What's the bandwidth for a 23/27" Monitor? The test I saw which hovered around 750MB/s was playing multiple 1080p HD video streams, I believe the 750 was being pulled off the array, but the same cable was also being used for display (there, your opposite direction).
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Apple Launches MacBook Pros with Thunderbolt, Quad Core CPUs, AMD GPUs
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What's the bandwidth for a 23/27" Monitor? The test I saw which hovered around 750MB/s was playing multiple 1080p HD video streams, I believe the 750 was being pulled off the array, but the same cable was also being used for display (there, your opposite direction).
I admit I've been confused a bit about the new Thunderbolt
Copper Connector after reading that future Thunderbolt connectors
might be true optical.
What I think is making more sense is that these connectors must
use copper to provide bus power, but the cables themselves might
be combined powered bus with true fiber-optic.
Dazed and confused.
Copper Connector after reading that future Thunderbolt connectors
might be true optical.
What I think is making more sense is that these connectors must
use copper to provide bus power, but the cables themselves might
be combined powered bus with true fiber-optic.
Dazed and confused.
Hybrid SSD/HDD's have been out since early last year
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/laptops/laptop-hdd
why wait for apple? just get one NOW or even better, go buy a full out SSD thats sandforce controlled,
copper is cheaper, apple cheapped out
Apple went with "USB 1.0"
Do you remember USB 1.0?
Neither does anyone else - since it basically didn't work. It wasn't until USB 1.1 that it was really usable. (The "space egg" plastic CRT Imacs had USB 1.1.)
Apple is putting a completely new interconnect on their systems, when it is obvious that it would be impossible to even test the interface against products on the market.
Hmmm. Bleeding edge interface with completely new issues (e.g. hot-plug PCIe), which can't possibly have been tested to any realistic degree.
In a year or two, when they get optical working (and possibly drop the hack of using a Mini-DisplayPort connector), LightPeak may become interesting. Or, it may follow FW800 into the dustbin at the Computer History Museum.
Do you remember USB 1.0?
Neither does anyone else - since it basically didn't work. It wasn't until USB 1.1 that it was really usable. (The "space egg" plastic CRT Imacs had USB 1.1.)
Apple is putting a completely new interconnect on their systems, when it is obvious that it would be impossible to even test the interface against products on the market.
Hmmm. Bleeding edge interface with completely new issues (e.g. hot-plug PCIe), which can't possibly have been tested to any realistic degree.
In a year or two, when they get optical working (and possibly drop the hack of using a Mini-DisplayPort connector), LightPeak may become interesting. Or, it may follow FW800 into the dustbin at the Computer History Museum.
The Thunderbolt on all new Macs support both copper and fiber optic.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Please send us links to order both copper and fibre cables today.
I'd like one 2m copper and two 5m fibres.
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MBP and external monitors
So if this has already been asked please forgive me but I am wondering if Thunderbolt or MBP allows you to now run more than one external monitor? I'd upgrade in minutes if that's the case. I now run Matrox Duelhead 2Go to use 2 external monitors and it breaks constantly.
Thanks,
KP
So if this has already been asked please forgive me but I am wondering if Thunderbolt or MBP allows you to now run more than one external monitor? I'd upgrade in minutes if that's the case. I now run Matrox Duelhead 2Go to use 2 external monitors and it breaks constantly.
Thanks,
KP
I don't care how you look at it, Apple should still be including USB3 on all new models regardless of Thunderbolt. They should/could even make the USB3 ports a part of the Light Peak bus internally, thus saving precious space in the notebook motherboard designs. As it is, it just seems half-arsed with one port and no USB3 connection.
I'm curious how many of these Thunderbolt ports Apple will put on the Mac Pro whenever they get around to updating it. For that matter, how will they deal with the whole PCI-Express graphics card thing? Use Thunderbolt ports without the whole mini-display port dual-connector trick? Will future internal cards plug into a bus port instead and then pass the output through? The latter seems unlikely given the advantage of a dedicated video output port (sharing a port means a headache of getting a "pass-through" for the video output, which all existing monitors do not support and therefore the monitor would have to be disconnected and connected to the Thunderbolt device (e.g. an external hard drive) pass-through instead (a total PITA).
And now that Apple has the port on the MBP models, who is going to want to buy the existing Mac-Mini and Mac Pro lines knowing full well that Intel is NOT going to offer it on a card for the Mac Pro? You'd be buying an obsolete model for the indefinite future. Given Apple refuses to support USB3 (at least for now), that means any Mac Pro you buy is outdated and outmoded. The only USB3 PCI-E cards I've seen only work with the same company's hard drives the last time I looked (i.e. worthless) and who knows if they'll work at all in Lion.
I'm curious how many of these Thunderbolt ports Apple will put on the Mac Pro whenever they get around to updating it. For that matter, how will they deal with the whole PCI-Express graphics card thing? Use Thunderbolt ports without the whole mini-display port dual-connector trick? Will future internal cards plug into a bus port instead and then pass the output through? The latter seems unlikely given the advantage of a dedicated video output port (sharing a port means a headache of getting a "pass-through" for the video output, which all existing monitors do not support and therefore the monitor would have to be disconnected and connected to the Thunderbolt device (e.g. an external hard drive) pass-through instead (a total PITA).
And now that Apple has the port on the MBP models, who is going to want to buy the existing Mac-Mini and Mac Pro lines knowing full well that Intel is NOT going to offer it on a card for the Mac Pro? You'd be buying an obsolete model for the indefinite future. Given Apple refuses to support USB3 (at least for now), that means any Mac Pro you buy is outdated and outmoded. The only USB3 PCI-E cards I've seen only work with the same company's hard drives the last time I looked (i.e. worthless) and who knows if they'll work at all in Lion.
Intel doesn't even use it yet and Apple bases their designs on Intel reference.
They've been fairly good at updating when Intel does. 125W Sandy Bridge CPUs are still a ways off.
I don't see the lack or presence of TB ports breaking or making a purchase. If it is task critical, they'll just wait for the update, not disregard the product line all together.
The mini displayport connector isn't a hack, it was licensed from Apple to be incorporated into the thunerbolt standard since the USB-IF rejected intels request to base it on USB connectors like the early light peak prototypes.
The way they've incorporated mini displayport into Thunderbolt in such a manner that displayport works with it really is very clever IMO.
One thing I've inferred from the discussions I've read is that somewhere down the line Thunderbolt monitors, as opposed to displayport monitors, will crop up and 2 of these will be usable on the same TB chain (possibly a TB monitor with a displayport monitor on the end as well I guess).
Yes, Thunderbolt is cutting edge, but not tested? Seriously, you think Intel releases new hardware without having given it a good few runs round the block first?
As soon as the Thunderbolt i7 Mac Mini arrives, I'm there.
No one forces Apple to be lazy sods. They could easily add USB3 if they wanted to. Intel isn't doing it because they are playing standards games and are hoping to somehow de-rail USB3. Who cares about the consumer in all of this?
You could most likely build a Hackintosh in 6 months to a year with both on it, but without proper OSX drivers, the USB3 interface would only be useful when booting Windows or Linux.
I never said they would disregard it. I said who is going to buy the current lineup knowing its outdated in a way that cannot be upgraded in the future short of buying another machine. Even if I don't need Thunderbolt for the foreseeable future, I don't want to buy a machine that cannot possibly be upgraded to it in case I do need it in a couple of years. With a normal PC, you could simply swap your motherboard to get it and move everything else over. Apple doesn't sell updated motherboards. They want to sell you a whole new machine at exorbitant prices just to add a single new feature. This is why I'm going Hackintosh and saying the heck on Apple for desktops. I'm done playing their games.
I called Apple Tech Support today to get some clarification about the Thunderbolt port.
The port is dual purpose optical/bus power.
The connecting cables will also be dual purpose optical/bus power.
If the port was dedicated optical only, you would not have power
to your peripherals. So the Copper in the TB connection port
is not there because Apple was cheap. It's there to provide
10 volts of bus power.
The tech crews are just learning about this as we are,
since this is all coming out of Intel.
So far, no rock solid confirmation that the port will be Hot Swappable.
The lead tech supervisor on call was not certain, so they are looking into it.
Until we get absolute confirmation, I would not connect any cable
to the Thunderbolt port while the machine is up and running.
Of course it would be ideal if you can connect and disconnect future
devices and cables worry free like USB, but there is so much
connected to this port internally, that for now I would play it
safe, shutting down when you connect to your computer.
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Intel *does* ship USB 3.0
This is misleading.
If you look at Intel's motherboards for Sandy Bridge CPUs - 8 out of 10 have USB 3.0. Two micro-ATX boards don't have it, although four other micro-ATX boards do have USB 3.0.
In other words, all Intel Sandy Bridge ATX motherboards have USB 3.0, and USB 3.0 is available on an Intel board in every form factor.
There's a big difference between testing in a secret lab with a few prototype devices, and field testing with a range of production devices and environments. That's what I meant by can't possibly have been tested to any realistic degree.
It's a hack in the sense that a dual-purpose port is good for some things, bad for others.
Consider that you have your mDP monitor connected, and you want to connect your Thunderbolt array. Unplug the monitor, plug the drive into the mDP port, plug the monitor into the array. Add another drive - unplug the monitor again, add 2nd drive, reconnect monitor.
Now, remove the first drive. Oops, can't do that without unplugging the second drive - this could mean a shutdown/restart, or at least dismounting the second drive.
And what if you have a new Apple monitor that's a thunderbolt device (an mDP monitor with Thunderbolt devices - like USB/card readers, disks (think of an Imac without a CPU, just a board with a bunch of PCIe devices)). If you unplug the monitor, all those PCI devices disappear. Or, you can go behind the monitor and daisy-chain the drive off the Thunderbolt port on the display. (I assume that Apple wouldn't put the port in a convenient location on the front or side.)
Much of the hassle here comes from daisy-chaining, so lets put a couple of more Thunderbolt ports on the laptop. Now it becomes wierd. Are the two new ports Thunderbolt-only (no DisplayPort signals). Do you now have three identical ports, but your monitor only works in one of them?
Or, the USB 3.0 spec timeline didn't work for Intel's multi-year chipset development schedules. Or, after the USB 1.0 mess, Intel wanted the spec to stabilize in the wild before embedding it in the core silicon.
The fact that all Intel Sandy Bridge ATX motherboards have USB 3.0 doesn't exactly mesh with "trying to de-rail" USB 3.0.
Welcome to the bleeding edge - particularly with a non-locking connector that might have hot-plug issues.
This is misleading.
If you look at Intel's motherboards for Sandy Bridge CPUs - 8 out of 10 have USB 3.0. Two micro-ATX boards don't have it, although four other micro-ATX boards do have USB 3.0.
In other words, all Intel Sandy Bridge ATX motherboards have USB 3.0, and USB 3.0 is available on an Intel board in every form factor.
There's a big difference between testing in a secret lab with a few prototype devices, and field testing with a range of production devices and environments. That's what I meant by can't possibly have been tested to any realistic degree.
It's a hack in the sense that a dual-purpose port is good for some things, bad for others.
Consider that you have your mDP monitor connected, and you want to connect your Thunderbolt array. Unplug the monitor, plug the drive into the mDP port, plug the monitor into the array. Add another drive - unplug the monitor again, add 2nd drive, reconnect monitor.
Now, remove the first drive. Oops, can't do that without unplugging the second drive - this could mean a shutdown/restart, or at least dismounting the second drive.
And what if you have a new Apple monitor that's a thunderbolt device (an mDP monitor with Thunderbolt devices - like USB/card readers, disks (think of an Imac without a CPU, just a board with a bunch of PCIe devices)). If you unplug the monitor, all those PCI devices disappear. Or, you can go behind the monitor and daisy-chain the drive off the Thunderbolt port on the display. (I assume that Apple wouldn't put the port in a convenient location on the front or side.)
Much of the hassle here comes from daisy-chaining, so lets put a couple of more Thunderbolt ports on the laptop. Now it becomes wierd. Are the two new ports Thunderbolt-only (no DisplayPort signals). Do you now have three identical ports, but your monitor only works in one of them?
Or, the USB 3.0 spec timeline didn't work for Intel's multi-year chipset development schedules. Or, after the USB 1.0 mess, Intel wanted the spec to stabilize in the wild before embedding it in the core silicon.
The fact that all Intel Sandy Bridge ATX motherboards have USB 3.0 doesn't exactly mesh with "trying to de-rail" USB 3.0.
Welcome to the bleeding edge - particularly with a non-locking connector that might have hot-plug issues.
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Yes, but it's the board manufacturers putting it there. It's not in Intel's reference design.
No one forces Apple to be lazy sods. They could easily add USB3 if they wanted to. Intel isn't doing it because they are playing standards games and are hoping to somehow de-rail USB3. Who cares about the consumer in all of this?
You act like Apple doesn't play that game. Where's my blu-ray? iOS flash support? etc.
While that's your prerogative, that's not the path that makes sense for most apple users. They buy Mac OSX so they don't have to worry about tedious updates.
They're Intel boards
But those are Intel boards, designed and manufactured by Intel !
The "reference" design is a guide - not a mandate. In particular, you can route PCIe lanes to about any PCIe gizmo you want to put on the board.
But those are Intel boards, designed and manufactured by Intel !
The "reference" design is a guide - not a mandate. In particular, you can route PCIe lanes to about any PCIe gizmo you want to put on the board.
I don't know an awful lot about hardware testing in this field, but I do know that Intel have released a hell of a lot of semiconductor technologies without anything blowing up in their face to the extent you suggest. I think I'll dismiss the possibility and let you have the opportunity to say I told you so in the unlikely event that you're proven right!
To be frank, in this day and age I would be dumbstruck if Thunderbolt isn't hot-pluggable. It would raise serious questions about the competence of the engineers if they hadn't built for hot plugging. No, I'd be prepared to bet that it's hot pluggable.
Besides which, I hear your arguments about plugging and unplugging things in the chain and having to disconnect other devices in the process, I'm just not sure why I'd be doing that every couple of minutes. Any devices I wanted to take away with me I'd keep closest to the laptop in the chain. Any minor inconvenience there is from managing the chain is massively offset by being able to put the laptop on the desk, plug one cable and use the lot of the peripherals instantly.
Despite all that, whoever came up with the name should be sacked for being an idiot. You can have a clap of thunder, or a bolt of lightning, but there's no such thing as a thunderbolt! Even the abbreviation, TB, is a disaster. Everyone will think you're talking about tuberculosis. :-/
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This is good to know. Thanks AidenShaw for bringing this to my attention. FW800 has one lousy connection to the machine, and although TB looks to be more secure, I'd hate to have it pull out by accident.
You are right, welcome to the bleeding, untested, Rev A., probably rushed to market edge.
WTF those are intel boards made by intel (or an intel owned factory in china)
did you even click on his link? hes not pointing to newegg, although newegg is about the same ratio too
That's funny. I thought I just said they were playing that game.
I don't presume to speak for "most people" on here, but a lack of "tedious upgrades" is not even in my top 10 list of reasons to use OSX. In fact, it's not in the list at all. I already have one Hackintosh and most updates are the same as any other Mac through Software Update. Once I had to reload the audio driver. Once in awhile you update the program that provides the machine specific drivers. It's not exactly rocket science, dude.
I like/use OSX because it's free of malware and I like the interface better than Windows. I like it doesn't slow down as you add more software. I like the Unix underpinnings. I like not having a registry (for both speed and ease of installing and removing most software).
I don't like Apple telling me I cannot have a matte screen or that I don't need a card slot on a MBP or that they refuse to provide an access door so I can swap the battery if I need to (all about them providing a replacement for a fee, not "ease of use"). I don't like Apple using Mini-Display Port (my MBP has full size DVI which many monitors come with a cable for even) when very few monitors support it (means you have to keep track of adapters and probably purchase one or more adapters). I don't like them not offering BTO options for anything from 7200 PRM drives to SSD drives whenever they feel like not offering them (leaving me in a situation where I might have to void my warranty just to install something they don't want to sell on a particular model at a particular time while other companies offer any build option you might like (or let you build your own whereas Apple says you're not allowed). I also don't like Apple heading towards iOS features instead of keeping up with OpenGL, improving dual-display support, etc. (i.e. real features).
Yes, I understand these points. The point is that it's not native to the H67 or P67 chipset. That's all. Herego, apple isn't forced to have a dedicated USB 3.0 controller and then it's not an issue of them simply not offering a port on the machine for it.
That's funny. I thought I just said they were playing that game.
You said that apple were lazy sods and that intel was the one playing games, though the distinction is really irrelevant at this point.
How about the Pentium floating point bug? Or the fact that the first round of support chipsets for Sandy Bridge have SATA ports that fail?
The issue isn't really whether the PHY layer of Thunderbolt can handle hot-plugging. I agree - I would be gob-smacked if hot-plugging (or unplugging) the cable fried your motherboard.
The issue is software. Here's Intel's simplified diagram of Thunderbolt:
(click to enlarge)
When you hot-plug (add) a Thunderbolt device, in some sense you're adding PCIe slots to the motherboard, with cards in those slots. When you unplug a Thunderbolt cable, slots and cards disappear.
The only two announced devices coming for Thunderbolt are RAID arrays. Internally, those will have a PCIe SATA controller with RAID capability.
What would you expect to happen if you took the cover off your Mac Pro and removed a PCIe RAID card while it was running? What would you expect to happen if you added a PCIe RAID controller with attached disks while Apple OSX was running?
I think for most people who understand the situation, the answer would be "kernel panic".
So, I wouldn't expect a puff of smoke (a literal "Thunderbolt") when hot-plugging. I wouldn't be surprised, however, that the word "reboot" comes up a lot - especially initially - when discussing hot-plugging.
For example, I use eSATA devices. With Windows 7/Server 2008 R2 - no problem with adding an eSATA device, it simply appears (and asks if you want to open explorer on it). Removal - you should first unmount the drive before unplugging it. (If you don't, you may get the "need to run chkdsk" when you reconnect. The chance of data loss with NTFS is extremely small.)
My Windows Server 2003 system (actually WHS), does not see the drive appear when it's connected. It's connect then reboot. To remove the drive, I restart the server and unplug it during the POST screen.
I have no idea how XP/Vista/Server 2008 handle the situation - my only instances of those systems are in virtual machines, so they don't see the raw hardware.
Unless, of course, you need to shut down your laptop both to connect it to the chain and to disconnect it.
And "clap of thunder" brings up thoughts of another disease.
But, the
(click to enlarge)
It's gob-smacking to hear arguments that "USB 3.0 sucks, it's not native - I want Thunderbolt".
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If anyone's thinking about getting the new MacBook Pro 2011 model I'd advise them to wait until some updates have been released as it's terribly buggy.
I speak from experience, alas...
I speak from experience, alas...