So I am a little bit confused by this. Do we expect that the Thunderbolt implementation in the MBA can drive both the pegasus raid and one TB display without a problem?
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New MacBook Air Using Scaled-Down Thunderbolt Chip
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OK, that makes sense, and thanks for checking. What look like switch rockers are probably spring-loaded contacts for the pads on the SD card.
It's pretty funny how it seems like EVERYONE thinks 10gb means gigaBYTES. It's 10 Gb (gigaBITS) per second which means 1.125 GB (gigBYTES) per second. 10 sounds like a lot more than 1.125 (since everyone is used to gigaBYTES). Thunderbolt is a reasonable idea but the proprietary usage is going to kill the technology.
So to summarize...
So, in conclusion, using the cheaper controller has no effect whatsoever on the performance or expandability of the Air.
Have I got it right?
- The controller on the Air only supports 2 Thunderbolt channels
- The controller on the Air only supports a single, external DisplayPort device
- The Air can only support a single Thunderbolt port (a Thunderbolt port supports 2 channels)
- The Air can only drive a single external display (in addition to the internal one)
- The Air has only got a single Thunderbolt port, so 2 more channels would be as much use as a chocolate teapot.
- The integrated graphics in the Air can only handle a single external display anyway, so supporting a second Displayport channel would be like fitting an ashtray to a motorbike.
So, in conclusion, using the cheaper controller has no effect whatsoever on the performance or expandability of the Air.
Have I got it right?
The bandwidth over fiber is much higher. If/when intel fleshes out the TB spec and provides optical bridge chips, the speed will exceed anything else available today.
Why don't they use use gigaBYTES and just rate it at 1.125GB/sec?
Everything should be standardized in some way.
It's like that MBA rumor a while back about 400Gbit transfer rates on SSDs (about 3 weeks or so ago I think). Then there's this big discussion on what gigabits vs gigabytes and how fast that really was.
Unnecessary confusion to me.
Apple's next round of hardware upgrades (January?) will have intel's latest chip sets with USB 3.0 and TB. I expect there will be fiber optic TB cables available (for a price) at that time. Don't forget the original name for TB was LightPeak.
I think you are being hard to please. The SSDs are no different from the ones that are in your 2010. You probably have the Toshiba drive, but if you bought your 2010 model in the last 6 months, there's also a possibility you have the Samsung drive.
The HD 3000 graphics were a known issue, and there's nothing Apple could do about it since Intel refused to license NVIDIA chipsets for the Sandy Bridge, and NVIDIA left the chipset business.
Your 2010 MacBook Air lacks Thunderbolt entirely, so even the cheaper part still is better than what is in yours. They found a way to get the port in there, and the HD 3000 can't drive more than 1 external display, anyway (nor could the 320m) so why put in a port that can drive more than that?
This is what happens when engineers put gimmickry before performance.
But hey.. you can fit it in an envelope right?
That's kinda the point of the MacBook Air.
We aren't looking for blazing fast performance here. Mostly because the majority don't actually need all that. The MBA is reasonably fast already and fits quite a lot into its slim form.
This is what happens when engineers put gimmickry before performance.
But hey.. you can fit it in an envelope right?
This is what happens when people don't understand the topic at hand.
The performance is identical to what you'd get from the larger chip, through one Thunderbolt port with Intel integrated graphics onboard.
Cost might be part of it but I suspect bigger factors are power consumption and size.
It is standard practice to measure bandwidth in bits. Besides, if you really can't divide a number by 8 then you have bigger problems on your hand.
Because it's a serial connection. Serial is measured in bits per second, parallel in bytes per second. Hence why SATA is 1.5/3/6Gbps and not 150/300/600 MB/sec
Thunderbolt is faster than USB 3; who would want that over TB now that TB is out?
Stop speaking for the rest of humanity when your own arguments aren't even logical.