Thunderbolt and Lightpeak (very, very frightening)
My 2p-worth (for what it's worth, probably less than 2p
)
No addon cards: Maybe they will eventually come as 3rd party. But at the speed that TB runs at, I can't see a PCIe card being able to keep up. It'll need the controller chip wired directly into the CPU and memory bus at a very low level surely, hence the claim that it would need a new motherboard. Maybe it's possible to run it at a lower speed over the PCIe bus, but then who will be responsible if TB devices don't work properly? Therefore I can't see Intel, Apple or any major computer vendor producing these as official solutions. It may be possible (but probably not cost effective) for Apple to release a new MacPro logic board though?
Security: Saw a report earlier talking about it being insecure (like firewire) because of the architecture and giving direct access (presumably by target mode in their FW example of hacking into a locked down machine). Fortunately full disk encryption would reduce the risk of a malicious device being able to pull stuff from the disk directly via some future target-mode equivalent, unless it can read/write directly to memory of a running system, but surely they've considered that sort of thing....?
Cables: Yes, presumably the optical cables will be more expensive if they have the optical hardware in rather than in the interface. However I can't see there'll be any significant speed difference of optical over copper, as the local interface is copper, so the only real need for the optical cables will be for longer distance runs (like with networking - runs of 100m or so are fine with copper gigabit, several km requires fibre). For most standard setups, a copper cable should be fine...
Would be nice to have standard connector for everything although that does still depend on how Intel license it. If they start charging extortionate fees or denying access to it to competitors such as AMD then the market will be fragmented and the advantages will be reduced.
I also cannot see it (for the forseeable future) replacing all other cable types. There's no technical reason why it couldn't be used for networking for example, except that no company will want to ditch their existing equipment and cabling infrastructure and replace it all with expensive optical cables which require new cable ducts that don't have tight bends, etc etc.
But great for simply plugging peripherals together!
Steve.
