Leaked Info on Third-Generation Thunderbolt Points to 40Gbps Transfer Speeds

[MikhailT]

Can't they just release 1 version and get it over with? All these revisions just make it impossible to take this technology to mainstream adoption. The biggest advantage of USB 2.0 wasn't the technology, it was the fact that it stuck around for over 10 years.

Except Thunderbolt was originally designed to handle 100GBps of traffic over fiber optic.

The technology wasn't available at the time, so they are phasing it out by starting it with 10Gbps on copper, TB2 with 20Gbps, and now 40Gbps with upcoming TB3.

They are making all phases backward compatible. TB2 devices will work fine on TB1 just as TB3 will with an adapter.

They are going to keep releasing new versions until they get to stated goals with 100Gbps on fiber or copper if they can.

Why are they iterating so rapidly with versions of Thunderbolt?

Read above.

My 64GB USB drive regularly hits 240MB/s. USB 2 has a theoretical max of 60MB/s. No, flash memory is very fast if you buy decent hardware, USB 3 is very much needed and utilised (500MB/s max). I'm looking forward to seeing the new rMBP's with USB 3.1.

Those USB drives are not the same thing as the much higher quality and reliable NANDs inside the mobile devices. Right now, they are barely pushing above 30-40MBps, so there is no point of either USB 3.0 and 3.1 for the iOS devices.

Anyone know if these speeds are past PCI-e? I understand the latency between the 2 is very different but what about just speed?

I don't understand your question? TB is based on PCI-e, it cannot be faster than PCI-e that it is based on.

TB3 with 40Gbps will be based on 3rd gen PCI-e.

I'm shocked that they are choosing to change the port. Wasn't one of the advantages of Thunderbolt that it used the same port as mini DisplayPort? Makes the port more universal, which should be a goal. Will mini DisplayPort now be separate from Thunderbolt on future devices, or have I missed something? Maybe mini DisplayPort is being sent to the grave entirely since it's only for displays, not data?

They are redesigning it to be thinner and it will come with adapters for older devices. The same thing Apple did with MagSafe v1 and v2.

 

[kfscoll]

(Google serves different search results to different people for the same query, based on its proprietary algorithm.)

I understand that, but to suggest that "Reading Is Fundamental" wasn't among ANY of the search results is crazy. It's no big deal, really.

 

[mdriftmeyer]

Because no one is using it and Intel thinks that is because of speed?

Just make it affordable. All this speed means nothing if no one can afford to use it.

It's more a combination of 3rd party peripherals and the mark up tax by Intel, not just Intel's tax.

The certifcation process has been stalled, intentionally, by Intel so as to give USB 3 a bigger footprint.

They want USB 3.0 to be for the Consumer and Thunderbolt Series for the Pro/Prosumer markets.

Consumers just want them both to be for all markets.

 

[deviant]

Don’t know about you guys (complaining about thunderbolt and “who uses it” and stuff like that) .. I know it’s different but i’ve been using mine since i bought my mba 2012 like hdmi port. So i guess it’s not totally useless, rrrright?

 

[Nicky G]

Thunderbolt -- so misunderstood

Oh, so many of you will never understand Thunderbolt.

Let me make a quick list of things it is great for, that USB (including USB 3) are not as ideal for:

• Displays (yeah, it does that)

• desktop RAIDs and high-performance desktop SSDs (which can actually use the extra bandwidth)

• GigE and 10GigE NICs

• Fibre channel HBAs

• Video IO devices

• Red Rocket cards and other professional PCIe devices in external Thunderbolt enclosures -- Pro Tools cards, audio interfaces, all that jazz

People who call Thunderbolt a failure, or compare it to USB -- SIMPLY DO NOT GET IT.

 

[AppleScruff1]

I like TB also; I just think it's curious and maybe a bit short-sighted for Intel to change the connector at such a relatively-early stage in TB's life.

It's a very miniscule user base and there will be an adapter so it shouldn't really cause any problems.

 

[Mr. Wonderful]

A couple of points that people have missed:

USB has been getting just about yearly revisions since USB 3.0 as well.
This will have a newer, smaller form factor, which is important for continuing to shrink notebooks.
External GPUs still aren't going to happen. The leaps in integrated GPUs by Skylake will continue to cause external GPUs not to make sense.

 

[afsnyder]

Apparently you missed the section on the chart that says "NEW CONNECTOR"

Yea i did lol Skipped the line when I read "backwards compatible"

 

[Luba]

Don't have Thunderbolt on my Macs, but that's my worry. What happens when a Thunderbolt HDD/SSD gets disconnected when in it's being accessed?

Yet another connector. Great.

Hopefully they at least make this one locking, like XLR mic cables. I'm REALLY TIRED of my Thunderbolt hard drives getting disconnected!!!!!

 

[swingerofbirch]

Apple knows how their devices are used. There are only three people left in the planet who connect their iOS devices to PCs using wires. Everyone else either syncs wireless or doesn't sync at all. If you are one of those three, Apple is not going to spend a bunch of money just to pleasure you. Get used to it.

I'm not aware of any first-party way to wirelessly transfer personal videos from an iPhone to a computer?

 

[dragje]

Oh, so many of you will never understand Thunderbolt.

Let me make a quick list of things it is great for, that USB (including USB 3) are not as ideal for:

• Displays (yeah, it does that)

• desktop RAIDs and high-performance desktop SSDs (which can actually use the extra bandwidth)

• GigE and 10GigE NICs

• Fibre channel HBAs

• Video IO devices

• Red Rocket cards and other professional PCIe devices in external Thunderbolt enclosures -- Pro Tools cards, audio interfaces, all that jazz

People who call Thunderbolt a failure, or compare it to USB -- SIMPLY DO NOT GET IT.

Spot on.

 

[wiz329]

The max theoretical speed of the cable is irrelevant when the limiting factor is the write speed of NAND flash inside your device.

On that note ... why is flash in mobile devices so slow, when flash in SSDs is so fast?

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Why change the connector size? It's not exactly massive...

 

[wizard]

Thunderbolt 3 is nice but the Thunderbolt 1 ports in my 2011 iMac are still virgins.

They would loose that status if you where to spend a little money on them, maybe buy a dinner or harddrive to get them going.

----------

Yet another connector. Great.

Hopefully they at least make this one locking, like XLR mic cables. I'm REALLY TIRED of my Thunderbolt hard drives getting disconnected!!!!!

This is really one of the few valid complaints, TB's connector sucks! There are many complaints about TB that are baloney but this one should be on the top of Apples and Intels list of things to fix.

----------

The intel road map tells all! Next Gen Mac Pro is not doubt going to be a bigger monster then it is now! Of course that is to say apple goes for the goods available !

Since before the machine was introduced I've been saying that the new Mac Pro would be about the future. As these advancements roll out and Apple implements them that little tube will become incredibly powerful. Much of this will happen after Intel and AMD move to 14nm on the pro hardware. So by 2016/2017 the Mac Pro could be running at twice the performance it has now.

Ny biggest wonder here though is where would Apple get the extra 300 to 600 watts needed for these new ports. Digital circuits get smaller every year or so but analog lags significantly. Maybe it isn't a big deal but even if they did two TB3 ports that is still 200 watts or so of extra power they need from the power supply. That is a bit for the Mac Pros compact size.

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At first i was like wtf....i remember usb 2.0 being released to mainstream users in like 2003 and only now are we seeing usb 3.0 to be mainstream...meanwhile thunderbolt is getting new versions year over year.
at first i thought that sucks for developers and users/adopters/buyers...

but then i realized since the ports dont change and everything is backwards compatible.....this is actually good news.

It is very good news and frankly all the whining about a new port is nonsense! I can see Mac Pros supporting TB2 and TB3 for a very long time. People need to realize that the power delivery itself puts the port into a wholly different category. Further these data rates enable a whole new ball game so to speak when it comes to viable uses or devices at the other end of that cable.

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Because no one is using it and Intel thinks that is because of speed?

Just make it affordable. All this speed means nothing if no one can afford to use it.

It is a matter of perspective, I'm sure many can't afford not to use it. In any event you and many others frankly fail to realize that this tech isn't in place to replace USB. The two simply don't compete and it is rather ignorant to suggest that they do.

 

[LastQuadrant]

Next year I hope.

Nope, I think this will get to market in about 3-5 years. They weren't sure if this will make it to consumers. I think this is just the proposed specs, now they have to design it, test it, get the drivers, get the chips through their final production, that takes time.

Thunderbolt 1 came out in 2011
Thunderbolt came out at the end of 2013, more actually shipping in decent quantity in 2014.

So, i think they'll probably hold on to this for at least 3+ years. They don't want to make current product obsolete that quickly. They are still lightyears ahead of anything else.

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Oh, so many of you will never understand Thunderbolt.

Let me make a quick list of things it is great for, that USB (including USB 3) are not as ideal for:

• Displays (yeah, it does that)

• desktop RAIDs and high-performance desktop SSDs (which can actually use the extra bandwidth)

• GigE and 10GigE NICs

• Fibre channel HBAs

• Video IO devices

• Red Rocket cards and other professional PCIe devices in external Thunderbolt enclosures -- Pro Tools cards, audio interfaces, all that jazz

People who call Thunderbolt a failure, or compare it to USB -- SIMPLY DO NOT GET IT.

Amen,

I have an external RAID SSD with both Thunderbolt 1 and USB 3 and when I ran BlackMagicDesign speed test, Thunderbolt was 2x faster with both read and write.

Plus, USB gets clogged when you add more devices to the same bus, so for A/D and D/A conversion, one can't have HDD or SSD on the same bus. For high track count converters, Thunderbolt does't have the same latency problems as USB 3, IMO, USB 3 is meant more for low end applications like a keyboard, mouse, maybe a printer, it's just not that great for external storage or anything SERIOUS.

I think USB is more consumer centric while Thunderbolt is far more professional centric. We need both, but Thunderbolt just kicks ass.

 

[wizard]

I'm firmly in this camp, and I've been angry about it since 2011! I'd pay $50 for a TB to USB3 dongle, but I'm not going to spend $300 (or more!) on a giant hub with every connection known to man.

There in lies your problem, these aren't hubs in the traditional sense, so comparing them with a cheap passive USB hub is bogus.

There is one reason, and one reason only that a product like this doesn't exist. Greed. They know there aren't millions of us so they are using higher dollar devices to keep their profits higher.

Greed or trying to stay afloat. You need to realize that TB was never intended to be a port for mice and keyboards or even printers. Rather it is a high performance extension of the PCI Express expansion ports.

Really if you don't understand it there is no point in making these silly posts. I know of guys that have never used the video monitor port on their laptops. Does that make the port worthless. Certainly not.

Assuming Apple wants TB to be widely adapted, Apple should be the one selling this! The TB rollout is truly baffling. Its really like they want to hold back adoption of it.

I'd be the first to admit that rollout has been less that perfect but then I'd have to compare it to the USB rollout that took years (literally years) before hardware hit the marketplace. Back then Apple went all in with USB and actually lead the industry for a long time. Even then it took ages for peripherals to arrive and frankly the drivers sucked and on the MicroSoft side of things they truly created a mess with an ill conceived software stack in Windows.

So some of the impatience here is unwarranted. The hardware is being introduced and frankly it is filling a niche objectively the delay between announcement and actual products on the shelves isn't that bad at all. Intel, from a number of reports, is being real strict about software quality and that might be in part due to the start up issues USB had.

I sometimes get the distinct impression that a lot of the bitching about TB comes from people that where never around for the USB roll out. TB is doing fine and is serving the industry segments it was designed to support.

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I don't see it as a competitor either but that really doesn't change the fact that cost is crippling this tech, the 3rd gen should be focusing on making the tech more affordable.

Again all I can say is that you don't understand the market nor the expense of competing technologies. For example purchase a fiber channel disk array and a controller and a similar TB based unit. The TB unit will either be cheaper or in the same ball park.

Apparently many here have trouble grasping one important thing, TB isn't even remotely designed to replace USB, it is a whole different ball game. It is fundamentally cheaper than some of the other technologies that exist out there and do similar things.

 

[Quu]

Intel should have made a standardised connector for Thunderbolt from the start. The market is fractured.

Sony shipped thunderbolt by making a combination USB3.0/Thunderbolt connector. Apple shoehorned it in to their Mini-Display port. Now Intel is making their own connector years after those two prior ones were released.

So now thunderbolt will have three connectors in the market simultaneously, although Sony has stopped making notebooks now.

I hope this new connector is at-least a physical improvement that is more durable as I've found the Mini-Displayport/Thunderbolt port to wear incredibly quickly allowing cables to wiggle after several hundred connect/disconnects resulting in connection loss when connectors are bumped or touched by accident. This isn't great when the connector has so many different functions.

 

[H2SO4]

Apple knows how their devices are used. There are only three people left in the planet who connect their iOS devices to PCs using wires. Everyone else either syncs wireless or doesn't sync at all. If you are one of those three, Apple is not going to spend a bunch of money just to pleasure you. Get used to it.

Where did you get this info from please?

 

[octothorpe8]

Apple knows how their devices are used. There are only three people left in the planet who connect their iOS devices to PCs using wires. Everyone else either syncs wireless or doesn't sync at all. If you are one of those three, Apple is not going to spend a bunch of money just to pleasure you. Get used to it.

You're full of crap, you know that right? If I want to offload a whole bunch of photos off my phone what do you think is the quickest way to do that? How about loading a bunch of new music or media, or — as I did last week — restoring my entire phone from a backup? Wifi? No.

 

[kfscoll]

You're full of crap, you know that right? If I want to offload a whole bunch of photos off my phone what do you think is the quickest way to do that? How about loading a bunch of new music or media, or — as I did last week — restoring my entire phone from a backup? Wifi? No.

Not to mention the fact that I need to charge my iPhone and iPad, so why not sync them quickly and reliably at the same time?

Besides, if Apple was so sure that "no one" was connecting their iOS devices to their main computers with wires, I seriously doubt they would've just recently gone through the trouble and expense to develop the Lightning connector.

 

[Neodym]

but then i realized since the ports dont change and everything is backwards compatible.....this is actually good news.

It may be backward compatible (via adapters), but it'll get a different connector (which imho is bad for a standard that has still not gotten overly wide market acceptance - and sheds a poor light on the long-time planning capabilities of the parties involved).

 

[RoastingPig]

man i just bought the pegasus 2 ....not like there will be a difference as i am using spinners.

 

[Freyqq]

I'd still like to see some external thunderbolt video cards...

Imagine a docking station with a desktop-class GPU, and use intel integrated on the go.

 

[xmichaelp]

That's enough for 2880 x 5120. Interesting...

Retina thunderbolt display next fall?

 

[xmichaelp]

The max theoretical speed of the cable is irrelevant when the limiting factor is the write speed of NAND flash inside your device.

How fast is the flash in current i devices? Not as fast as SSDs right?

 

[goobot]

They would loose that status if you where to spend a little money on them, maybe buy a dinner or harddrive to get them going.

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This is really one of the few valid complaints, TB's connector sucks! There are many complaints about TB that are baloney but this one should be on the top of Apples and Intels list of things to fix.

----------



Since before the machine was introduced I've been saying that the new Mac Pro would be about the future. As these advancements roll out and Apple implements them that little tube will become incredibly powerful. Much of this will happen after Intel and AMD move to 14nm on the pro hardware. So by 2016/2017 the Mac Pro could be running at twice the performance it has now.

Ny biggest wonder here though is where would Apple get the extra 300 to 600 watts needed for these new ports. Digital circuits get smaller every year or so but analog lags significantly. Maybe it isn't a big deal but even if they did two TB3 ports that is still 200 watts or so of extra power they need from the power supply. That is a bit for the Mac Pros compact size.

----------



It is very good news and frankly all the whining about a new port is nonsense! I can see Mac Pros supporting TB2 and TB3 for a very long time. People need to realize that the power delivery itself puts the port into a wholly different category. Further these data rates enable a whole new ball game so to speak when it comes to viable uses or devices at the other end of that cable.

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It is a matter of perspective, I'm sure many can't afford not to use it. In any event you and many others frankly fail to realize that this tech isn't in place to replace USB. The two simply don't compete and it is rather ignorant to suggest that they do.

Yes ignorant because I think somthing needs to be cost effective to really go mainstream XD, hey my iPhone and TV don't compete so I guess one can cost way more than anyone is willing to pay for it. Maybe you should take your own advice.