Intel to Speed Thunderbolt Deployment With Developer Kit Release This Quarter

[2499723]

Isn’t TB supposed to be an intermediate step on the way to LP? If this is the case, won’t all of these ports and peripherals be superseded in a short time? Seems like a lot of work for something “temporary”.

I don't think this is the case, actually. I hope someone can help me back it up with evidence, but I remember hearing that once the faster-speed 'LightPeak' products/cables come out, they will work with the original implementation. Basically, the port is not the limiting factor at the moment - it's the cables. So, the current ThunderBolt ports will be compatible with ThunderBolt ports of the future. And, for the record, ThunderBolt IS LightPeak. It will not be replaced by it. LightPeak is the development name. All future (and faster) versions of the technology will be called ThunderBolt, not LightPeak.

To back this statement up, I've pulled one source from Wikipedia that has a link to the original article (sorry for not trying harder), and the second quote regarding the adoption of ThunderBolt as the official name for LightPeak comes from the Intel website.

Wikipedia:
'The conversion of electrical signal to optical will be embedded into the cable itself, allowing the current display port socket to be future compatible, but eventually Intel hopes for a purely optical transceiver assembly embedded in the PC.'

Intel Website:
'Developed by Intel (under the code name Light Peak), and brought to market with technical collaboration from Apple. Thunderbolt technology is a new, high-speed, dual-protocol I/O technology designed for performance, simplicity, and flexibility.'

So, 'future compatible' MAY simply mean a faster cord can be plugged in, but may be limited by the speed of the port, kind of like USB 1-3. Who knows, though. Anyway...hope that helps!

 

[dzigg]

I'm not technically savy, so I want to ask if this possible with thunderbolt :

Use it as external storage, high-res display, firewire port, AND external GPUs at the same time ..

I mean, if this is possible, than it could be the end for desktop PC, or at least for me anyways..

Especially the external GPUs part.. since that's the thing that Mac is not known for.. 3D Gaming. Sure you can have decent gaming with high end MBP or iMac or Mac Pros, but the cost is significant..

If external GPU is possible AND not too expensive, I think people would buy it..

 

[Tailpike1153]

Change the name before its too late.

Woosh wire and Licketty-split line are still available.

 

[Tastic Bycrom]

Question of curiosity - does anyone know how Thunderbolt will be adopted in regards to the video card for standard desktops? I don't think the idea of an external video card will be catching on, and I'm not sure that the Thunderbolt port should be tied to an internal video card.

I imagine an internal video card could render the video out put and send it back the to the motherboard to be sent out of the port if the port were on the motherboard itself.... or the port is on the video card and all non-video data is also routed through the card - perhaps even being an internal part of the daisy chain.

Thoughts?

 

[Blipp]

Question of curiosity - does anyone know how Thunderbolt will be adopted in regards to the video card for standard desktops? I don't think the idea of an external video card will be catching on, and I'm not sure that the Thunderbolt port should be tied to an internal video card.

I imagine an internal video card could render the video out put and send it back the to the motherboard to be sent out of the port if the port were on the motherboard itself.... or the port is on the video card and all non-video data is also routed through the card - perhaps even being an internal part of the daisy chain.

Thoughts?

External video cards connected via PCIe already exist and are typically used to use more than a single external display with a laptop. Thunderbolt is essentially the same protocol as PCIe just with a cable instead of a card slot. Anything that PCIe can do Thunderbolt should be able to do.

 

[FloatingBones]

Will thunderbolt be the new connection for iOS devices... iPhone 5?

Perhaps you missed this story from a few days ago. Check out the graphic from that article:

It's remarkable when you go look at the patent application for the 30-pin dock connector containing a "Display Port (Dual Lane)" option. They were already looking at how to integrate Thunderbolt with iOS devices in this April, 2010 application. It was a rather sneaky name/label for the tech.

 

[ericinboston]

Gotta say I think Thunderbolt (and beyond that Lightpeak) has a real shot at becoming the next de facto standard for computer connectivity. It's got some big names behind it, USB 3.0 isn't really established yet (and isn't as fast or convenient)...

huh? USB 3.0 is clearly established...there are tons of hard drives with USB 3.0 as well as numerous medium-to-high end computers with USB 3.0 ports. I haven't looked for other devices (cameras, vid cams, printers) but let's be realistic about what all the excitement is about: speed for large files and large quantities of files...the devices will begin with hard drives and then move on to the other devices (if necessary) that hook up to a computer.

And how is USB inconvenient?! You're joking, right? I cannot imagine how you think USB is inconvenient.

TB is the one late to the game...AND IS STILL IN DEVELOPMENT...I think they will both survive but have a feeling USB 3.0 will crush TB as far as being in every single device....kinda like how USB is in 1000x more items than Firewire. TB is a brand new technology with 0 backwards compatibility...USB 3.0 is the same great technology we've been used to for 15 years but now much faster and offers more voltage for charging devices...and it's backwards compatible. Far far far less risk for the 90% of personal computer owners out there to move to USB 3.0.

Intel has their hands in both technologies so obviously there is big risk of bias on Intel's part. Again, I'll take anything that is substantially faster than USB 2.0...but it's going to come down to price, performance, availability, and if it's some niche player or something everyone in the world is adopting.

 

[aiqw9182]

huh? USB 3.0 is clearly established...there are tons of hard drives with USB 3.0 as well as numerous medium-to-high end computers with USB 3.0 ports. I haven't looked for other devices (cameras, vid cams, printers) but let's be realistic about what all the excitement is about: speed for large files and large quantities of files...the devices will begin with hard drives and then move on to the other devices (if necessary) that hook up to a computer.

And how is USB inconvenient?! You're joking, right? I cannot imagine how you think USB is inconvenient.

TB is the one late to the game...AND IS STILL IN DEVELOPMENT...I think they will both survive but have a feeling USB 3.0 will crush TB as far as being in every single device....kinda like how USB is in 1000x more items than Firewire. TB is a brand new technology with 0 backwards compatibility...USB 3.0 is the same great technology we've been used to for 15 years but now much faster and offers more voltage for charging devices...and it's backwards compatible. Far far far less risk for the 90% of personal computer owners out there to move to USB 3.0.

Intel has their hands in both technologies so obviously there is big risk of bias on Intel's part. Again, I'll take anything that is substantially faster than USB 2.0...but it's going to come down to price, performance, availability, and if it's some niche player or something everyone in the world is adopting.

Hope you enjoy your one-dimensional USB 3.0 future while the rest of us enjoy the versatility that Thunderbolt has to offer. Once again, FireWire was only compatible with FireWire devices. Thunderbolt is compatible with eSata, USB 1-3, HDMI and FireWire just to name a few so put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Not to mention Thunderbolt native speeds make USB 3.0's look abysmal. It's a superior technology in every way, shape and form.

Oh and I'm curious... what risk exactly does Thunderbolt impose on new consumers?

 

[lewis82]

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USB 3.0 isn't really established yet?!?
Except that it's backwards compatible with the last ten years of USB ports. It hit the market first and I already had a USB 2/3.0 external harddrive when they announce Thunderbolt. This isn't a VHS vs Beta, thunderbolt is basically the renamed version of the very unsupported FireWire. Don't get me wrong, I would LOVE for this to take off as I am always transfer huge files.... But it's not to beat USB3 sorry.

Thunderbolt is basically external PCI-Express... a whole different thing than IEEE-1394.

TB is the one late to the game...AND IS STILL IN DEVELOPMENT...I think they will both survive but have a feeling USB 3.0 will crush TB as far as being in every single device....kinda like how USB is in 1000x more items than Firewire. TB is a brand new technology with 0 backwards compatibility...USB 3.0 is the same great technology we've been used to for 15 years but now much faster and offers more voltage for charging devices...and it's backwards compatible. Far far far less risk for the 90% of personal computer owners out there to move to USB 3.0.

So basically you should not have bought a computer with USB back then in 1998, parallel ports were much more common and backwards-compatible...

 

[xlii]

The main difference between the two being that the copper version carries 10-watts of power and can be a significantly longer cable where the fiber has a limited length and no power.

You are correct in saying that the copper version carries power and the fiber version has no power. It's the other way around for the length of the cable. Fiber can be a lot longer than copper... a lot longer. Copper has a much worse jitter budget than fiber.

 

[TMay]

huh? USB 3.0 is clearly established...there are tons of hard drives with USB 3.0 as well as numerous medium-to-high end computers with USB 3.0 ports. I haven't looked for other devices (cameras, vid cams, printers) but let's be realistic about what all the excitement is about: speed for large files and large quantities of files...the devices will begin with hard drives and then move on to the other devices (if necessary) that hook up to a computer.

And how is USB inconvenient?! You're joking, right? I cannot imagine how you think USB is inconvenient.

TB is the one late to the game...AND IS STILL IN DEVELOPMENT...I think they will both survive but have a feeling USB 3.0 will crush TB as far as being in every single device....kinda like how USB is in 1000x more items than Firewire. TB is a brand new technology with 0 backwards compatibility...USB 3.0 is the same great technology we've been used to for 15 years but now much faster and offers more voltage for charging devices...and it's backwards compatible. Far far far less risk for the 90% of personal computer owners out there to move to USB 3.0.

Intel has their hands in both technologies so obviously there is big risk of bias on Intel's part. Again, I'll take anything that is substantially faster than USB 2.0...but it's going to come down to price, performance, availability, and if it's some niche player or something everyone in the world is adopting.

For moving a file around, USB is perfectly capable. Once you start looking at data streams (audio/video) firewire is currently preferred with its isochronous capability, lower latency and minimal cpu overhead.

Now imagine that you can have a high bandwidth mix of asynchronous, isochronous and packet data in the same cable with a wide variety of dongles available for "legacy" systems like USB. That is what Thunderbolt accomplishes and with laptop and mobile devices shrinking in bulk especially thickness, designers have a choice of the performance and capability of Thunderbolt, including its future migrations, over USB.

I am quite pleased that Apple has chosen Thunderbolt for its future, and if the penalty that I pay for use of legacy USB devices is a dongle, I am quite happy to do that.

It will be interesting to see if test equipment companies like Agilent, Labview and Fluke look at Thunderbolt. One of my bud's that does RF design, and thinks that Thunderbolt may find acceptance with the military, especially since it would allow a common platform of modular growth for systems that now must be integrated (FWITW, Firewire is quite common in military and automotive systems now)

 

[stefmesman]

thunderbolt is an cable that is forward and backwards compatible to the optical version. the difference is that the optical cable will have transcoders to digital at each end to get to copper. the optical version is to travel long distances. Both have scalable bandwith up to 100Gb/s in the future! compare that to usb3...

 

[lewis82]

Is that Thunderbolt icon an Apple creation? Some idea left over from the iTunes 10 icon debacle? If this is Apple design again, they really need a design intervention.

As a protocol icon it is pretty nice. iTunes 10, on the other hand...

 

[SilianRail]

I just don't get why people have interest in USB 3. For low bandwidth devices like keyboards, mice, printers, etc. USB 2 is obviously more than sufficient. For transferring between hard drives, especially on modern 3+ TB hard drives, it's incredibly painful.

Using the 3.0 drive, the 10-gigabyte folder transferred to the U.S.B. 3.0 drive in 6 minutes, 31 seconds (write speed). The U.S.B. 2.0 drive took 22 minutes, 14 seconds to copy the same 10-gig folder.

In other words, the U.S.B. 3.0 drive copied the data roughly 3.5 times faster than the U.S.B. 2.0 drive. That’s far short of the touted 10X performance gains, but it’s an improvement that you’ll definitely notice.

In my informal tests, the difference in read speeds was not so dramatic. The USB 3.0 drive transferred the 10-gigabyte folder to the desktop in 4 minutes, 13 seconds, while the USB 2.0 drive transferred the same folder in 5 minutes, 14 seconds.

http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/06/testing-real-world-speed-of-usb-3-0-hard-drives/

THEN take into account it hammers your CPU and can only transfer one way at a time, ouch.

 

[thibaulthalpern]

I just don't get why people have interest in USB 3. For low bandwidth devices like keyboards, mice, printers, etc. USB 2 is obviously more than sufficient. For transferring between hard drives, especially on modern 3+ TB hard drives, it's incredibly painful.


http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/06/testing-real-world-speed-of-usb-3-0-hard-drives/

THEN take into account it hammers your CPU and can only transfer one way at a time, ouch.

Totally agree! USB is a horrible interface for high bandwidth applications, including hard drive read/write and syncing. It hogs the CPU and is dead slow.

 

[thibaulthalpern]

Isn’t TB supposed to be an intermediate step on the way to LP? If this is the case, won’t all of these ports and peripherals be superseded in a short time? Seems like a lot of work for something “temporary”.

You've been misinformed. LightPeak was what they were calling ThunderBolt before it released. Why the name changed I don't know but I can harbour a guess: It was originally called LightPeak because the technology used fibre optics. But since the released version goes through copper wires, they renamed it to ThunderBolt.

 

[res1233]

huh? USB 3.0 is clearly established...there are tons of hard drives with USB 3.0 as well as numerous medium-to-high end computers with USB 3.0 ports. I haven't looked for other devices (cameras, vid cams, printers) but let's be realistic about what all the excitement is about: speed for large files and large quantities of files...the devices will begin with hard drives and then move on to the other devices (if necessary) that hook up to a computer.

And how is USB inconvenient?! You're joking, right? I cannot imagine how you think USB is inconvenient.

TB is the one late to the game...AND IS STILL IN DEVELOPMENT...I think they will both survive but have a feeling USB 3.0 will crush TB as far as being in every single device....kinda like how USB is in 1000x more items than Firewire. TB is a brand new technology with 0 backwards compatibility...USB 3.0 is the same great technology we've been used to for 15 years but now much faster and offers more voltage for charging devices...and it's backwards compatible. Far far far less risk for the 90% of personal computer owners out there to move to USB 3.0.

Intel has their hands in both technologies so obviously there is big risk of bias on Intel's part. Again, I'll take anything that is substantially faster than USB 2.0...but it's going to come down to price, performance, availability, and if it's some niche player or something everyone in the world is adopting.

This guy wins the "Most Ignorant" award. FireWire can't be compared to TB. Apple has their hands in both, that's where the similarities end. TB is, in fact, fully compatible with USB, as well as any future IO standards due to the fact that it's based off PCI-E. It doesn't get more versatile than that. TB is in position to replace all existing IO standards due to the fact that it's so easy to implement in peripherals. They could easily just include an internal adapter for USB 3 to TB and ship that in a product rather than fully implementing TB. FireWire could never and will never reach that level of versatility.

 

[iRobby]

I thought apple had a 1-2 year exclusive deal with Intel Thunderbolt before other manufacturers.

 

[res1233]

I thought apple had a 1-2 year exclusive deal with Intel Thunderbolt before other manufacturers.

Nah. Intel is letting Apple have it first though (which is fair since Apple brought the idea to intel). PC manufacturers will most likely be putting it into their computers by the end of this year or 2012. I forget where I read that however.

EDIT: Apple is pretty much getting their foot in the door. This technology has TREMENDOUS potential, and that's what apple looks for. Steve Jobs once made a comment about how they try to "choose the horses to ride". Well, this horse sure looks like a good one.

 

[SilianRail]

I thought apple had a 1-2 year exclusive deal with Intel Thunderbolt before other manufacturers.

That would be pretty dumb for an I/O protocol whose purpose is predicated on broad support. Imagine being the only person in the world with a phone. Great, but you've got nobody to call.

 

[Music_Producer]

TB is the one late to the game...AND IS STILL IN DEVELOPMENT...I think they will both survive but have a feeling USB 3.0 will crush TB as far as being in every single device....kinda like how USB is in 1000x more items than Firewire. TB is a brand new technology with 0 backwards compatibility...USB 3.0 is the same great technology we've been used to for 15 years but now much faster and offers more voltage for charging devices...

Reminds me of the time when people like you were fearful about internet over cable connection and touted the reliability of dial-up (telephone lines have existed for years!) ..

You can stay with dial up and USB 3.0 while we move along with LTE and TB

 

[caspersoong]

I wonder if all Thunderbolt ports will support MiniDisplay Ports-capable devices. (even from other manufacturers)

 

[res1233]

I wonder if all Thunderbolt ports will support MiniDisplay Ports-capable devices. (even from other manufacturers)

Mini Display-port is a standard. As long as the device complies with the standard then, yes. That logic doesn't work for every port such as USB since USB relies on drivers for each device, but generic drivers exist, so most USB devices work regardless.

I have to say though. If external graphics cards are every introduced, we could probably keep using the current gen MBPs for the next 10 years so long as we keep buying new cards. Perhaps even SLI will be possible with the dual-lanes.

 

[cube]

I'm waiting for NVIDIA and AMD (ATI) to release some external graphic cards utilising ThunderBolt.

Graphics cards must have DisplayPort 1.2 ports, not slow ThunderCrap ports.

You will never see AMD crippling their cards.