Fiber Optics have been in consumer goods for years and years, have you heard of TOSLink?
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Intel to Launch 'Thunderbolt' on Thursday? MacBook Pros to Follow?
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Fiber Optics have been in consumer goods for years and years, have you heard of TOSLink?
I'd think the idea is that Monitor/projector makes will be encouraged to implement this not just a stop gap but as a long term improvement. It gives them a high enough bandwidth single cable connection to act like a dock for any computer that uses this version of displayport. When the Optical spec is up and it will use a more general port that will be used to drive mainstream adoption and this will stay around to handle legacy video connections for the foreseeable future.
No doubt there is already a single chip monitor driver that can take either DP or DVI-a input and feed to a LCD panel. So all intel needs to help them with is another chip that takes Display port data lines to hook them up to a couple of USB trees plus say an ethernet and/or firewire ports but these will need fallback to make them still work if the monitor is connected with original Displayport with usb datalines.
That would be my take on long term viability position until we know more.
I know a guy who's job is to go from company to company downloading data into a laptop that he then has to bring back to his office and load into yet another computer... anything at all to speed up part of that process would make his day brighter and less-annoying. Granted this is just the beginning, but if Thunderbolt rolls out to more places and more brands over the next year, then hooray.
Nice
I remember a friend that had an PowerBook 100 in the early 90's which had no floppy disk and and a SCSI connection so you could add an external drive or another computer, really nice feature at this time...
Now we have a combined Display Port (17Gbit/s) plus additional 10Gbit instead of DP 720Mbit Aux channel. why would this be bad?
I can connect my laptop to my Cinema display with two connectors instead of three, add all storage and devices to my display and also daisy chain another display if I need more screen estate.
If they also had included a power connector with more than 3,3V 500mA (current DP) according to the MagSafe patent fro me some weeks ago, so I could use only one connector...
I remember a friend that had an PowerBook 100 in the early 90's which had no floppy disk and and a SCSI connection so you could add an external drive or another computer, really nice feature at this time...
Now we have a combined Display Port (17Gbit/s) plus additional 10Gbit instead of DP 720Mbit Aux channel. why would this be bad?
I can connect my laptop to my Cinema display with two connectors instead of three, add all storage and devices to my display and also daisy chain another display if I need more screen estate.
If they also had included a power connector with more than 3,3V 500mA (current DP) according to the MagSafe patent fro me some weeks ago, so I could use only one connector...
ocd
I'm a little obsessive, but the various ports that will now be on the MBPs makes me cringe. I'm sure people would feel inconvenienced if FireWire disappeared, but I'd rather see fewer options purely for the sake of a clean appearance. Especially for the 13" model, two Thunderbolt ports and one USB would suit me just fine. This might also help solidify Thunderbolt as a new universal standard.
P.S. How is a UNIVERSAL Serial Bus not a general purpose connector? What a bunch of crapola.
I'm a little obsessive, but the various ports that will now be on the MBPs makes me cringe. I'm sure people would feel inconvenienced if FireWire disappeared, but I'd rather see fewer options purely for the sake of a clean appearance. Especially for the 13" model, two Thunderbolt ports and one USB would suit me just fine. This might also help solidify Thunderbolt as a new universal standard.
P.S. How is a UNIVERSAL Serial Bus not a general purpose connector? What a bunch of crapola.
I hope USB ports in new MacBook Pros are USB 3.0....
nah.. man that stuff is dead.
Maybe they forgot what the 'U' in USB stands for.
They also seem to think cutting out the guys who invented to spec was a good plan. So not the sharpest tools in the shed by any measure.
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Ha who called it, thanks to my TARDIS.
Ha who called it, thanks to my TARDIS.
Tell me there are no similarities...
[crossposted response of mine from another thread here on MR]:
- Lightning McQueen's "BOLT" in PIXAR's 2006 movie "CARS".
- Steve Jobs bought and was CEO of PIXAR until it was sold to Disney.
- Steve Jobs has been the largest shareholder of Disney stock since that acquisition.
- Disney's 2008 movie "BOLT" is about a fast dog.
- Steve Jobs has long been known to have been inspired by Walt Disney.
It's the famous 6 degrees of Steve Jobs... and by 6, I mean 5.
Apple is buying Disney to give PIXAR back to Steve Jobs and have everything come full circle. [Intel's just one of many pawns in Steve's game of life].
"All your base are belong to SJ!!!"
Happy Birthday Steve!
[crossposted response of mine from another thread here on MR]:
- Lightning McQueen's "BOLT" in PIXAR's 2006 movie "CARS".
- Steve Jobs bought and was CEO of PIXAR until it was sold to Disney.
- Steve Jobs has been the largest shareholder of Disney stock since that acquisition.
- Disney's 2008 movie "BOLT" is about a fast dog.
- Steve Jobs has long been known to have been inspired by Walt Disney.
It's the famous 6 degrees of Steve Jobs... and by 6, I mean 5.
Apple is buying Disney to give PIXAR back to Steve Jobs and have everything come full circle. [Intel's just one of many pawns in Steve's game of life].
"All your base are belong to SJ!!!"
Happy Birthday Steve!
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The "Thunderstorm" term will be used on MBPs sporting more than one Thunderbolt ports.
This is nothing compared to the last MBP refresh wait... remember the endless threads?
I can't believe the USB association doesn't allow the integration of other technologies into USB. Just how exactly does that benefit anyone? Aren't people supposed to be working on making the world a better place? I hate it when people don't allow innovation just because "it's ours and we don't allow it".
With Intel/Apple backing up Thunderbold, it likely will just takes days before you see external harddisk and USB 2.0/3.0 hubs being announced. You basically get a 1 cable dock option for the MBP.
I'm hoping that Apple will also provide multi-monitor support via Thunderbold. That would finally allow to use a MBP in a multi-monitor setup without using something like Matrox xHead2Go. At least the LightPeak specs seem to support such setup...
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Is DisplayPort really only 3.3V? Is this the same now that it also has Thunderbolt? If yes, Thunderbolt is definitely doomed, how the hell are people going to attach devices that aren't self powered, such as smaller external hard drives, graphics tablets, etc...? Even 5V is not enough to power many hard drives, 12V would be ideal with more amps, isn't this a huge step backwards? Then no matter how slow USB 3 is going to be, it will still be more popular as it won't require people to carry bulky (not to mention non-eco friendly) power adapters for every single thing they want to connect to it.
"Thunderbolt" is a super fast SSD
It seems Intel means with "Thunderbolt" super fast flash memory, which makes more sense than a replacement for light peak. As i said it many times, light peak is still in development, and first products should appear 2015 (10 GBit/s). And where are the semiconductors, which implement LP? Did you see them? No?
More Info:
http://savolainen.wordpress.com/2008/04/27/intels-mobile-strategy/
It seems Intel means with "Thunderbolt" super fast flash memory, which makes more sense than a replacement for light peak. As i said it many times, light peak is still in development, and first products should appear 2015 (10 GBit/s). And where are the semiconductors, which implement LP? Did you see them? No?
More Info:
http://savolainen.wordpress.com/2008/04/27/intels-mobile-strategy/
mini display port is obvious
The reason the thunderbolt connection is shared with the mini display port is obvious.
This will become the single connection point, instead of connecting min display port + separate thunderbolt cable you have a single connector. The display will contain some sort of hub for connecting your peripherals.
Thunderbolt would be useless if it had to carry the data for the display as well as there would be no bandwidth left for anything else so for now until higher speed versions become available it is necessary for the display port to be used.
The reason the thunderbolt connection is shared with the mini display port is obvious.
This will become the single connection point, instead of connecting min display port + separate thunderbolt cable you have a single connector. The display will contain some sort of hub for connecting your peripherals.
Thunderbolt would be useless if it had to carry the data for the display as well as there would be no bandwidth left for anything else so for now until higher speed versions become available it is necessary for the display port to be used.
By using the Displayport protocol, Thunderbold can theoretically already support 10GBit/sec bidirectionally.
On WikiPedia Displayport is specified to support a voltage up to 16V. It's a bit unclear however if this is for the dedicated powerpin or for the data lanes to drive long distances. Anyway, my guess would be that Intel/Apple have spend some time on figuring out how to at least power something like a external harddisk or USB hub via Thunderbolt. Doesn't seem to make sense that they didn't.
Update: seems that DisplayPort 1.2 supports something called 'Fast Aux' which basically provides a Video + USB 2.0 connection over a single cable. See http://www.displayport.org/cms/sites/default/files/downloads/DisplayPort_DevCon_Presentation_DP%201_2_Dec_2010_rev_2b.pdf. Wondering how likely it is that 2 months after this spec being presented, Apple/Intel come up with something fundamentally different...
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