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Intel Shares Additional Details on 20Gbps 'Thunderbolt 2'

Insert comment about how much it will cost. Insert picture of dr evil.

For real tho maybe the prices of the first gen cable will drop?
 
demodave said:
This is seriously what's killing me, though: sitting here in this "wait till the next announced update, because the rumors sounds too cool to be true, but I believe that Apple might could do it, because Apple does things that are way too cool to be true" mode. (And it may not even be worth it. [Looks left, looks right, hopes the Cabal Thuggies aren't hiding in a dark corner.])

I think I may just give up after WWDC 2013 and buy a new laptop. This one is starting to feel kind of schleppy (heavy). I think an MBA is in my near future. (The hardware is correct, but the software is 10.8.3, probably going to 10.8.4. I upgrade. McCain just doesn't get it.)
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Oh I have been going on for years about Apple's current direction but my laptop is almost 6 years old and it does not have a battery. I am typing on it right now. At this point, I just want a new laptop. My desktop is still just fine until next year and the Haswell refresh.
 
MacRumors said:
Thunderbolt 2 is backwards compatible with current generation cables and connectors, so existing hardware will continue to function with the updated controller.
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This is all I wanted to know from this entire article. Backwards compatibility is always good news. 🙂
 
subsonix said:
Doesn't seem to support you statement. Something specific you had in mind?
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Does TB2 even use the same diagram?
If TB2 can channel a full 20Gpbs for PCIe or video does it even have the GFx link in the diagram?

New controllers could just have PCIe interface (and get feed video over PCIe) so they could be anywhere on the PCIe network, even on video cards. That sort of design change would sure help adoption.
 
bedifferent said:
Apple chose to implement Thunderbolt in less expensive portables as a replacement for FireWire for many reasons. Showcasing it in consumer systems introduces a generally unknown tech to a larger demographic while pushing third party device manufacturers towards Thunderbolts external devices. Consumer awareness is crucial. As a bi-directional system, it carries a myriad of signals (video, audio, data, you name it), thus eliminating the need for FireWire, eSATA, even USB, allowing for slimmer and more efficient systems
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This is incorrect.

Thunderbolt is a multiplexed DisplayPort & PCI-e bus. Your external "Thunderbolt" disk drive is an external eSATA controller hooked up to a Thunderbolt endpoint controller over PCI-e. Therefore, while you're not actually using eSATA ports anymore- internally, the disk drive is presented to and accessed as an eSATA device.

The only difference is that instead of installing an eSATA adapter in a PCI-e slot inside your computer, that functionality is built into the PCB off inside the external drive chassis. The same goes for USB, Ethernet, Firewire, etc adapters. They are ALL PCI-e compliant chipsets, hooked up to a Thunderbolt controller which provides a PCI-e bus.

Thunderbolt doesn't replace any of your examples. It just covers them up so you can't see them anymore. They're still there, and always will be. Thunderbolt itself doesn't replace anything, it's just a peripheral bus and you still need a PCI-e compliant controller sitting on the other end to do anything.

-SC
 
subsonix said:
Doesn't seem to support you statement. Something specific you had in mind?
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More importantly, without processor graphics there's no clean way to route DisplayPort through Thunderbolt on a Xeon platform just yet. At some point processor graphics will come to the Xeon however. There will never be a Thunderbolt PCIe card. TB is integrated into the system, it ties directly into the CPU and on-cpu GPU.

there's no good Thunderbolt strategy for the Xeon platform just yet. Apple's stance on USB 3 points to a corporate desire to maintain simplicity and uniformity across all product lines. Without processor graphics there's no clean way to route DisplayPort through Thunderbolt on a Xeon platform just yet.
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http://www.anandtech.com/show/6001/...ro-users-about-something-really-great-in-2013

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ScottishCaptain said:
Thunderbolt doesn't replace any of your examples. It just covers them up so you can't see them anymore. They're still there, and always will be. Thunderbolt itself doesn't replace anything, it's just a peripheral bus and you still need a PCI-e compliant controller sitting on the other end to do anything.

-SC
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That is essentially what I meant. Replacing FireWire with Thunderbolt doesn't mean it's not capable, of course it is for the points you mentioned. Apple decided against providing external connections/use in order to push Thunderbolt while producing a slimmer notebook as well as the redundancy of having FireWire with Thunderbolt systems.

MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, iMac, and Mac mini now give you access to a world of high-speed peripherals and high-resolution displays with one compact port. That’s because Thunderbolt is based on two fundamental technologies: PCI Express and DisplayPort.

PCI Express is the technology that links all the high-performance components in a Mac. And it’s built into Thunderbolt. Which means you can connect external devices like RAID arrays and video capture solutions directly to your Mac — and get PCI Express performance. That’s a first for any computer. Thunderbolt also provides 10 watts of power to peripherals, so you can tackle workstation-class projects. With PCI Express technology, you can use existing USB and FireWire peripherals — even connect to Gigabit Ethernet and Fibre Channel networks — using simple adapters.
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Thunderbolt is just PCIe over a cable - you still need the SATA/SAS/Fiber or whatever chipset at the other end along with a Thunderbolt bridge chip. It will cost more since you are also adding those fancy new Thunderbolt chips at both ends. And the only thing you accomplish is you put the SATA/SAS/RAID chipset inside the enclosure instead of inside your MacPro in a PCIe slot.
 
there are two thunderbolts ports on my rMBP that remain unused, and they're already announcing thunderbolt 2?.. oh my.
 
Chuck-Norris said:
have thunderbolt on my 2011 macbook pro for the past 2 and a half years.....never used it
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devilcm3 said:
just another i-won't-use-it-anytime port other than for display.....
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It will become more useful for some people, when 4k video streams become more mainstream.

devilcm3 said:
.....i don't see how this interface would survive the market in after 5 years.
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I believe it will be there, maybe catering to a niche market of users, but it will be around, and will become more useful as the file sizes that people manipulate, back-up and store, become larger and larger.

And for those users it will be, (and already is), a godsend.
 
iMikeT said:
How about better support for and making Thunderbolt 1 more widespread before announcing Thunderbolt 2 Intel?
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Ditto. Thunderbolt 1 technology is still highly priced and has low market penetration. It's terrific that they're improving the technology (for the pro users), but they need to make it much more accessible if they want it to compete with USB 3.0 in the mainstream market.
 
subsonix said:
Can someone explain why this is the case? A thunderbolt controller is a separate chip from the CPU, why would it be tied to specific CPUs?
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One reason is probably the necessary DMA (Direct Memory Access). Thunderbolt needs the DMA, and modern Intel CPUs have an integrated memory controller, which allows the DMA for certain interfaces (SATA & others?).
 
yet both of my thunderbolt 1s on my rmbp are still virgins never to be used ... id rather have another usb 3 port on my mac

upthetoffees said:
That is your choice though, it's not as if there will be a *magic* invention that will require them.
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of course id use it if the prices were reasonable but so far ...

1TB Thunderbolt external drive: 180€
1TB USB 3 external drive: 60€
 
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bedifferent said:
It's embarrassing that the top line professional system, the Mac Pro, doesn't have Thunderbolt while the entire line currently does. If there is a Mac Pro refresh announced this month, it better include Thunderbolt along with the hints at a return to the pro-market.
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they havent updated it in several years, it's pretty logical that theres no thunderbolt ports on it.. if they updated it with the same lousy specs and added thunderbolt, people would be even more pissed.

The next Mac pro will have thunderbolt.
 
even if TB technology reaches 1Tbps which would make it undeniably superior to USB, for what reasons apple continues to integrate it while the devices are not accessible?
 
bedifferent said:
More importantly, without processor graphics there's no clean way to route DisplayPort through Thunderbolt on a Xeon platform just yet. At some point processor graphics will come to the Xeon however. There will never be a Thunderbolt PCIe card. TB is integrated into the system, it ties directly into the CPU and on-cpu GPU.
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With reservations for not knowing anything about Thunderbolt2, I can agree with the "no clean way" part. But I don't think Xeon will ever see an integrated GPU, because either they sit in a server and then graphics don't matter, or they sit in a workstation and if that workstation is used for graphics, you would want a (much more capable) graphics card.

As far as I can tell from the linked article, and the intel doc the problem seems to be that a dedicated graphics card has its own displayport. This port then needs to be re-routed with a cable back to the motherboard just to come out of the Thunderbolt connector. The intel doc shows two scenarios, one with solid arrow where displayport is taken from the pch and the other directly from a discrete GPU. A scenario where the GPU re-routes it's screen output back to pcie to be taken from the pch is not supported by any graphics cards (according to ars technica).

Perhaps a Thunderbolt port on a Mac Pro only carries PCIe, and no Displayport. Or, Thunderbolt just like express card is only intended for portable computers and will never show up on a workstation (which makes some sense actually since a workstation has proper PCIe slots).
 
MattInOz said:
Does TB2 even use the same diagram?
If TB2 can channel a full 20Gpbs for PCIe or video does it even have the GFx link in the diagram?

New controllers could just have PCIe interface (and get feed video over PCIe) so they could be anywhere on the PCIe network, even on video cards. That sort of design change would sure help adoption.
Click to expand...

That is another possibility, the information about TB2 so far is limited to a few paragraphs on an intel blog post.
 
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