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Intel Shares Additional Details on 20Gbps 'Thunderbolt 2'

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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What annoys me is that they could have very easily just released an expansion card for the current lineup. They better not just give the pro a speed bump and an expansion card now though, especially since the pro cant be sold in Europe anymore. It's going to need a complete redesign (preferably without the razor sharp handles this time!)

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Solomani said:
This is all I wanted to know from this entire article. Backwards compatibility is always good news. :)
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Especially when the Thunderbolt cables and peripherals are stupidly priced. Would be rather annoying for people who've invested a lot in TB equipment to find it no longer works!
 
bedifferent said:
Thunderbolt would allow:

1- a smaller form factor
2- daisy chaining external drives/drives
3- faster, bi-directional transfers for HD/4K video
4- Placing the system in a ventilated closet or a few in another room, with a single Thunderbolt cable leading to (a) workstation(s) for HID's, displays, etc.
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1. What's the use?
2. Daisy chaining is PITA.
3. Something like 6G-sdi, hdmi, dp and esata can't do?
4. Probably the worst price-performance ratio for KVM on the planet. The whole 3 meters!

TB in macs is looking more and more like infiniband in consumer device. What's the situation in 2014?
1. TB market penetration something like 0.0001% ?
2. 10 million macs out per year and almost nobody needs TB to other than dp.
3. After few years more of existence and only 1 TB display on market.
4. Usb4, hdmi2.0 and new dp out, TB is once again one generation behind and 10x more expensive alternative.
 
toke lahti said:
2. 10 million macs out per year and almost nobody needs TB to other than dp.
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Apart from all the pro users using it for video import and fast external storage, of course... Sure it'd be nice if there were more/cheaper consumer-oriented TB devices, but that doesn't mean it's useless: it just isn't useful for you.
 
Great news! Maybe somebody already said this, but here's hoping for someone to FINALLY release a dual-thunderbolt splitter so we can use two monitors natively through the port and without having to rely on a USB display adapter! (For those of us without a Retina Macbook of course.)
 
iMikeT said:
How about better support for and making Thunderbolt 1 more widespread before announcing Thunderbolt 2 Intel?
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Yeah, because nothing helps proliferate a standard more than letting it stagnate... Seriously, I don't know why people are complaining here. There is literally no downside to continuous, backwards compatible updates to TB.

And we absolutely need an update to Thunderbolt, if only for DisplayPort 1.2 and the ability to drive HiDPI screens. Without that, it would be holding Apple back.
 
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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If their is indeed and update, which i of course cannot guarantee, i will guarantee that thunderbolt will be included in that hypothetical update:)
 
alFR said:
Apart from all the pro users using it for video import and fast external storage, of course... Sure it'd be nice if there were more/cheaper consumer-oriented TB devices, but that doesn't mean it's useless: it just isn't useful for you.
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I'm a video professional, but I don't use laptops in my work.
And actually in one edit room I work I do use TB. Since there hasn't been reasonable MP's in years, they bought an iMac to it and the 10G-ethernetcard lies in TB-box.
But putting pro tech to consumer devices isn't what Apple normally has done in recent years. More over they have cut all other "pro" stuff away from their products. I think upper levels in Infinite Loop now thinks that TB was a mistesp and just wait for replacement. They could save many dollars per mac by not using TB. At the same time, they could make more money selling TB cables, but I don't think too many buys those cables...

Btw, Decklink used to offer videoI/O with usb3, but since their customers are pretty mac oriented, they had to make tb-versions, because apple put tb first to their products and usb3 only after. After usb4 is on the market there's no need in video equipnment for tb. You can only have small benefit when copying huge amounts of data from storage to storage and those cases are pretty rare if you think how much more that is going to cost. Usb3/4 can easily handle single ssd speeds, so for tb to be beneficial there needs to be petabytes in several multidrive raids. Usually this means SAN and again there's no place for TB.
 
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Nicky G said:
You realize that this holdup is due to Intel not having currently available Xeon-based processor chipsets that can support Thunderbolt, right?
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Well then they could do what has always been done in the entire history of computing to add a feature to a computer:

Include an add-in expansion card with a thunderbolt port on it.

Not everything HAS to be on the motherboard!
 
All i want is a Thunderbolt device , a small box, that lets me plug the DVI or HDMI output from a PC video card or games console, or cable TV/Satellite TV receiver into a box that then lets me use my Thunderbolt iMac as a display...

I have Zero need for any Thunderbolt peripherals that the iMac can access, as my needs are all dealt with by either USB devices (why would i need a thunderbolt mouse or keyboard ?) or NAS storage .

The thing i used the most on older iMacs, the ability to have ONE screen on my desk and use it as a display for multiple sources, has been killed by Thunderbolt.

Now i can understand the Tbolt "docks" for laptop users, and if i was mobile often enough then that would be a must have purchase, but as it stands, i miss the old iMacs you could use as a display for everything else
 
Most of my external devices are Thunderbolt - my external portable HDD, my Drobo 5D, etc - used for video editing.
I have USB3 drives for storage since they are cheaper.

Cant even saturate the current Thunderbolt connection so have no need for Thunderbolt 2.........yet!
 
Jjaro said:
Great news! Maybe somebody already said this, but here's hoping for someone to FINALLY release a dual-thunderbolt splitter so we can use two monitors natively through the port and without having to rely on a USB display adapter! (For those of us without a Retina Macbook of course.)
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While you can daisy chain 2 of Apple's TB Displays together, I know what you're saying & some people don't want to use Apple's displays.

Can someone clarify something for me? I think I read on AppleInsider or someplace that TB 1 has two channels, each 10 GBps while TB 2 has only one 20 Gbps channel so they basically just combined the 2 channels. Did I read/understand that correctly? Just wondering.
 
It would be great to have Thunderbolt on my Mac Pro. As I have looked at my needs though, I found that there were many alternatives using PCIe cards, and other than using dedicated Thunderbolt accessories (which there are few), I didn't see what the big deal was. In order to keep myself sane, I just see the entire Mac line minus the Mac Pro as having Thunderbolt because it doesn't have any PCIe slots. The Mac Pro doesn't need it for the most part... Most of the professional thunderbolt video hubs that I have seen come with a PCIe alternative that is usually better anyways. That doesn't mean the Mac Pro shouldn't have Thunderbolt, it's just a different way of looking at things. It will get it eventually once the architecture supports it.

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guzhogi said:
Can someone clarify something for me? I think I read on AppleInsider or someplace that TB 1 has two channels, each 10 GBps while TB 2 has only one 20 Gbps channel so they basically just combined the 2 channels. Did I read/understand that correctly? Just wondering.
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Yes, they combined the channels and made them bi-directional.
 
Millah said:
Hmm, they even dropped the gloss from the lightning logo ;)
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That's actually a Thunderbolt logo...and that is Intel's official logo design. Apple just spiced it up.

Intel's Website:
thunderbolt.png


Apple's Website:
thunderbolt_icon.jpg
 
Let's come out with a second technology that was soooooo adopted in it's first incarnation. :rolleyes:
 
my guess we will see TB as a center piece of a new mac pro which does away with much of the legacy tech such as PCIe, multiple drive bays, optical media drives and their corresponding motherboard components in a much more modular and slimed down solution. no more huge dedicated boxes that only a small percentage of professionals take advantage of. this would allow for cheaper core machines that can scale up easily to service the needs of more demanding professionals. and TB is what makes this possible. what, you need more storage space? slap a a few 2 terabyte drives onto the TB chain. need more video crunching power? connect a TB video "card" on the chain. i have no idea if apple is going this direction, but it makes sense if they did. and it allows third parties to become actively envolved with the evolution of the product by providing more options that apple can't possibly meet on it's own.
 
cmanderson said:
Don't be ridiculous.
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More likely, you are paying TRIPPLE for fiber channel 10Gb arrays... Which Mac Pro supports... So why would intel cut a steep discount when they got you locked in. FC is a $500 option just for the Interface. Drives go up from there, but they are shareable.
 
Lots of misinformation here. For one you guys do realize that TB was developed by Intel on a Mac Pro. TB originally ran on run of the mill Intel hardware.

Second TB isn't a replacement for USB. The cost delta should make that clear to most people. Beyond that acceptance of TB hasn't been much worst than that of USB. If you young ones would read up on history you would know that Apple lead the way on USB too. TB might not be ramping up as fast as some would like but it is widely accepted in many applications as the best tech out there.
 
so true

lannisters4life said:
i'm intrigued to see what they do here...

in order to get thunderbolt into the mac pro, they'll need to either a) use consumer haswell CPUs like the new i7 4770k that have integrated video which will piss a lot of people off because they're not workstation hardware or b) use xeon or sandy bridge-e CPUs and build something crafty to reroute thunderbolt video to the video card which will piss people off just as much because they're yet again using old hardware.

there's also a fantasy c) scenario, where they've made a deal with intel to make new ivy bridge-e CPUs with integrated video for Apple's exclusive use, in which case the whole thing would be absurdly expensive

they're basically screwed every which way, i'm surprised they just didn't axe it altogether
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IMHO Apple's mistake was building the Mac "Pro" as a Xeon based system in the 1st place. They should have built a high-end tower on a desktop CPU architecture instead (Core i7) where they could have easily incorporated newer tech like Thunderbolt and USB 3

They should have left the Xeon relegated to the server space where it belongs - of course that would mean continuing and improving the XServe line instead of the bone-head move of ditching it entirely.
 
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