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Acer and Asus to Provide Momentum to Thunderbolt Adoption

mtbgtr said:
I would consider the lack of TB peripherals a big disadvantage to USB3. Then when they do come out the cost will be another big disadvantage to USB3. I keep saying it and will get all negative votes from fangirls but in its present form with the lack of anything to take advantage of TB's speed, its just another firewire. By the time firewire drives came down in cost it already lost the war to USB, which is really too bad.
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I've read through a lot of these threads on MR since TB was announced, and I could probably find 1 in 10 forum members that conceptually understand TB.

TB is fast now and will be faster still in the future, but it isn't just about data transfer. It's about latency, in the neighborhood of 8 ns, synchronization of data streams, and flexible protocols. These are not strengths of USB 3.0.

Apple, Asus, Acer, and Sony see a future of mobile devices morphing into full fledged workstations, and if that is what is desired, TB has the underlying technology that USB 3.0 does not.

Complementary is how Intel would describe TB an USB 3.0 and I would agree with that.
 
RoninTheDog said:
The problem is, will the connector be the same?

Apple's got ownership of the mini display-port connection, and it's only usable under their terms.

Apple needs to let the port become a standard. Until then I don't think it's really going to take off as much as USB 3.0 will.
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That's a good point. Toshiba has released notebooks with MDP connectors, so hopefully that bodes well for Acer and Asus being consistent with their thunderbolt implementation. Apple licenses the connector with no fee after all...
 
Mattsasa said:
I don't understand why people are worried about thunderbolt adoptation, pc manufacturers are simply just waiting for ivy bridge next year, cuz ivy bridge natively supports that... At this point has intel released the the stuff to manufacturers to make thnderbolt?

Think of it this way: thunderbolt will launch next year. Apple got it early becas use they helped develop it. And apple products have longer refresh cycles.
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Exactly. And there are Thunderbolt RAID drive accessories for professionals right now.


aristotle said:
You are not getting it. You can have USB ports from a Thunderbolt breakout hub.

In a sense, USB has become a subset of thunderbolt. Thunderbolt encompasses display port, USB and PCI.
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And Firewire.

Coming in the future: external graphics cards.
 
Interesting development.

There must be something in Thunderbolt that promises it to be more future proof than USB 3.0, or Asus would just keep with usb 3.0.
 
RoninTheDog said:
The problem is, will the connector be the same?

Apple's got ownership of the mini display-port connection, and it's only usable under their terms.

Apple needs to let the port become a standard. Until then I don't think it's really going to take off as much as USB 3.0 will.
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The mini displayport connector was accepted as a standard years ago. Now the mini displayport connector has also been accepted as the TB standard by Intel.
 
Hopefully this wider adoption will make Thunderbolt licensing fees go down.

Cause huge RAID boxes and 999$ displays are cool, but not accessible for most people. Putting Thunderbolt on cheaper stuff right now would have made it too expensive for what it is.

Now maybe we will see Thunderbolt thumbdrives and portable external storage, aka what 95% of people care about.
 
RoninTheDog said:
The problem is, will the connector be the same?

Apple's got ownership of the mini display-port connection, and it's only usable under their terms.

Apple needs to let the port become a standard. Until then I don't think it's really going to take off as much as USB 3.0 will.
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I thought mini DisplayPort was part to the DP standard as of 1.1a?
 
DESNOS said:
There really are no disadvantages to thunderbolt besides lack of physical backwards compatibility with USB.
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And cost. And the current size of the controller chip.

Though I expect both of those will be resolved sometime in the near future.

EDIT: I'm also thinking that even though we might not see external GPU's under OS X ever, what would stop someone from using one only when booted to Windows? The way I see it, you could connect the GPU only when booting windows (like for games or 3D modeling). I know there might be the EFI/BIOS issue, but am I missing something bigger that might prevent this?
 
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mtbgtr said:
By the time firewire drives came down in cost it already lost the war to USB, which is really too bad.
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Guess I never noticed much. Since the time the Blue & White G3 came out I've been using firewire on Macs- which has always been better than whatever version of USB was in use at the time up until USB 3. My faster disk performance, bus power, and daisy chaining never quite seemed to care if some "war" was "lost" to USB.
 
BornAgainMac said:
Sony is/was implementing Thunderbolt but with the USB connector. Is that still true?
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From what I read, Sony started on that particular project before the mini displayport connector was deemed the standard by Intel (the USB connector was first choice, but the USB org did not want that connector used for TB).
 
i just dislike how much room thunderbolt takes up. hopefully in some time that gets smaller too. I would still very much love to have USB 3.0 come to macs soon :)
 
Nostromo said:
There must be something in Thunderbolt that promises it to be more future proof than USB 3.0, or Asus would just keep with usb 3.0.
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TBolt is an excellent choice for a laptop docking station port - so that desktop I/O performance and connectivity will be possible when a small portable is docked,
 
KPOM said:
Thunderbolt is far better for video capture (several TB video capture devices were announced yesterday at IDF), while USB 3.0 is better for inexpensive flash drives and regular peripherals.
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I don't know why people keep perpetuating this myth. USB 3.0 isn't better for ANYTHING. It is just cheaper.
 
No mention of the port they will be using for Thunderbolt technology.

They could easily go the rout of Sony and use and USB plug.
 
BornAgainMac said:
Sony is/was implementing Thunderbolt but with the USB connector. Is that still true?
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Yes and no.

Sony's implementation — in ONE laptop as a docking station connector, not a line-wide thing — is not Thunderbolt; it's BASED on Thunderbolt. (Or based on Light Peak, as Sony likes to say it.) Sony's own marketing materials do not refer to it as Thunderbolt (because it's not); they call it a proprietary technology and describe the connector as the "Docking Station/USB port."

If you don't use the MDP connector, it's not Thunderbolt and can't be marketed as Thunderbolt.

In short: Sony is NOT using Thunderbolt. If Acer and Asus adopt Thunderbolt, it will be identical to Apple's implementation.
 
blackcrayon said:
Guess I never noticed much. Since the time the Blue & White G3 came out I've been using firewire on Macs- which has always been better than whatever version of USB was in use at the time up until USB 3. My faster disk performance, bus power, and daisy chaining never quite seemed to care if some "war" was "lost" to USB.
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Ah, but every ipod after 4th gen certainly cared. As well as many more add-ons to your computer.
 
scoobydoo99 said:
I don't know why people keep perpetuating this myth. USB 3.0 isn't better for ANYTHING. It is just cheaper.
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Cheaper can mean better. If I can buy a USB3 gigabit ethernet adapter for cheaper than a Thunderbolt one then it is better for the end user. Better is not all about capability
 
This is awesome news.

I've got these two super-powerful thunderbolt ports in the back of my iMac and they've done nothing but look pretty since I've purchased the machine! :(

The sooner I get to really unleash the power of these ports, the better. :)
 
MacRumors said:
HP has of course since announced that it will be exiting the PC business.
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Not quite... they are out of the tablet business for sure but they are still on the fence about their PC division. They announced that they were looking into selling/spinning off their PC division, but they haven't officially made that decision just yet. They will keep operating more or less as normal for the time being, as shown in their recent release of new workstation models.
 
scoobydoo99 said:
I don't know why people keep perpetuating this myth. USB 3.0 isn't better for ANYTHING. It is just cheaper.
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And TBolt isn't good for ANYTHING.

By that I mean there are not any current or announced native TBolt peripherals, and probably never will be.

The TBolt storage units are not TBolt disks - they are a TBolt controller bridged to a PCIe bus with a PCIe SATA controller connected to SATA disks. ($ cha-ching $)

Same with the Apple TBolt Display - it's a Display Port display housed with a TBolt controller bridged to a PCIe bus with a PCIe USB 2.0 controller, a PCIe 1394 controller, and a PCIe GbE NIC (and possibly a PCIe audio controller).

There are no native TBolt devices, and probably never will be.


Henriok said:
It's true and it's in violation of both the USB and the Thunderbolt standard. I can't imagine that they can keep that up for long.
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My Latitude XT2 (w/o internal optical) came with a powered external eSATA DVD-RW drive. The port will accept both USB 2.0 devices and eSATA devices. The Dell DVD-RW drive has a funky plug that connects to the signal pins for eSATA, and the power pins from USB to power the drive.

Dell's been using that design for years, so I don't think that Sony is at risk.
 
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