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Hewlett Packard Not Convinced of the Value of Thunderbolt

Question.

Does the Mini DisplayPort implementation of ThunderBolt use ThunderBolt bandwidth to drive the Mini DisplayPort monitor?

Do I get Video + 2x 10Gbps or 2x 10Gbsp - Video?
 
KnightWRX said:
What are you talking about ? Work what with Cisco ? Cisco what ? Thunderbolt is a host based technology. What are you trying to plug into a Cisco piece of equipement exactly ? :confused:

Are you trying to plug a MBP from its Thunderbolt port into a GBIC on a Cisco router/switch ? Is there even a Thunderbolt GBIC in existence ? Is there even support for IPoTB in OS X ? Is there even such a thing, since Thunderbolt is a PCI-E extender and you'd need a NIC to even convert the signal to 10000Base-SomethingorOther.

You're not making any sense here.
Click to expand...

I'm not setting it up. This is from my IT department. There are about 70 macs they want to control access to for our render farms drives
 
ericmooreart said:
I'm not setting it up. This is from my IT department. There are about 70 macs they want to control access to for our render farms drives
Click to expand...

I think you're quite misunderstanding the issue they are having. They are probably testing connecting to your render farm using Fiber channel on Mac Pros through storage switches from Cisco, not Thunderbolt on Macbooks.
 
HP being incredibly business savy here. Why try to implement something that's going to be, at least in the long-run, a huge loss leader for them?

If Apple somehow do convert the industry, let them take the blow of raising support, building awareness and all the other guff that comes with trying to get a new format launched.

Meanwhile, HP can saunter in two or three years down the line if/when TB becomes widely adopted. Consumers don't care if HP once said that TB is 'crap' or whatever, it'll just be a few irrelevant Apple fanboys that point this out.
 
KnightWRX said:
I think you're quite misunderstanding the issue they are having. They are probably testing connecting to your render farm using Fiber channel on Mac Pros through storage switches from Cisco, not Thunderbolt on Macbooks.
Click to expand...

Now do you connect a MacBook Pro to Fiber Channel?
(Hint: ThunderBolt)
 
KnightWRX said:
I think you're quite misunderstanding the issue they are having. They are probably testing connecting to your render farm using Fiber channel on Mac Pros through storage switches from Cisco, not Thunderbolt on Macbooks.
Click to expand...

Not using any macbooks. Our Towers are being traded in for the iMacs.
 
baryon said:
Look, if something is only available off the internet and can't be found in electronics shops, then it's not practical, that's all I'm saying.
Click to expand...

Couldn't this have been used to describe Apple products not too long ago?

So you order the cable when you order the drive. Problem solved.
 
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4iedBandit said:
rtheb said:
iBook:
Apple is going to try and drag us kicking and screaming into the new Millennium whether we like it or not.
Click to expand...

Yep. This is what they do. Apple isn't a company prone to following. It's a company prone to leading. Sometimes when you lead others follow (ie. the end of the floppy drive), sometimes they don't (ie. fire wire 800).

I don't take much stock in HP saying they're not going to support Thunderbolt right now. They are not a leader and sorry folks, selling more computers only makes you a leader in units out the door. My work laptop (HP) has a docking station which still has PS/2 ports on it. Still. And it's less than 6 months old. WTF? HP is making the safe bet: stay out of the market until the early adopters develop it.

Thunderbolt has a lot of promise. It's still really young but it will be interesting to see what comes of it.
Click to expand...

Because a docking station has a lot of space, so why not fill it with useful ports? I think there are a lot of companies still using PS/2 keyboards. Im still using an old HP keyboard from 1998 with my PC, it still works just as good as any other and pretty much any motherboard supports it.
 
If there is a "format war" between USB3 and Thunderbolt, the real loser is... all of us. As long as the higher-speed standards are not agreed upon, the lowest common denominator will remain the "standard." There will be some peripherals built with Thunderbolt capability, just as there are with USB3 and Firewire capability. However, the critical mass of the market will not adopt as a standard a format that 20-80% of their market will not use.

So long as Apple continues to be the leader in mobile devices and continues to refuse to incorporate USB3, USB3 will not be the standard. So long as Windows PC makers do not incorporate Thunderbolt (which has the disadvantage of not being compatible with current USB standards) Thunderbolt will not be the standard.

So USB 2 will keep limping along. It will continue to be the way to connect our iPhones to our computers. It will continue to be the way we connect many peripherals to our computers. It will last for a while.
 
Duluth Baptist said:
If there is a "format war" between USB3 and Thunderbolt, the real loser is... all of us. As long as the higher-speed standards are not agreed upon, the lowest common denominator will remain the "standard."
Click to expand...

No it won't. USB3 will absolutely be a standard. In a few years, USB3 will be included on 10's of millions of computers. You think the companies making peripheral devices are not going to make USB3 devices because 5% of the world's computers don't use them?
 
Really?

Value Proposition? How about – it being waaaaaaaaaaay faster and soon to be even faster...

:confused:
 
MrWinters said:
No it won't. USB3 will absolutely be a standard. In a few years, USB3 will be included on 10's of millions of computers. You think the companies making peripheral devices are not going to make USB3 devices because 5% of the world's computers don't use them?
Click to expand...

Agreed. USB3.0 will be with us in the future. Thunderbolt is a maybe. It'll probably be like Firewire has been compared to USB
 
In other words HP does not want to use the latest chipsets from intel, and continue to sell customers cheap hardware to keep profit up while keeping prices down. HP is dumb, they could support USB 3 while also supporting and using the thunderbolt bus.
 
jamesnajera said:
In other words HP does not want to use the latest chipsets from intel, and continue to sell customers cheap hardware to keep profit up while keeping prices down. HP is dumb, they could support USB 3 while also supporting and using the thunderbolt bus.
Click to expand...

Integrated ThunderBolt support isn't supposed to happen till Ivy Bridge. So HP is choosing to not add an additional controller (in addition to the USB3 controller) on their systems. Much like how Apple is choosing not to add and additional controller (USB3) on their systems.
 
ptysell said:
Question.

Does the Mini DisplayPort implementation of ThunderBolt use ThunderBolt bandwidth to drive the Mini DisplayPort monitor?

Do I get Video + 2x 10Gbps or 2x 10Gbsp - Video?
Click to expand...

You get 2x10Gbps - 1 10Gbps channel for video, 1 for everything else.
 
diamond.g said:
And the video is actually separate from the ThunderBolt bus (at least from the ThunderBolt controllers point of view).
Click to expand...

But here's the weird thing. When using an iMac as a target display, the display data must be encapsulated in Thunderbolt packets, hence why it only works with 2011 Macs.
 
fat jez said:
But here's the weird thing. When using an iMac as a target display, the display data must be encapsulated in Thunderbolt packets, hence why it only works with 2011 Macs.
Click to expand...

That is cause DP video isn't bidirectional. So the Thunderbolt controller has to do some magic for it to work. Which is also part of the reason that the Monitor has to be the last device in a chain.
 
MrWinters said:
No it won't. USB3 will absolutely be a standard. In a few years, USB3 will be included on 10's of millions of computers. You think the companies making peripheral devices are not going to make USB3 devices because 5% of the world's computers don't use them?
Click to expand...

Fair enough, but if I reduce the meaning of "us" to "those of us who use Macs," the statement still holds. Jobs has scoffed at USB3 in the past and has a history of sticking to his guns on these issues. It may be a long time before USB3 appears on an Apple product. That's what a "format war" would mean, if Apple really wants to make this a battle. Now, I would not predict they would win such a battle, since USB is so widespread, but it wouldn't be out of character.

If Apple relents and puts USB3 ports on its Macs next to the Thunderbolt ports, that would be great. I think they would have done so if that were in their immediate plans, though. And if they aren't going to support USB3, that means iPhone and iPad users are stuck with antiquated USB2 sync cables until Apple goes wireless.

This is a dumb technology to have an inter-company tiff over; market share is not swayed by the technology used to connect peripherals. HP will never sell computers by using "Apple doesn't use USB3" adds, and there won't be any "Hi, I'm a Mac, and I have Thunderbolt" commercials either. Flash, at least, is enough of a wedge technology that the market is affected.
 
Macsavvytech said:
HP was never really a big supporter of thunderbolt. Not sure why this is big news.
Meanwhile Dell, Sony, Apple, Intel and many other big brands are behind Thunderbolt.
Click to expand...

tundrabuggy said:
Wrong. HP's decision is short-sighted. This is why Apple is so far ahead of the competition.
Click to expand...

And so on. It would be easy to point to today's news, which said that HP's consumer PC client sales dropped 23 percent in the quarter compared to the year-ago period...but its not that easy, or simple.

For example, it is entirely possible that HP is merely feining disinterest ... afterall, how many times has Steve Jobs done just that for several months - - and then dropping a "One More Thing" bomb?

EatSleepMac said:
Just picked up a 2011 Macbook Pro and I'm wondering if there's any external hard drives that are supported by thunderbolt? I put a 128gig ssd inside my MBP but i need an external drive for the crazy amounts of media I have, also it'd be nice to have a backup drive.
Click to expand...

The first TB peripherals are due out this summer, so you don't have long to wait. However, the initial stuff will be (by today's standards) very high performance and very expensive. It will take months more for examples of less high end examples to ship, although I'd personally expect something like an enclosure for a 4-5 disk based RAID 10 by Christmas (2011).


Piggie said:
Does this feel a little like Firewire / USB2 again?

I have buckets of things that are USB.USB2, the defacto standard, and only 1 thing that was ever firewire, a 8mm video camera.

Don't get me wrong, the faster and higher spec the better, but it's all pointless unless it gets fitted into everything and becomes a standard..
Click to expand...

Understood, but what you illustrate with USB is also why USB has become entrenched: despite its performance shortcomings, it was relatively easy for it to become ubiquitous.

If you've been using Macs for awhile (as I have), those non-USB Firewire ports have been there for a decade, and I hope that you've been at least considering Firewire peripherals instead of USB ones for where bandwidth makes a difference.

For example, I have a flatbed scanner that's dual-port and I've found that my images scan ~40% faster with the FW400 cable intead of the USB2 one. Sure, we can say "but it is only 10 seconds instead of 20", but that's a productivity step where the user always have to sit there and wait, plus research has found that such delays actually impact productivity on a logarithmic scale (operator inattention to return the task), so it actually makes for a larger difference than what "Specs" would suggest. Similarly, I've also found that for External HDDs, FW800's in particular are noticably faster I/O and their extra cost is often "Worth It" when wholesale moves of "healthy sized" (250+GB) chunks of data for whatever reason (backups, new machine, etc).



Bodypainter said:
i am sorry, but i still don't get it. Why do we Need thunderbolt again? ...
Click to expand...

TB is high end performance. True, most people won't need it, but for those that do, there simply is "No Substitute" for having gobs of bandwidth.

Sure, USB3 passes the "Good Enough" benchmark for today, but between its low bandwidth efficiency and the rate of change we've been seeing, it is probably only ~3 years at most before USB3 will be bumping its limits for the more demandnig bandwidth applications, which means that the Industry needs to start to work on rolling out its replacement.


-hh
 
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