive priced in line with a comparable USB 3.0 drive OR any other Thunderbolt device besides a monitor. at 1000:1 odds each.

3.) Belkin's Thunderbolt express dock. at 25,000:1 odds

4.) A new Mac Pro. 1,000,000,000:1 odds *

* speed bump does not count, must include at least one new technology like USB3 or T-Bolt.

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I'll gladly take those odds on numbers 1 & 2.

The USB 3.0 specification defined SuperSpeed mode back in 2008, and it's available today in virtually every new PC since Intel integrated it into their 7 series chipsets. http://www.usb.org/developers/ssusb/

Available Thunderbolt devices besides displays or HDDs/SSDs:
AJA ioXT
AJA KiStor Dock
AJA T-TAP
Apogee Electronics Symphony 64 | Thunderbolt
Apple Thunderbolt to Gigabit Ethernet Adapter
Apple Thunderbolt to FireWire Adapter
ATTO ThunderLink FC Thunderbolt to 8Gb/s Fibre Channel Desklink
ATTO ThunderLink NS Thunderbolt to 10GbE Desklink (SFP+)
ATTO ThunderLink NT Thunderbolt to 10GbE Desklink (10GBASE-T)
ATTO ThunderLink SH Thunderbolt to 6Gb/s SAS/SATA Desklink
ATTO ThunderStream SC Thunderbolt to 6Gb/s SAS RAID Desklink
Avid Pro Tools|HD Native Thunderbolt Interface
Blackmagic Design Intensity Shuttle for Thunderbolt
Blackmagic Design Intensity Extreme
Blackmagic Design UltraStudio 3D
Blackmagic Design UltraStudio Express
Blackmagic Design UltraStudio Mini Monitor
Blackmagic Design UltraStudio Mini Recorder
Blackmagic Design UltraStudio 4K
Blackmagic Design Blackmagic Cinema Camera EF
Blackmagic Design Blackmagic Cinema Camera MFT
Blackmagic Design Teranex 2D Processor
Blackmagic Design Universal Videohub Editing Interface
Matrox MXO2 Thunderbolt adapter
Matrox DS1 Thunderbolt Docking Station (2 variants)
Other World Computing OWC Mercury Helios PCIe Thunderbolt Expansion Chassis (5 variants)
Promise SANLink
Seagate GoFlex Thunderbolt Adapter
Seagate GoFlex Desk Thunderbolt Adapter
Sonnet Echo ExpressCard/34 Thunderbolt Adapter
Sonnet Echo Pro ExpressCard/34 Thunderbolt Adapter
Sonnet Echo Express Thunderbolt Expansion Chassis for PCIe Cards
Sonnet Echo Express Pro Thunderbolt Expansion Chassis for PCIe Cards
Sonnet Echo Express SE (3 variants)
Sonnet xMac mini Server
Sound Devices PIX-DOCK
Universal Audio Apollo Thunderbolt Option Card

throAU said:

Because this isn't what thunderbolt is intended for.

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Great, so l am stuck with USB 2.0.......bugger that....

Tanax said:

So does this mean that all USB3 SuperSpeed peripherals that are out today will get 10Gbps with new USB3 cables? Or do they need to release updated peripherals with updated USB3 connectors/chipset?

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Anyone??

I know if you need them you'll pay the price but those Sumitomo fibre cables ain't cheap a 10m one is about the same price as a mini:

http://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/product/B00ASUON46

Elijahg said:

Then why are they bothering sinking so much of their R&D budget and manufacturing costs into something that's intended for pros on a consumer laptop? Why is it on the consumer-level iMac? Shouldn't the iMacs have Fibre Channel too? Surely, the Mac Pro should be the first to get it if it's for pros, but it's going to be the last...

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Fiber channel ? Are you being silly on purpose ? That's enterprise level technology that costs 10k$ to implement properly and requires pretty much data center level hosting.

You think that if something isn't targetted at consumers, it must be enterprise level ? Please, lower the hyperbole, there's more than black and white in life.

And do you have numbers to back up your ascertion of R&D manufacturing ? How much of it goes to Thunderbolt ?

Apple likes adding prosumer features. Firewire, IPS displays, Thunderbolt, they're all prosumer level features that sometimes trickle into the high-end consumer arena, but rarely filter all the way down to the low end consumer trinkets.

Elijahg said:

In reality, it's pretty certain it is not just targeted at pros, especially as Apple's catering to the pro market seems to be waning lately. The majority of people don't see anything wrong with USB, TB is just expensive with few benefits to most. The spec should have been launched along side a good 10 or so peripherals that were reasonably priced, to help start off adoption.

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In reality, we've seen it for the last close to 2 years. Some of you just want to ignore it. Jason Ziller, from Intel, which I've quoted time and time again explained it 2 years ago. You guys just don't want to accept it : Thunderbolt is not consumer level tech and consumer level devices aren't really in the pipeline.

DJJAZZYJET said:

and we need 10gb data transfer for what exactly.

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Famous last words - think about it, who complains about SSD speeds nowadays - "SSD'd are just too fast". Imagine transferring DVD or BluRay images, video files in the 100's of gigs over in a matter of seconds.

I know that's specialised so lets take a real world example - Time Machines system restores that are done within a minute. Backups that happen in seconds. Music, image and video library, iPhoto, Aperture database transfers... the list goes on and on...

There's never any point in complaining about faster speeds because they are always better than slower and although the price isn't right at the moment, faster is ALWAYS better and inevitable.

MadDawg2020 said:

Video editing for one...
Backing up your system in minutes instead of hours another...

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Is video editing the only application? If so, Thunderbolt's life is very bleak.

johnmacward said:

I know that's specialised so lets take a real world example - Time Machines system restores that are done within a minute. Backups that happen in seconds. Music, image and video library, iPhoto, Aperture database transfers... the list goes on and on...

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Not possible unless computers have a massive internal disk array.

So it's a pointless example (for now) of the use of Thunderbolt.

Thunderbolt needs exciting applications that are possible TODAY, not fluff or niche applications to survive.

KnightWRX said:

In reality, we've seen it for the last close to 2 years. Some of you just want to ignore it. Jason Ziller, from Intel, which I've quoted time and time again explained it 2 years ago. You guys just don't want to accept it : Thunderbolt is not consumer level tech and consumer level devices aren't really in the pipeline.

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It's unfortunate it was included in the iMac in this case ... the iMac is hardly a workstation machine.

I still think real-professionals who need to move this much data will stick with tried and true technologies such as Fibre Channel. The costs are not that much - but you get even more storage and more peripheral choices. There's even an article on SmallNetBuilder about building your own FiberChannel SAN for < 1000.00USD!

AppleHater said:

I don't think so. Apple's accessories may help a bit, but as long as it takes hundreds of dollars to use the connector, it's dead on the water. Someone needs to find a way to get it working at affordable price, or it'll take the way of Rambus RAM.

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That's hy I wrote at a reasonable price...

coolspot18 said:

It's unfortunate it was included in the iMac in this case ... the iMac is hardly a workstation machine.

I still think real-professionals who need to move this much data will stick with tried and true technologies such as Fibre Channel. The costs are not that much - but you get even more storage and more peripheral choices. There's even an article on SmallNetBuilder about building your own FiberChannel SAN for < 1000.00USD!

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There's a level between Consumer and Enterprise. That level can't afford FiberChannel SANs but require better than consumer level devices.

Think SMBs. They don't have 100k$ budget to design a SAN using 8 Gbps HBAs, don't have the expertise for LUN provisionning nor setting up proper MPIO. Thunderbolt fits them well for DAS, 10GbE will do the job for NAS or a iSCSI SAN if they really have a bigger deployment than a few workstations.

This is mostly for Audio/Video studios that do and can work from MBPs and iMacs instead of Mac Pros.

You guys are waaaaaay too Black and White for your own goods. There are plenty of shades of gray out there.

FC for under 1k$ ? We're talking FCoE most probably using a GBE setup. Even if you were to use a Round-Robin policy over MPIO to your LUNs, that would give you max 2 Gbps bandwidth total for your entire storage accees. And would still require quite a bit more knowledge to setup than just plugging in a wire.

coolspot18 said:

Not possible unless computers have a massive internal disk array.

So it's a pointless example (for now) of the use of Thunderbolt.

Thunderbolt needs exciting applications that are possible TODAY, not fluff or niche applications to survive.

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And SSD speeds aren't getting faster every few months? Most decent SATA III drives are acheiving around 550 MB/s Read - Write. That's half the Thunderbolt bandwidth on the copper cable (10Gbps = 1,250MB/s). Give it a year and that could approach 700 to 800MB/s.

If the 100 Gbps cable was out already and being pushed hard, I would be surprised but 10Gbps is just the next obvious thing.

Tech198 said:

Make ya wonder now, if this is true, why Apple decided to keep Thunderbolt. They must of know its not as popular.

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Thunderbolt is firewire 2.0. A fast proprietary port that is not very widely used. So it's not unobvious why Apple went this route?

AidenShaw said:

There is no "optical" T-Bolt today - only copper.

There is no system with an optical T-Bolt port - only copper.

There is no peripheral with an optical T-Bolt port - only copper.

If T-Bolt survives to T-Bolt 2.0 with optical connections, it will most certainly be incompatible with copper T-Bolt 1.0.

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You're correct in point -- optical is only within the cable for length. It has to be converted to copper eventually.

The spec was designed for optical cables; copper was a substitute while cable prices came down. This is what Intel wanted from the start. There are fiber optic cables now -- Sumitomo is manufacturing them. They should be on the market this year. All of the Mac TB ports are also "fiber optic compatible" -- once those cables do come out, they will immediately be usable. Since the conversion back to copper is in-line, whether it happens on the cable or in the port...does it really matter?

the only problem with the fiber cables is power is not going through those like the copper cables

ljonesj said:

the only problem with the fiber cables is power is not going through those like the copper cables

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Yeah, but it seems like most TB devices that needs a separate cable have their own power supply anyway.

AidenShaw said:

My video files are on GbE over whole-house Cat6 cabling. With a switched GbE fabric - no bandwidth issues. (All variants of WiFi suck...)

My ISP guarantees about half the bandwidth of a single BD. Fail.

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So judgmental.

And in any case I was not talking about ones personal bandwidth at home today. I'm talking about bandwidth limitations of an entire internet system if we all cease storing our data and media at home and have to download everything we watch, read or listen to at home. Will the ISPs be able to keep up and will it be affordable?

solamar said:

TB is going 100GB, sooooo kinda this is more of a keep up move on USB's part..

IF you even consider them on the same usage scenario..

Thunderbolt is PCIe port on a cable.. One major difference and use, is true docking stations for laptops.. where you can get an external box, with PCI slots, and use true high-end video cards and other add-ons cards you could never put on a laptop with 100GB bus speeds. Disconnect, you're on the move and when back at your home/office, you're running a high-end system.

I know a few (I think Belkin was one) have working TB Dock models focused on this; scheduled for release in 2013.. Now I have to look them up again.. been a few months..

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TB only has a X4 pci-e link to the chip set so that really limits video cards and all it's takes is one video card to max out the bus and still be much slower then running at X8 or X16 with no TB overhead.

MadDawg2020 said:

3.) Belkin's Thunderbolt express dock. at 25,000:1 odds

4.) A new Mac Pro. 1,000,000,000:1 odds .

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I'll bet you 10 bucks on each of those.


edit:
LOL at an FCoE SAN for under $1000 USD.

You won't even get the number of spindles required to make it worth implementing for $1000.

You certainly won't get a 10Gb switch that can run its FCoE ports at guaranteed line-rate, and I doubt you'd even get more than a couple of 10Gb NICs either.

As stated earlier in thread, you'll need to up your budget by 30x plus to get anything worthy of being called a SAN



If you're trying to build an FCoE SAN with 1Gb, you're kidding yourself.

And as to putting Fibre channel on an iMac - they have thunderbolt instead. Which can then be used to plug in FC, 10GbE, e-SATA/SAS or whatever you like - rather than shipping with an assortment of ports that many users will never use. If it shipped with FC, you'd have people bitching that it had no e-SATA or no 10GbE....


People need to stop comparing Thunderbolt to USB, and think of it like a PCIe slot - because essentially, that's what it is.

Previously, iMacs have had no slots. previously, Macbooks have had no slots.

They still don't but now they have Thunderbolt, which gives them almost the same expansion capabilities - without needing to open the box, and without needing the internal enclosure space to permanently install the peripheral.



And as to what to use the speed for, and how no one will ever need 10 Gb or faster - I still need to wait for file copies. I still need to wait for backups.

Until those tasks are reduced in time to ZERO, i'll take whatever speed improvements I can get, thanks.

canman4PM said:

So judgmental.

And in any case I was not talking about ones personal bandwidth at home today. I'm talking about bandwidth limitations of an entire internet system if we all cease storing our data and media at home and have to download everything we watch, read or listen to at home. Will the ISPs be able to keep up and will it be affordable?

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You've heard of youtube, right?


Most of the internet's bandwidth is already made up of 1080p porn, cat videos, and bit-torrent downloads of movies already.

Streaming may actually REDUCE bandwidth, because for example I can currently download content faster than I can watch it. If I was streaming everything without a need to download, I'd potentially be using less bandwidth during peak times.

Tanax said:

Originally Posted by Tanax
So does this mean that all USB3 SuperSpeed peripherals that are out today will get 10Gbps with new USB3 cables? Or do they need to release updated peripherals with updated USB3 connectors/chipset?

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Anyone??

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No. The current generation of USB 3.0 SuperSpeed devices can only operate at up to 5 GT/s. According to the announcement at CES by the USB 3.0 Promoter Group, the next USB specification to introduce a speed increase is expected to be released at the end of 2014. At which point silicon will need to be designed, validated and certified before new devices supporting 10 GT/s transfer rates can be produced based on those chips. Even early adopters will likely have 3 years to prepare for the arrival of these products.

It would appear from the statements made that the 10 GT/s USB spec will continue to use ports and cables that are essentially the same electrically as those currently in use by USB 3.0 SuperSpeed devices. Therefore, some existing cables may allow operation at 10 GT/s when used with the new equipment capable of those transfer rates, however, not having been tested or validated at those speeds, they are not necessarily capable of supporting them.

the8thark said:

Thunderbolt is firewire 2.0. A fast proprietary port that is not very widely used. So it's not unobvious why Apple went this route?

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Your middle sentence there strikes me as inaccurate. FireWire is a trade name used by Apple for the IEEE 1394a/b standards which describe the interface. So not exactly proprietary at all. There is no way Thunderbolt, which is quite proprietary and belongs to Intel, is ever going to become an IEEE standard. And then the next bit: "not very widely used." Well perhaps not as an I/O interface on consumer PCs these days, but it is found in a LOT of places still. Look on the back of your cable television set top box, for instance, and you'll see a little 1394 port. 1394 is also used as a bus in industrial automation and has a history of applications in the avionics and automotive fields. 1394a is also still found on a shocking number of new PCs and motherboards, although Apple was really the torch bearer for including 1394b in consumer PCs.

An interface will be successful as long as OEMs pay for its inclusion because it is either useful or required. It is not necessarily always a popularity contest. There are plenty recording artists that are quite successful financially without ever being anything that could be regarded as "popular".

Every playstation 2 had a firewire port with a different plug on it. So i wouldn't say that firewire (aka IEEE 1394) is not widespread.

throAU said:

Every playstation 2 had a firewire port with a different plug on it. So i wouldn't say that firewire (aka IEEE 1394) is not widespread.

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Actually only the early PS2s had a FireWire port (or "iLink" as Sony called it). It was dropped during the later hardware revisions.

APlotdevice said:

Actually only the early PS2s had a FireWire port (or "iLink" as Sony called it). It was dropped during the later hardware revisions.

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Ahh didn't know it got dropped. I have an original

canman4PM said:

So judgmental.

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I'd call it "practical".

canman4PM said:

Will the ISPs be able to keep up and will it be affordable?

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No. And No.

The ISPs are struggling (and failing) to solve yesterday's problems.

CES is all about 4K video.

By the time the ISPs figure out how much extra to charge us for yesterday's problem, we'll be trying to download 4K video.

I predict a long and healthy life for optical media.

throAU said:

You've heard of youtube, right?


Most of the internet's bandwidth is already made up of 1080p porn, cat videos, and bit-torrent downloads of movies already.

Streaming may actually REDUCE bandwidth, because for example I can currently download content faster than I can watch it. If I was streaming everything without a need to download, I'd potentially be using less bandwidth during peak times.

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Yes, I've heard of YouTube. My kids live on it. And it seems to me most of the content is still less than high-def. in fact, tons of it is showing at less than 480p...

Don't recall seeing lossless audio either...

My point is (and I guess I'll have to use an extreme, never happen, example to get through), if 400,000,000 North Americans are all streaming 1080p (or worse 4k) media, with lossless audio, for their nightly entertainment, will there enough bandwidth available for all of us to be online at once, streaming our arses off? Will the content provider's servers be able to handle the volume? I seem to recall Apple's near meltdown the first couple of times they released a new iPhone and were flooded with activations. Never mind the first couple of iOS upgrade releases. I believe iOS upgrades are smaller than than a Blu-ray disc.

And before you scoff at 4K, Sony is already producing content, and has had a 4k projector available for a couple of years. 4k upscaling has been available on AV receivers for years and is today available on receivers only of slightly better quality than a Walmart home theatre in a box.