Is Sony Fragmenting Thunderbolt? Apple, not Intel, Applies for Thunderbolt Trademark

[xxBURT0Nxx]

Odd considering every 4K tv/monitor I have been able to find use HD-SDI/DVI/HDMI ports. I am still trying to find one that uses DP (or even mDP).

and i'm sure that intel couldn't get a 4k monitor with whatever port they want on it for their demo..

also considering the demo was from 2009, TB didn't have a dedicated connector, who knows if it was even hooked up via display port. But again I think it was different demos because the article is from this year, only video i can find with similar showing but not exactly is from IDC 2009 so perhaps pcmag is talking about a different time or maybe the journalist is falsely remembering the demo from idc, not really sure...

Are you new in following Apple? Apple never shows anything from their labs. Ever.

umm i said in my post that it doesn't look like an ACD in the video. And obviously they do, don't you remember the iphone 4 that was in a 3gs type case found at a bar? Who is to say apple isn't testing 4k displays and let intel use one for their demo? They did work together on the project, so i'm not saying it did happen, but it is possible that it could have happened. Regardless, none of us have been to all the press events and tech demos so how can we speculate on what was and wasn't there... i'm just quoting what the article said.

 

[KnightWRX]

Why Thunderbolt is Dead in the Water

Seems not everyone is a fervent believer in Thunderbolt :

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2385615,00.asp

 

[nanofrog]

Seems not everyone is a fervent believer in Thunderbolt :

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2385615,00.asp

There's a few good points in the article, but enterprise usage will take additional time. So I see the current implementation as a means of generating an income now, rather than later by targeting the portable consumer market (more in terms of convenience) and professionals that use portable systems (i.e. video and audio professionals doing field work, who could actually benefit more from the additional bandwidth that's available in TB vs. other currently available interconnects).

But even as it exists now, the mentions of costs is of concern, as TB was supposed to be no more than a $50 premium (stated $90 in parts is almost double, and a harder pill to swallow after R&D and margins are applied). Higher prices will hinder adoption, and if it doesn't take off now, it could be abandoned for the enterprise market (as the article mentioned, optical circuitry isn't cheap by any means, and I presume that the optical version ran into cost issues <parts costs exceeded budgets>, and may have been slower to develop or manufacture to meet the initial deadline <IIRC, it's already late in it's current form>).

I do hope that graphene based modulators will reach the market sooner than later, but we'll have to wait and see if the lab findings can be translated into a cheap commercial product in the time frame depicted in the article.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

What's more interesting than that article is the mega-rush of fanboys from here to defend their master's overpriced, over-hyped port in the opinion area. I mean come on, $200-300 more for the same external drives/devices over the identical speed USB3 versions (seeing as no consumer level device can saturate either one). WTF would buy that? Oh wait....

Firewire had a real usable difference over USB2 with common consumer devices (not just high-end high-speed RAID arrays) and it still failed big time as a consumer device. It had limited success in the professional industry and I see TB having the same fate unless they can rectify this USB port compatibility issue immediately (MDP users would have to use a dongle, but they have to already anyway for 99% of the monitors out there) AND they have to get the price down. No one in their right minds are going to pay $200-300 more for the same device with the same performance (i.e. excepting those professional devices that saturate USB3, which nary a consumer will EVER encounter), not to mention places like Best Buy won't carry such devices since no one will use/buy them.

Apple seems to be trying to force people to buy them by not including USB3, but I think that will disappear by next year as well (just like Apple left out USB2 and had to cave and include USB2 and change the iPod over to USB2). It seems Apple never ever learns their lesson. They always want to try to hold the world hostage to their formats (even trade-marking Intel's own technology!)

 

[xxBURT0Nxx]

just curious which drives you are referring to? Haven't seen any TB drives priced yet so I'm interested in seeing what their prices are.

 

[coldmack]

just curious which drives you are referring to? Haven't seen any TB drives priced yet so I'm interested in seeing what their prices are.

http://www.crunchgear.com/2011/02/24/lacie-is-the-first-with-a-thunderbolt-equpped-external-drive/

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

http://www.crunchgear.com/2011/02/24/lacie-is-the-first-with-a-thunderbolt-equpped-external-drive/

I like the graph where it says "theoretical transfer rates".

 

[coldmack]

I like the graph where it says "theoretical maximum transfer rates".

There fixed. If Apple came up with this tech it would be averaging those speeds; but, since this is Intel's technology or what have you it is crippled like a turtle with a broken leg.

 

[AidenShaw]

just curious which drives you are referring to? Haven't seen any TB drives priced yet so I'm interested in seeing what their prices are.

LaCie wants $300 for the 1 TB USB 2.0 version of the drive, so quoting $300 for the TBolt version seems like a low estimate. ($285 at Newegg for 1 TB)

It has a pair of 7200 RPM spinning hard disks. Expect the 500 GB SSD version to be $1200 or more.

http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?id=10278
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822154385

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

There fixed. If Apple came up with this tech it would be averaging those speeds; but, since this is Intel's technology or what have you it is crippled like a turtle with a broken leg.

I was referring to the fact that their drive will not come anywhere near those speeds on any interface (all interfaces are limited by the actual drives connected if they are below the theoretical maximum) so touting TD over USB3 is pointless with that product.

Show me some real world speeds with the same drive on TB and USB3 so I can actually see if it's worth the price premium (hard to imagine).

LaCie wants $300 for the USB version of the drive, so quoting $300 for the TBolt version seems like a low estimate.

http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?id=10278

The article suggested $200-300 more for the same product, not $300 total. That seems realistic based on the price premiums I've seen with many Firewire drives versus their USB2 versions. I had to pay $150 more for a FW800 version of a drive, but at least it was about 2x faster than using USB2. I doubt this TB version will be any appreciably faster than the USB3 version (particularly once the embedded USB3 boards come out from Intel).

 

[Rodimus Prime]

Seems not everyone is a fervent believer in Thunderbolt :

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2385615,00.asp

so basicly Apple is the one who screwed everything up. Sony is sticking with what Thunderbolt should of been. Using the USB socket....

 

[xxBURT0Nxx]

http://www.crunchgear.com/2011/02/24/lacie-is-the-first-with-a-thunderbolt-equpped-external-drive/

I see nothing in that link that says how much it will cost, it says how much a 250GB Intel 510 costs, that's it....???

LaCie wants $300 for the 1 TB USB 2.0 version of the drive, so quoting $300 for the TBolt version seems like a low estimate. ($285 at Newegg for 1 TB)

It has a pair of 7200 RPM spinning hard disks. Expect the 500 GB SSD version to be $1200 or more.

http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?id=10278
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822154385

How can you compare prices between a drive with 7200rpm drives and SSD's? Obviously the SSD is going to be more whether it uses usb 3.0 or Tb, and since the drive you linked is usb 2.0 i'm not sure its relevance.

 

[nanofrog]

(even trade-marking Intel's own technology!)

This isn't true; Intel does own the trademark for Thunderbolt (there was even a front page article on this a day or two ago).

http://www.crunchgear.com/2011/02/24/lacie-is-the-first-with-a-thunderbolt-equpped-external-drive/

All I saw on pricing had to do with the cost of a single Intel 510 SSD disk, not an MSRP for the LaCie product.

I like the graph where it says "theoretical transfer rates".

There's usually truth to this, but what you need to keep in mind, is that particular product is a stripe set of 2x Intel SSD's (510 series).

The article suggested $200-300 more for the same product, not $300 total. That seems realistic based on the price premiums I've seen with many Firewire drives versus their USB2 versions. I had to pay $150 more for a FW800 version of a drive, but at least it was about 2x faster than using USB2. I doubt this TB version will be any appreciably faster than the USB3 version (particularly once the embedded USB3 boards come out from Intel).

We'll have to wait and see. But it's this potentially high cost difference that will hinder the adoption of TB by consumers (audio/video pros on portable systems may be able to justify it for the speed/features, but they're small in number).

 

[AidenShaw]

The article suggested $200-300 more for the same product, not $300 total.

Hmmm. $600 for a 1 TB TBolt drive, vs. $80 for a 1 TB USB 3.0 drive.

Even at a $100 price premium, that would kill TBolt for most users. (Especially since it's $100 for each daisy in the chain.)

I'll bet the that price delta is closer to $50 after it's been around a while. At $200 it will never get critical mass.

 

[AidenShaw]

I see nothing in that link that says how much it will cost, it says how much a 250GB Intel 510 costs, that's it....???.

This link:

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2385615,00.asp

Just like FireWire, though, Thunderbolt is off to a slow start. Even in its non-optical, crippled copper state, Thunderbolt is prohibitively expensive. USB 3.0 controllers cost just a few dollars, while Thunderbolt hardware, we've been told, cost no less than $90. Matrox's new line of Thunderbolt-enabled products are $200-300 more than the eSATA or USB equivalent! As a result -- and FireWire had the same problem -- we will only see Thunderbolt-enabled devices where the price of the controller can be transparently absorbed by a high list price: video cameras, high-end audio gear, and so on.

And

http://www.matrox.com/video/en/press/releases/Matrox_Thunderbolt/

Matrox Thunderbolt adapters for all MXO2 devices can be purchased as an add-on at $299 US (£199, €249).

 

[xxBURT0Nxx]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

Thanks, other links didn't have that info

 

[nanofrog]

Hmmm. $600 for a 1 TB TBolt drive, vs. $80 for a 1 TB USB 3.0 drive.

Given the pricing of a single 250GB Intel 510 SSD is ~$500, it's going to be more than that. But it's the SSD aspect that makes the LaCie so expensive (granted, a $200 - 300 premium over that vs. USB 3.0 seems steep, but with SSD's, users that would purchase such a product will likely be more willing to pay it).

But if a 1TB mechanical disk has that same premium for the TB interface, it won't sell (mechanical can't remotely touch the throughput of TB; if a user daisy chained the limit, they could get close - but if we're talking about 6x of these disks @ even a $100 premium to use TB, that additional $600 would turn users away, and it's looking like the premium is more like $1200 - 1800 ). No one in their right mind would go this route for mechanical in this fashion.

So the market at this sort of additional cost for the interface only makes sense for SSD's and any other transfer that requires really fast throughputs (i.e. Promise Pegasus R6 = RAID card in an external enclosure over a TB interface). But this will be a niche market. Consumer users won't pony up the cash for this IMO, as it's just too expensive.

Even at a $100 price premium, that would kill TBolt for most users. (Especially since it's $100 for each daisy in the chain.)

I'll bet the that price delta is closer to $50 after it's been around a while. At $200 it will never get critical mass.

For consumer users, I agree. Such users would be willing to fork over $50, but past that, they'll have second thoughts, and the higher it is, the less time they'd need to consider it.

This link...

Another niche product.

But the cost of the TB card is telling... ($299 USD = Ouch! for consumers - pros that could actually benefit from it vs. other interconnects on portable systems would be able to justify it as they could with storage over TB).

 

[AidenShaw]

Agree.

Given the pricing of a single 250GB Intel 510 SSD is ~$500, it's going to be more than that.

The LaCie SSD is 500 GB, the 1 TB version is a pair of spinning hard drives. That will be the one to compare prices on, since it comes today with eSATA/1394/USB2.0 interfaces. There's no current SSD version (http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?id=10278).

 

[nanofrog]

The LaCie SSD is 500 GB, the 1 TB version is a pair of spinning hard drives. That will be the one to compare prices on, since it comes today with eSATA/1394/USB2.0 interfaces. There's no current SSD version (http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?id=10278).

I figured you were trying to compare it by capacity, where other products could be considered as well (either ready-made or if a user wanted to find a 2x disk enclosure that supports eSATA, FW, and USB 2.0 and their own choice of disks).

Either way, the mechanical disks over the currently available interfaces mentioned are cheaper (even if the user has to buy an eSATA card), and eSATA is fast enough it won't throttle the mechanical disks (get full speed out of a stripe set).

 

[AidenShaw]

TBolt the only variable

I figured you were trying to compare it by capacity...

No, I was trying to find a product where the only difference between two models was the TBolt controller.

I agree that the 1TB spinning disk RAID-0 version won't max out TBolt performance - 200-230 MB/s is all that the fastest 7200 RPM laptop drives can do in RAID-0 - but it's still a lot faster than 1394/USB if you can't use eSATA.

 

[nanofrog]

No, I was trying to find a product where the only difference between two models was the TBolt controller.

Hard to do ATM though, as there's no MSRP on the TB unit yet (can't dissect it to get a difference of the TB controller's portion of it).

but it's still a lot faster than 1394/USB if you can't use eSATA.

True. But there's more than just Apple's portable systems out there (i.e. more that do offer eSATA natively or an ExpressSlot that would allow a eSATA card to be used).

Unfortunately, for Mac users, ExpressSlot is the only chance they have of running eSATA, and not all of their systems are equipped with one. But your point is quite relevant in such cases.

 

[AidenShaw]

TBolt's can only survive at the high end

Hard to do ATM though, as there's no MSRP on the TB unit yet (can't dissect it to get a difference of the TB controller's portion of it).

Here's a device more suited to TBolt than a portable disk like the LaCie:

http://www.promise.com/storage/raid_series.aspx?region=en-US&m=574&rsn1=40&rsn3=47​

Up to 18 TB of hardware RAID (RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50, 60). It will be expensive enough that the price of the TBolt controller is a minor part of the package.

(Price hasn't been announced yet .)

 

[KnightWRX]

There's a few good points in the article, but enterprise usage will take additional time.

Most enterprise customers are moving away from host based storage solutions and more towards network based storage solutions (NAS over existing TCP/IP infrastructure or dedicated SANs). Host based storage is a nightmare to manage. TB being a host based technology pretty much garantees it's non-acceptance into enterprise solutions.

Small/medium business ? Yeah, I guess. Low server count to manage, so the problems of host based storages are minimized (though always there...), but then again, NAS is so cheap these days that even these businesses can get all the advantages of network based storage (pooling and consolidation of storage ressources) without added costs.

So what's left ? Consumers ? Looking at the current line-up of announced TB products, none of them seem to fit the "consumer" bill, price wise and feature wise. These storage solutions are pretty much all on the high-end, because let's face it, you don't need TB type interconnects to plug in a simple HDD drive.

The only market I see for TB is as a workstation interconnect. People having to work on really large datasets locally on very high-end workstations. Basically, Firewire's niche.

 

[coldmack]

Dang 18TB sounds like a wild amount of space. I'd like to meet the consumer, or Prosumer who even use half that space.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

Dang 18TB sounds like a wild amount of space. I'd like to meet the consumer, or Prosumer who even use half that space.

It's not quite as hard as you think. I've got a 3TB drive almost full with only 600 movies + 6000 songs and 5000 photos (server for my whole house audio/video system). Once you start putting HD movies onto a drive, space starts to go fast, particularly 1080p movies with lower amounts of compression (i.e. some say BD quality means at LEAST 10-12GB rips per movie. That's less than 100 movies a Terrabyte. 18TB would only be 1800 movies at that rate or maybe 1500 + a bunch of music and photos (not even counting a lot of games installed for a Windows platform, etc.). 1800 movies 'sounds' like a lot, but my dad has over 2000 movies on DVD alone (if those were BD 1080p MKV transfers, it'd be full).

And if you do any uncompressed HD video editing, you can fill up space so fast it'll make your head spin.