Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/9A5248d Safari/6533.18.5)

orfeas0 said:
$50 just for the cable?! :eek:

all apple cables and adapters cost 50$... :/

but can't you connect 2 macbooks with the TB cable to transfer files? i mean with normal mode, not target disk mode!

xUKHCx said:
Promise don't include a cable, seems pretty cheap of them.

Granted the cable is expensive but still.
SO SO SO cheap!! have you ever seen an external usb disk drive without the usb cable..?

Yes, almost every drive I've ever bought.
 
A PCIe 2.0 breakout box needs to support PICe 2.0 bandwidth. What is PCIe 2.0 bandwidth?

Each PCIe 2.0 lane needs 500 MB/sec. That's bytes, not bits. A high end 16 lane graphics card needs to be fed at a rate of 8 GB/sec, so that's a bit rate of (at least) 64 Gb/sec. 100 Gbps fiber optic Light Peak can handle that, but Apple's 10 Gbps copper T-bolt can't. T-bolt can't even handle 16 lane PCIe 1.0 that is half the speed of PCIe 2.0.

If you can get by with cheap, low-demand video cards and single lane cards then maybe a T-bolt breakout box might work. Maybe.

Just wait for the fiber. You'll be glad you did.
Either you don't know how to read or your brain has a hard time functioning, so i'll try to help you AGAIN!

Light Peak is the same thing as thunderbolt, they are NOT different technologies. Light Peak was simply the codename for thunderbolt.

It is not Apple's TB, it belongs to INTEL.

Quit posting the same thing over and over when it's not even accurate information.
 
Would have been awesome if it also had ethernet so it could be networked... Thunderbolt for high-speed use, ethernet for network streaming
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)

Internal ssd's might be fast too, but they don't offer very much space like something like this would.
 
Look again, ThunderBolt is 10 Gbps, same as 10 GE. I would try to at least have accurate information before being cocky in my posts if I were you. ;)

One of those is total theoretical bandwidth. Ask anyone you know about how fast 10 GE can actually go in the "real world."

The 10 gbps of a TB port is bi-directional, so it's more like 20gbps, and it's established already that it can move well over 800 MB/sec while concurrently transferring a display port signal at an obscene resolution.

Also, show me a 10GE switch that's less than $5,000 and I'll buy you a donut.
 
One of those is total theoretical bandwidth. Ask anyone you know about how fast 10 GE can actually go in the "real world."

The 10 gbps of a TB port is bi-directional, so it's more like 20gbps, and it's established already that it can move well over 800 MB/sec while concurrently transferring a display port signal at an obscene resolution.

Also, show me a 10GE switch that's less than $5,000 and I'll buy you a donut.

Can I have Krispy Kreme? :p

http://www.google.com/products/cata...a=X&ei=FugJToX9M8a4tge8vNGRAQ&ved=0CFkQ8wIwAg
 
Quick question btw.

Why did :apple: not incorporate the TB port in it's own time capsule, I can only guess that many have it plugged into ethernet at a desktop iMac for that speed etc.

I suppose it was too expensive for them to put the tech and intel chip into it without charging too much. IDK, just kind of strange they were not the first out of the gate incorporating their own tech with peripherals.
 
Settle the speed

Thunderbolt currently runs with a top speed of 10Gbps. Since there are two wire pairs, and the system is bidirectional, a single cable can have up to 40Gbps coursing through it at its maximum theoretical capacity (20Gbps upstream and 20Gbps downstream).

So this is faster than 10GbE (bi-directional or not).

As per the optical vs. copper war, the conversion of electrical signal to optical will be embedded into the cable itself, allowing the current display port socket to be future compatible, but eventually Intel hopes for a purely optical transceiver assembly embedded in the PC. But this will be capable of providing up to 100Gbps.

And as the current fastest SATA connectors are rated to 6Gbps Thunderbolt connections won't be saturated by this, it only becomes an issue if you had maybe 4 striped controllers (not drives, controllers) attached somehow to an ultrafast backplane with the fastest SSD's availiable (currently you would not be able to saturate thunderbolt by any means as there is nothing this fast avaliable yet).

So by the time (even after a year or so) the prices come down and you start seeing 256GB thunderbolt external SSD drives for £150 ($220approx) it will still be a more than capable technology and would be worked on further to go to fibre (but using copper connectors as is now) which will mean it is very, very unlikely to be saturated by anything to come for at least 3-5 years min.

So, don't worry what some people are saying about waiting or that you might be buying a redundant technology, anyone who bought a PC with USB 3.0 did that, not us!

And just to be clear;
6Gbps = 0.75GBps (750MBps)
10Gbps = 1.25GBps (1250MBps)
20Gbps = 2.5GBps (2500MBps)
40Gbps = 5GBps (5000MBps)
100Gbps = 12.5GBps (12500MBps)
 
Quick question btw.

Why did :apple: not incorporate the TB port in it's own time capsule, I can only guess that many have it plugged into ethernet at a desktop iMac for that speed etc.

I suppose it was too expensive for them to put the tech and intel chip into it without charging too much. IDK, just kind of strange they were not the first out of the gate incorporating their own tech with peripherals.
people don't plug time capsules into their macs to back them up, that's the whole point of a time capsule... wireless backup. A TB port on a time capsule would have been utterly useless.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)

Internal ssd's might be fast too, but they don't offer very much space like something like this would.

You can fit 8 drives into a Mac Pro easily, and RAID them together. I had 6 in mine at my last job. 4 of them were RAID0, 500 GB, and then a couple of TB drives used as a backup. Not sure what that RAID configuration would be called, but it certainly was fast. I got the feeling that I was never going to have to wait for anything, especially with big files.

Now I'm just using the 1 super-fast SSD system drive, and a big fat FW800 external drive, and honestly, most of the time, it's faster. Maybe not when moving extra-large files, but I do that so rarely that it doesn't end up mattering. The near-zero random read times are really amazing. I guess ideally, I would have an SSD boot, and a RAID 0 working drive. But I like the mobility, and it's a fair trade-off.
 
Either you don't know how to read or your brain has a hard time functioning, so i'll try to help you AGAIN!

Light Peak is the same thing as thunderbolt, they are NOT different technologies. Light Peak was simply the codename for thunderbolt.

It is not Apple's TB, it belongs to INTEL.

Quit posting the same thing over and over when it's not even accurate information.

TB is not exactly the same as LP. TB runs through copper and carries power. Just wait, soon enough we'll get Lightning Bolt too, the fibre version; faster, but no power.
 
999$ for host based storage, and only 4 TB's worth ? :eek:

Talk about gouging. I'll stick to NAS boxes.

Let's hope Thunderbolt filters down to more consumer levels than this, otherwise, it's not going to last long.
A similar product from Promise without thunderbolt is around $999. I don't see the issue with the price to be honest, considering that it includes hardware RAID. Your cheap NAS boxes are not the same thing.

Here is another similar product from Gtech - no Thunderbolt

$1239

http://www.videoguys.com/Item/G-Tec...terface+Storage+Solutions/33937313037403.aspx

You're clearly not the target market.
 
Last edited:
currently you would not be able to saturate thunderbolt by any means as there is nothing this fast avaliable yet

Well, you could saturate it.

http://barefeats.com/ssd6g05.html

3GB sequential read from 8 SSD's stripped. Which makes 24Gbit, which is faster than TB can handle. So if there was an external RAID adapter to control these SSD's, that would do it.
 
TB is not exactly the same as LP. TB runs through copper and carries power. Just wait, soon enough we'll get Lightning Bolt too, the fibre version; faster, but no power.
it is the same thing.... intel just is using copper right now to cut some of the costs, they will have fiber in the future. Whether or not it will be known under a different name remains to be seen.

but no matter how you slice it LP=TB, light peak was just a code name. I don't know why you people can't understand that?

Kind of like how nintendo code named the gamecube "dolphin" dolphin is not a different product, it's just the code name used during development. Other examples of code names and actual products:

xenon - xbox 360
Argo - Zune
Purple 2 - iPhone

Realize that a code name does not always equate to the products release name and you will see what I'm talking about.
 
If tech with this kind of price seems expensive to you, sorry but its not meant for your consumer ass:D

Like people with 12 core macs for playing World of Warcraft and watching porn.
 
One of those is total theoretical bandwidth. Ask anyone you know about how fast 10 GE can actually go in the "real world."

I was only correcting the guy on "ThunderBolt is 10 GB/s", no need to get defensive here. He was cocky with wrong information.

The 10 gbps of a TB port is bi-directional, so it's more like 20gbps, and it's established already that it can move well over 800 MB/sec while concurrently transferring a display port signal at an obscene resolution.

Thunderbolt is not 20 Gbps, you can't use both directions for the same transfer. ;)

Also, show me a 10GE switch that's less than $5,000 and I'll buy you a donut.

10 GE is also a networking standard made for systems interconnect. Thunderbolt is a host base PCIE extender. Not exactly the same purpose nor did I even suggest it as a replacement, since my first post about 10 GE was only to correct the guy who said Thunderbolt is 10 GB/s. No need to convince me that they don't serve the same purpose.
 
I just emailed monoprices.com to see if they'll be selling Thunderbolt cables soon...No way in hell I'd pay $50 for one of those...and knowing monoprices.com they'll easily beat that price and still make something of quality.
 
people don't plug time capsules into their macs to back them up, that's the whole point of a time capsule... wireless backup. A TB port on a time capsule would have been utterly useless.

Correct but it would be amazing to have an Airport Extreme with a TB port so you could use proper drives to backup your data with RAID 5, ensuring you could maintain your backup system yourself.
Plus allowing access through the ethernet (1Gb/s still theoretically faster than USB2 or even FW800) for others machines.

Sure the max throughput of the TB technology would never be reached but it would at least allow maximum use of all the ports of the Airport Extreme without problems.
 
I am only buying this cable if it is long enough to plug into iCloud.


Seriously though not sure where to keep my data nowadays.
Current NAS is too slow.
Thunderbolt RAID system is fast but too constrained.
iCloud too slow and limited but brilliantly connected.

Really want iCloud for all files types at thunderbolt speeds.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.