Fiber Optic Thunderbolt Cables Begin Mass Production, Available Up to 30m in Length

[Pakaku]

Originally Posted by herocero

video and audio studios, when the whirl of a single fan in a hotter than hell RAID enclosure effects playback/monitoring performance. you get to keep the physical studio interfaces and connections (i.e. to ProTools interfaces) in the control room, and the computer, hard drives, etc. in a sound proofed remote room.

We all know where Apple stands when it comes to the Pro market

[bedifferent]

Originally Posted by Pakaku

We all know where Apple stands when it comes to the Pro market

Lord, don't I know it. I really, really, really, really, really hope this changes - or in the least finds some common ground.

[Garsun]

Apple will need to come up with a Female to female Thunderbolt adapter to make it possible to move their monitor-interface hub to the other room from the Mac Mini. Another small additional expense. Still it will be nice to move the monitor/Keyboard and mouse out of the cramped server room and onto the desk in my office

[Lesser Evets]

It will become "affordable" in 2020. If lucky.

By then it will be surpassed by USB 12.0 which costs $1 per for of cord.

[chabig]

Originally Posted by MacRumors

As ZDNet points out, these currently unpriced cables could be used to put noisy Thunderbolt data storage devices like the Drobo 5D in a soundproofed closet, away from the host Mac.

I have a Drobo 5D. They've done a great job with the fan. It's quieter than my MacBook Pro most of the time.

[mac1984user]

I would love to justify the expense of a Thunderbolt RAID 2-bay HDD setup for my 2011 Mac Mini (without USB 3.0), but to be honest, it would be about as cheap for me to replace my computer with the current model and buy a USB 3.0 RAID enclosure to use with my existing hard drives. Thunderbolt accessories are ridiculously expensive. I only have myself to blame for believing Apple about the eventual ubiquity of this data transfer method.

[zoltamatron]

I imagine these cables are really aimed at large live video installations (concerts, performance, etc.) where you need a HD feed to travel a long distance from the host computer to the monitor/projector. Given that you can also daisy chain several monitors off of one line (if I remember correctly about thunderbolt) this could really be a nice solution for serving a lot of separate images. I did a show a while back that used fiber optic 100m HDMI cables that cost about $3000 apiece so I imagine these will be somewhere in that ballpark, less perhaps since they are shorter.

[PeanutButterMan]

Originally Posted by Dwalls90

30m .. why? Lol

That's 100 feet.

Because of "noise"? #FirstWorldProblems ... mechanical HDD's are hardly annoying, and SSD is the future especially for thunderbolt.

Speak for yourself. I work on HDDs all day (let me know when you can get 24TB of SSDs for under a grand and we'll talk), and I'd love to put them away in a closet and run 100' of TB cable through my house.

[Builddesign]

Good bye cable companies
Hello google fiber

[kemal]

...Will it cost more than the new non-upgradable Mac Pro?

[maxwelltech]

Great. How much?

[rmwebs]

Originally Posted by musicmanalex1

I wouldn't be surprised if they added this little invention to the next Apple Announcement coming in early 2013. Chances are it will be in March or it might be June. Who knows for sure!

Honestly, I'd rather see it announced alongside someone like HP, Acer, Lenovo, or any other Windows-based OEM. It'd gain a hell of a lot more traction to the 'outside world' who currently think of it as another proprietary Apple flop (which is pretty much true in its current state).

Until it's made more widely available on computers, nobody will be willing to make anything Thunderbolt compatible in any sort of decent volume, thus the price will never become acceptable.

[TMay]

Originally Posted by Lareson

Rack-mounted workstations would work perfectly for this too. A whole entire room of workstations with all of the towers located in one closet. Only things that would be on the desk is a docking stations with a monitor, keyboard, and mouse.

Can imagine this with Mac Minis, since then if the computer needed to be replaced or fixed, all you'd have to do is disconnect the power and TB cable and install the new one. Would mean no more climbing underneath a desk to get a tower out. Also would be way more secure too since the workstations can be locked away then too.

Might want to do a thermal study on that scenario, i.e., air-conditioning that closet.

[Westside guy]

Originally Posted by bedifferent

I imagine it would be best suited for server based systems.

Those of us who have to deal with server rooms on a regular basis can tell you noise from a peripheral is not a consideration - the places are already bloody loud.

[TouchMint.com]

Maybe the price of the regular ones will drop?

I just can't justifity spending 50+ on a cable to speed up my Mac migration lol.

[spoonie1972]

i haven't bought a single TB item or cable yet.

still waiting for reasonable pricing.

[TMay]

Originally Posted by mac1984user

I would love to justify the expense of a Thunderbolt RAID 2-bay HDD setup for my 2011 Mac Mini (without USB 3.0), but to be honest, it would be about as cheap for me to replace my computer with the current model and buy a USB 3.0 RAID enclosure to use with my existing hard drives. Thunderbolt accessories are ridiculously expensive. I only have myself to blame for believing Apple about the eventual ubiquity of this data transfer method.

TB devices that are SSD are the way to go for performance, and USB 3.0 will be better by far for Time Machine backup rather than as working drives for large projects. Check out the Other World Computing Helios PCIe extender chassis with the Accelsior PCIe SSD card, which easily exceed USB 3.0 capabilities.

At some point, there will be SSD capability designed to saturate or exceed the bandwidth of the current TB channels, anticipating the TB future roadmap of 100Gb.

[rmwebs]

Originally Posted by bedifferent

I imagine it would be best suited for server based systems.

Not in datacenters it wouldnt.

Generally you'll just have your servers racked up with power and ethernet - you dont need anything else.

In MOST cases you'll never hook monitors up to a server, and if you do it'll be from a crummy onboard gfx card (most likely VGA as well) for terminal use only.

Really all the thunderbolt port is doing is changing your options from plugging a ~$50 VGA monitor along with a $2 keyboard directly into the server (so 2 ports) to just 1 thunderbolt, going into an expensive hub.

Really not worth it.

Heck some places I've seen dont even have onboard graphics, and instead just have drivers for USB graphics cards that get plugged in when someone cant access the server via remote console.

---

I assume you may have been talking about the Mac Pro server market, in which case it's still going to be the same situation (in 90% of cases, you never, ever should work directly on the server).

The only time I can see it being useful is for read/write to disks, but even then, there's a very tiny usage market for writing at 10gbps that needs to be done 30 meters away from the server.

[bedifferent]

Originally Posted by rmwebs

Not in datacenters it wouldnt.

Generally you'll just have your servers racked up with power and ethernet - you dont need anything else.

In MOST cases you'll never hook monitors up to a server, and if you do it'll be from a crummy onboard gfx card (most likely VGA as well) for terminal use only.

Really all the thunderbolt port is doing is changing your options from plugging a ~$50 VGA monitor along with a $2 keyboard directly into the server (so 2 ports) to just 1 thunderbolt, going into an expensive hub.

Really not worth it.

Heck some places I've seen dont even have onboard graphics, and instead just have drivers for USB graphics cards that get plugged in when someone cant access the server via remote console.

---

I assume you may have been talking about the Mac Pro server market, in which case it's still going to be the same situation (in 90% of cases, you never, ever should work directly on the server).

The only time I can see it being useful is for read/write to disks, but even then, there's a very tiny usage market for writing at 10gbps that needs to be done 30 meters away from the server.

Yet, data centers weren't mentioned. Home workstations/servers was the example I, and others, gave.

How would this not be beneficial given the setup I described? As others have stated, placing a noisy, cumbersome system when film editing or simply needing the space tucked away makes perfect sense. I did mention a graphics box connected via Thunderbolt and other devices using the copper wiring, the fiber optics cable would be best suited running a long distance to the workstation - hence the 30m length mentioned in the article. Since a Mac Pro utilizes server grade processors, and one does work directly on a Mac Pro, I don't know what you mean by stating 90% of the time you wouldn't work directly on a server. My apologies for the confusion, I meant in regards to a Mac Mini or Mac Pro setup.

If you're using a corporate server based situation, this is not the example being discussed

[TMay]

Originally Posted by PeanutButterMan

Speak for yourself. I work on HDDs all day (let me know when you can get 24TB of SSDs for under a grand and we'll talk), and I'd love to put them away in a closet and run 100' of TB cable through my house.

I'll bet that even you would agree that the working dataset for a large project, i.e., digital video or digital audio would be best served off an SSD drive, but for backup, your economics are correct.

[bedifferent]

Originally Posted by Westside guy

Those of us who have to deal with server rooms on a regular basis can tell you noise from a peripheral is not a consideration - the places are already bloody loud.

Again, I am referring to the Mac Pro (server processors/work station setup), as in my example. Data centers are not what my example illustrated. Apologies for the confusion.

[longofest]

Originally Posted by Dwalls90

30m .. why? Lol

That's 100 feet.

Because of "noise"? #FirstWorldProblems ... mechanical HDD's are hardly annoying, and SSD is the future especially for thunderbolt.

Apparently you haven't heard many RAID arrays with fans spun up to keep the HDs cool.

[SockRolid]

2 months from now: 18 inch optical Thunderbolt cables by Monster Cable: $100.

9 months from now: 18 inch optical Thunderbolt cables by Monoprice: $10.

[pubwvj]

The lack of electric in the cables is a big advantage. It provides electrical isolation between systems. 20 years ago I setup a system where the notes were electrically isolated to protect them from EMPs by using fiber optic cable. This was a big advancement in security and reliability. I don't like it that Apple keeps changing the cables and connectors but this is once instance where they're making a great improvement.

[jazbo brown]

Having 100 cables lengths means professional multi-room installations are no longer hampered by length-restricted consumer cables like HDMI, USB, Firewire, etc. For example, in a recording studio, the computers and terabytes of storage are typically in a separate sound proof machine room, then there are monitors and keyboards in the control room where the engineer sits, and more monitors and more USB inputs in the tracking room where the artist (e.g. in film the artists need to see whats on the screen). The distances between the rooms are typically more than USB and HDMI will go, so in the past you end up with repeaters, or converting to ethernet and then back to USB/HDMI, or whatever. Now you can just put a thunderbolt USB/HDMI doc in each room, connected with a 100' thunderbolt cable - easy, and reliable, and compared to the alternatives, cheap.

If you just have a hard drive sitting next to your iMac, then no, this isn't for you.