Intel Shares Additional Details on 20Gbps 'Thunderbolt 2'

[B2k1977]

It's useless for most people.

how is it useful WHEN YOU DONT FREAKIN USE IT

I've had TB for 2 years. never used it once. It's safe to say I don't even know if the port actually works at all. I've never plugged anything into it. I use firewire and usb.

 

[roadbloc]

And now Apple can make even more £30 cables.

 

[tevion5]

If you're a "pro user" you aren't using desktop attached storage.

Absolutely every Professional recording studio I have ever seen has tons of external drives. Usually multiple Firewire drives, but I can see how thunderbolt would be better.

 

[iMikeT]

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.

I wasn't referring to Intel sitting on their hands and doing nothing. What I am referring to is the fact that Intel made Thunderbolt too proprietary and too expensive that 3rd-party manufacturers can't easily adopt the standard and release Thunderbolt devices. It's been over two years since Thunderbolt was released and since then, the price for adopting the technology hasn't dropped much.

 

[mdelvecchio]

there are two thunderbolts ports on my rMBP that remain unused, and they're already announcing thunderbolt 2?.. oh my.

it isn't for you...big whoop.

----------

TB then TB2 or how Intel & Apple are scre.wing people twice...

exactly how are you being "screwed" with the improvement of TB?

----------

how is it useful WHEN YOU DONT FREAKIN USE IT

do you really believe everyone's life is identical to your own? really...?

----------

I've had TB for 2 years. never used it once. It's safe to say I don't even know if the port actually works at all. I've never plugged anything into it. I use firewire and usb.

and people like my dad have never used their FireWire ports...but I'm still glad they're there, since I do.

 

[jdiamond]

Why not HDMI 1.4 support?

Even though DisplayPort 1.2 still doesn't provide enough bandwidth for a Retina 27" Thunderbolt display (5120x2880 required, 3840x2160 provided), they could utilize a dual-link Thunderbolt connection to provide the appropriate bandwidth (kinda like how the 30" Cinema Display used a dual-link DVI connector).
So a 21.5" Retina ThunderBolt display requiring a single-link ThunderBolt 2.0 connection and a 27" model requiring a dual-link connection is very possible (if they can get a good enough yield from manufacturing). Though, they would need new Macs to drive them (iMac refresh, long awaited Mac Pro, maybe Mac Mini).

I don't understand it - Thunderbolt I has the bandwidth for HDMI 1.4 support, why is Apple sticking with 1.2? No 3D support? Thunderbolt 2 has bandwidth to support the not yet released HDMI 2.0 spec.

 

[AnonMac50]

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.

I think it's too early to drop PCIe.

 

[deconstruct60]

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.

That is basically it.

"... It is achieved by combining the two previously independent 10Gbs channels into one 20Gbs bi-directional channel that supports data and/or display. Current versions of Thunderbolt, although faster than other PC I/O technologies on the market today, are limited to an individual 10Gbs channel each for both data and display, less than the required bandwidth for 4K video transfer. ... "
http://blogs.intel.com/technology/2...ndwidth-enabling-4k-video-transfer-display-2/


this really seems to be just reshuffling of the deck chairs and not overall throughput increase.

It was probably much easier to make the independent channels isochronous with the major re-encoded PCI-e and Display Port data being transported on different channels.

To multiplex that all together into one logical stream and keep all the timing correct is going to require more complicated hardware in each controller. The future models will have a bigger transistor budget because they'll be on a newer (smaller ) process technology.

However, there is nothing that particularly indicates that the interface to the PCI-e system is any wider or higher bandwidth. The majority of the dat increase seems to be largely motivated by the large increase in throughput handling all of Display Port v1.2 potential demands. There is a bit more flexibility of large PCI-e data + normal video and large video + normal data but the fact they merged what was already there isn't a big jump in overall system throughput.

----------

Yes, they combined the channels and made them bi-directional.[/QUOTE]

Thunderbolt has always been bidirectional. That isn't new. That is just keeping it just as it was.

 

[deconstruct60]

<snip>

----------

....
Yes, they combined the channels and made them bi-directional.

No. Thunderbolt has been bidirectional from the beginning. There was no "directionality support" change with the move to 2.0.

 

[deconstruct60]

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.

A myopic and disconnected from present realities viewpoint of the situation. In terms of computation horsepower GPUs can be used a general compute device so parallel float loads. More cores per square mm can be engage than a general GPU.

There is also a point where broad spectrum server core count gets to diminishing returns. E5 are about to go to 12. At about 16 this is probably going to be enough for most. Problems in the workstation space that scale up from there are going to more likely be in the embarrassingly parallel floating point space. The sweet spot for GPGPUs.

For the E5 4600 and E7 yeah. But for the E 1600's the core count march has already stopped. It is likely to stop for the 2600 next iteration or so also. Those are the two that Mac Pro would likely use.

Perhaps a Thunderbolt port on a Mac Pro only carries PCIe, and no Displayport.

Makes absolutely zero sense to fragment the Thunderbolt standard given it is not on solid footion adoption wise yet. There is no large established base to build on (relatively to the overall PC market). Start to fragment it into smaller pieces now and it is never going to get there.

More than likely they can't. It is doubtful the DisplayPort folks allowed Intel to "hijack" their port if it was not going to further adoption of Display Port signal transport. They'd be foolish if OK'ed that. The USB folks veto'ed highjacking USB. It is doubtful that Display Port would be any less good stewards of their standard.

Or, Thunderbolt just like express card is only intended for portable computers

It is not. It just has a pragmatic requirement that there be an embedded GPU on the motherboard. The trivial way to implement that is with a iGPU. However, the iMac has a discrete GPU that manages to pump data to the Thunderbolt controller. Some folks try to project that has to be routed through the iGPU but I don't see why that would be necessary.

Thunderbolt happens to align with Intels agenda of more iGPU but I still haven't seen hard evidence that it requires it.

 

[cmanderson]

how is it useful WHEN YOU DONT FREAKIN USE IT

Wow, troll much? At any rate, here I am with a 15" rMBPro with GigE plugged into a Thunderbolt port. There's a monitor plugged into the other.

I don't "lose" a Mini DisplayPort. It's "part of" the Thunderbolt chain, but it doesn't have to be used with a Thunderbolt device, per se. Still, I could use it as a secondary Thunderbolt port if necessary. I could go wireless if I need both of the TB ports for whatever reason.

Under the same desk sits a Mac Mini Server with a LaCie 5big 10TB DAS plugged into its Thunderbolt port. I'm running MacZFS. Actually, I just added Greenbytes ZEVO Community Edition on top of that. 10TB in RAIDZ, 8TB usable storage. I see anywhere from 325 to 475 MBps, read and write, on the 5big. Not Mbps; MBps.

I'm able to accomplish this with ONE device attached to the Mac Mini for primary storage (the cache device is just a toy, can disconnect at any time, wouldn't lose sleep over it.) If I wanted to use eSATA, I'd need a bridge device of some sort, most likely Thunderbolt to eSATA. Or a bunch of USB drives getting hot as they're stacked up on top of each other or getting in my way as they're spread out. What I've done for myself here is a more elegant solution.

It's great for running multiple virtual machines (VMWare Fusion, for the most part), storing my media collection, iPhoto / Aperture photo editing, etc., etc., etc. It's like a GIANT SSD in terms of performance.

Daisy-chained off of the LaCie is an Intel 240 GB SSD stuffed into a Seagate portable GoFlex Thunderbolt chassis. I pulled the 1GB drive for use elsewhere. I use the Thunderbolt SSD for a number of things including *fast* external storage when I'm away on business trips.

While I'm traveling, it's nice to have a bus powered local Time Machine backup, plus additional storage, that I can plug into the second port on the 5big when I'm back home.

While I'm at home, I don't have to unmount drives on the MacBook Pro if I want to take it out to the patio or living room, because things are connected directly to the Mac Mini Server*. I simply unplug my power cable and GigE Thunderbolt adapter and leave the room. I keep the Wireless adapter on and in a lower priority than the GigE and it works well for me that way.

Every once in a while when I need more screen real estate I'll head over to the room where the 27" iMac sits (with it's 2 Thunderbolt ports) and connect my MacBook Pro up to that and use it (the iMac) in Target Display mode.

I don't have a Cinema Display or the Thunderbolt Display, but when the kids are in bed, it's nice to have the option. The Nvidia 650M in the rMBPro ain't too shabby when it comes to gaming, at least the gaming I manage to do these days. I'll admit I don't really have or foresee an immediate need for 4K in my use cases.

I don't want a bunch of Firewire drives either - it's yesterday's technology. No offense to those who still use Firewire 800 (or 400), but Thunderbolt is a legitimate replacement for Firewire, and then some.

Having said that, if there were a compelling reason to add a 4K monitor and the price was right, I'd be feeling the urge to upgrade to Thunderbolt 2 in some way shape or form to be able to obtain that. I don't see this as a realistic possibility in my case for several years, 3 to 4 is probably about right.

 

[tongxinshe]

ThunderBolt will be another FireWire -- gradually die out after USB catches up. Price is the most important factor that causes their death.

 

[cmanderson]

ThunderBolt will be another FireWire -- gradually die out after USB catches up. Price is the most important factor that causes their death.

In the meantime it just works and works well.

 

[itsamacthing]

In the meantime it just works and works well.

It can work well but until Intel makes it affordable to implement, it will keep on being a niche technology

 

[cmanderson]

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.

FC goes 1 / 2 / 4 / 8 / 16

Tripple - a horse's gait?

----------

It can work well but until Intel makes it affordable to implement, it will keep on being a niche technology

For a niche there sure are quite a few options out there, with more to come.

 

[MattInOz]

ThunderBolt will be another FireWire -- gradually die out after USB catches up. Price is the most important factor that causes their death.

By Firewire there are still a lot of uses for firewire that USB never replaced, they just aren't main stream.
Yes Thunderbolt is likely to be a lot like Firewire in that regard. For uses with demand and money USB is never likely to catch up because it plays for the useful to almost everyone end of the market.

 

[Atlantico]

You realize that this holdup is due to Intel not having currently available Xeon-based processor chipsets that can support Thunderbolt, right?

Apple doesn't have to rely on Intel providing a reference chipset to put Thunderbolt on a Xeon motherboard.

 

[ogun7]

Yup, I do. They could announce new systems with availability down the road. Intel has not made any official statement on the next Xeon based chips, could be the Fall, sooner or later. Perhaps Apple may offer more BTO options/processors (doubtful). Until official releases and announcements are made, it's anyone's guess.

You think maybe Intel is waiting for Apple to announce the new MacPro just like how Apple announced a thunderbolt first?

How important are Xeons to anyone outside the server community on Windows?

----------

I built almost Mac Pro myself and have now 2 Thunderbolt ports working on GA-Z77X-UP5 TH mobo. One for Blackmagic Ultrastudio and second for HD.

My colleague built a hackintosh with the older, non-Thunderbolt motherboard and convinced me to build one with the board you have.

 

[Matrixfan]

It baffles me a bit that the actual Thunderbolt connector doesn't have any physical retaining as other professional connectors do. We are talking about high bandwidth and multiple connection points due to daisy chaining. You don't have to be a scientist to use the system to it's full extent. A simple prosumer musician (low latency applications like the UAD Apollo) or a video editor (very high bandwidth video streams) can fully utilise the system. TB is "making peripherals" out of components that used to be inside the box. It's not like a keyboard or mouse. Based on technical superiority and setting price aside, I prefer Thunderbolt to USB, but a more professional plug would be nice. What if I plug and unplug my MBP multiple times a day? I wouldn't want my TB socket to loosen up.

 

[Chuck-Norris]

Wow, troll much? At any rate, here I am with a 15" rMBPro with GigE plugged into a Thunderbolt port. There's a monitor plugged into the other.

I don't "lose" a Mini DisplayPort. It's "part of" the Thunderbolt chain, but it doesn't have to be used with a Thunderbolt device, per se. Still, I could use it as a secondary Thunderbolt port if necessary. I could go wireless if I need both of the TB ports for whatever reason.

Under the same desk sits a Mac Mini Server with a LaCie 5big 10TB DAS plugged into its Thunderbolt port. I'm running MacZFS. Actually, I just added Greenbytes ZEVO Community Edition on top of that. 10TB in RAIDZ, 8TB usable storage. I see anywhere from 325 to 475 MBps, read and write, on the 5big. Not Mbps; MBps.

I'm able to accomplish this with ONE device attached to the Mac Mini for primary storage (the cache device is just a toy, can disconnect at any time, wouldn't lose sleep over it.) If I wanted to use eSATA, I'd need a bridge device of some sort, most likely Thunderbolt to eSATA. Or a bunch of USB drives getting hot as they're stacked up on top of each other or getting in my way as they're spread out. What I've done for myself here is a more elegant solution.

It's great for running multiple virtual machines (VMWare Fusion, for the most part), storing my media collection, iPhoto / Aperture photo editing, etc., etc., etc. It's like a GIANT SSD in terms of performance.

Daisy-chained off of the LaCie is an Intel 240 GB SSD stuffed into a Seagate portable GoFlex Thunderbolt chassis. I pulled the 1GB drive for use elsewhere. I use the Thunderbolt SSD for a number of things including *fast* external storage when I'm away on business trips.

While I'm traveling, it's nice to have a bus powered local Time Machine backup, plus additional storage, that I can plug into the second port on the 5big when I'm back home.

While I'm at home, I don't have to unmount drives on the MacBook Pro if I want to take it out to the patio or living room, because things are connected directly to the Mac Mini Server*. I simply unplug my power cable and GigE Thunderbolt adapter and leave the room. I keep the Wireless adapter on and in a lower priority than the GigE and it works well for me that way.

Every once in a while when I need more screen real estate I'll head over to the room where the 27" iMac sits (with it's 2 Thunderbolt ports) and connect my MacBook Pro up to that and use it (the iMac) in Target Display mode.

I don't have a Cinema Display or the Thunderbolt Display, but when the kids are in bed, it's nice to have the option. The Nvidia 650M in the rMBPro ain't too shabby when it comes to gaming, at least the gaming I manage to do these days. I'll admit I don't really have or foresee an immediate need for 4K in my use cases.

I don't want a bunch of Firewire drives either - it's yesterday's technology. No offense to those who still use Firewire 800 (or 400), but Thunderbolt is a legitimate replacement for Firewire, and then some.

Having said that, if there were a compelling reason to add a 4K monitor and the price was right, I'd be feeling the urge to upgrade to Thunderbolt 2 in some way shape or form to be able to obtain that. I don't see this as a realistic possibility in my case for several years, 3 to 4 is probably about right.

sounds pretty sexy

 

[HarryKNN21]

Thunderbolt 2 will be a more pointless development if those Thunderbolt compatible devices and storages are still not affordable by typical consumers.

Even the current LaCie Thunderbolt external drives are not really that faster than USB 3 drives.

 

[subsonix]

In terms of computation horsepower GPUs can be used a general compute device so parallel float loads.

Yes… But graphics cards or dedicated computation cards like Tessla or Xeon Phi does a much better job than an integrated GPU. Integrated GPUs makes sense where graphics cards or even discrete GPUs are impossible, such as in a laptop.

It is not. It just has a pragmatic requirement that there be an embedded GPU on the motherboard. The trivial way to implement that is with a iGPU. However, the iMac has a discrete GPU that manages to pump data to the Thunderbolt controller. Some folks try to project that has to be routed through the iGPU but I don't see why that would be necessary.

How is that pragmatic if you have a graphics card?

 

[ogun7]

I don't think they ever passed it off as science, no faux papers where published etc.

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.

I believe they used Xeon to address the amount of memory lanes.

 

[deconstruct60]

Yes… But graphics cards or dedicated computation cards like Tessla or Xeon Phi does a much better job than an integrated GPU.

The iGPU doesn't have to out compete those. It just has to outcompete the float math function units in the CPU package. Talking effective bang-for-buck transistor allocation inside the CPU package. At some point just piling on more x86 cores doesn't do a whole lot.

In the blade and/or custom cluster node space large PCI-e cards are nether thermally or space efficient. Where are talking the space between a whole card with a whole another set of RAM and the exact same space of CPU socket and the RAM that was also already there.

Intel isn't really ready just yet. Haswell HD graphics just got OpenCL 1.2. But couple eDRAM and the next generation (or one after) HD graphics GPGPU compute engine block (not max biggest but single building module) to 6-8 Xeon like x86 implementations and it will be decent out of the box for a modest server and much more aligned with the workstation market. All the more so if TB peripherals market matures and prices come down a bit.

If actually look at E5 2600 server boxes they come with an Matrox G200eW , at some point is likely to absorb that market also. If look at those systems they are already embedded GPUs present now. iGPU just shifts the implementation strategy for the embedding.

Integrated GPUs makes sense where graphics cards or even discrete GPUs are impossible, such as in a laptop.

You are still missing the point. It is a computational engine and effective use of die space. CPUs and GPUs are going to merge and it has little to do with limited laptop space.

Over the 50+ year history of electronic/transistor computers things have grown more integrated over time. That isn't stopping now. The CPU "black hole" sucked in the memory controller (and northbridge ). At that point the GPU was bound to get pulled in also in a wider variety of designs.

How is that pragmatic if you have a graphics card?

Many servers don't have graphics cards. They have embedded graphics. So it is quite pragmatic.

http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/xeon/c202_c204/x9scl-f.cfm (Matrox G200eW )

A list of blades.

http://www.supermicro.com/products/nfo/xeon_x9_e5.cfm?pg=sb ( all Matrox G200eW )

 

[subsonix]

The iGPU doesn't have to out compete those. It just has to outcompete the float math function units in the CPU package.

I'm sorry, floating point math on a regular CPU is a completely different matter.

You are still missing the point. It is a computational engine and effective use of die space.

Ok, you are right!

----------

Many servers don't have graphics cards. They have embedded graphics. So it is quite pragmatic.

So what? The reason it's not pragmatic if you have a graphics card is that you would likely want to use your graphics card, not the integrated graphics of either the CPU or separate chip.