In YOUR opinion... Was there a ton of stuff available when USB3 debuted? NO... it took time so there's TB stuff available, just some want to see how well it's going to take off before they mass produce it's looking like... now with the PC getting it, it will!
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Thunderbolt Coming to PCs in April 2012
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Wrong Context
If you're just writing to one drive, it's not terribly useful. If you've got an external array of SSDs though, it's very useful.
Thunderbolt will allow portable and small form factor devices to access the same kind of hardware today's boat-anchor sized desktop PCs can access. It means people won't have to choose between a Macbook Air and a Macbook Pro. They can buy something the size of the Air, and then connect it to a huge boat anchor of a box when they get home, if they want to access a RAID array, terabytes of storage, high-end graphics hardware or other stuff that, in the past, only big desktop PCs could take advantage of.
Thunderbolt will likely spell the end of the desktop PC as we've come to know it. I think the vast majority of users will migrate to laptops, all-in-ones like the iMac or living-room-friendly systems like the Mac Mini. The few who need a big box will still buy a comparatively lightweight front-end, then connect it to a big drive array or external co-processors via Thunderbolt.
If you're just writing to one drive, it's not terribly useful. If you've got an external array of SSDs though, it's very useful.
Thunderbolt will allow portable and small form factor devices to access the same kind of hardware today's boat-anchor sized desktop PCs can access. It means people won't have to choose between a Macbook Air and a Macbook Pro. They can buy something the size of the Air, and then connect it to a huge boat anchor of a box when they get home, if they want to access a RAID array, terabytes of storage, high-end graphics hardware or other stuff that, in the past, only big desktop PCs could take advantage of.
Thunderbolt will likely spell the end of the desktop PC as we've come to know it. I think the vast majority of users will migrate to laptops, all-in-ones like the iMac or living-room-friendly systems like the Mac Mini. The few who need a big box will still buy a comparatively lightweight front-end, then connect it to a big drive array or external co-processors via Thunderbolt.
Get your facts right before you nitpick. These are the types of comments I'm sick of.
1. TB is 10Gb/s, which is 1.25 GB/s. What kind of storage devicewould use that? A RAID0 array of 4 SATA3 sandforce SSDs can easily saturate that kind of bandwidth. And if current technology can saturate it, imagine what future technology will be capable of.
2. Bi-directionality. Its not useful if you want to restrict the "context" to just writing. However, for the rest of us who read AND write to storage arrays, its quite useful to have 10 Gb/s BOTH ways. Even in the limited application of storage devices, there are many situations in which both read/write operations will be performed simultaneously, and having 10 Gb/s bandwitch in both directions would be highly useful.
However where bi-directionality really shines is in using TB for expansion. Consider Apple's TB display. Suppose you hook up a TB display, and have a SSD array daisy-chained to that. Even if you're only reading from the storage array, you will come close to saturating both up and down bandwidths.
How is it NOT useful?!
3. You fail to understand that TB is not trying to compete with USB in the same way that FW was. Did you read the article at all? its NOT trying to "unseat" USB 3.0, but rather, exist alongside of it, because it has different application.
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...according to your link:
It looks like "the world's most advanced OS" needs some work to match the world's most popular OS....
It seems the world's most advanced OS could careless about this request.
http://www.magma.com/thunderbolt.asp
You sure aren't going to push any leading edge GPGPUs through that solution with such a pitiful power supply, which is what would interest Apple.
- Three PCIe 2.0 expansion slots (Two x8 and One x4)
- 220W power supply with (2) 4-pin auxiliary connectors
Wake me when Corsair builds an external Thunderbolt certified box with their 1200 W Supply and 4 GPGPU x16 slots. Then I'll be impressed. Then one can utilize daisy chaining for the OS to access thousands of more streams for Parallel Processing.
No, thats not his opinion. He's on the money.
USB 3.0 allows everyone to keep their current devices and offers 750mb/s transfer speeds on USB 3.0 devices. The fact is, that is FAST. I'm not complaining about USB 2.0 speeds, I'm comfortable with them.
The general public is NOT going to want to buy a bunch of new devices and throw out their old ones just to get Thunderbolt. USB 3.0 alleviates that problem easily. And even if they could, there arent many options to GET thunderbolt onto your computer. And if there are... expect to pay the same stupid APPLE TAX, as in, its expensive.
And who are the consumers that are supposed to be switching over to Thunderbolt? The only consumer thats got the possibility to gain from TB is any new macbook or imac user. That said, Apple has had since January of this year, 12 months nearly, to convince 3rd party manufacturers to develop and roll out devices specifically for Thunderbolt.
In TWELVE MONTHS there are 4 devices available.
Nobody gives a CRAP about thunderbolt because its been a complete disaster. And its going to end up exactly like firewire, if it hasnt already.
I'd be all for Thunderbolt if it let me keep my current devices connected to it and there were more than a laughable 4 devices to buy. TWELVE months and only 4 devices. That is a pathetic JOKE.
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Show me ONE, just ONE SSD drive that can saturate USB 3.0 speed of 750mb/s.
Then show me a thunderbolt SSD drive thats available on store shelves to use with a computer that isnt a 2011 macbook or imac.
I haven't commented in a while, but many of you are missing the point here:
USB 3.0 is a connector. Thunderbolt is the data connection that everything runs on. It's essentially external access directly to the PCI Express bus, feeding into the processor and ram at incredible speed. It's one cord where you can plug in USB 3/2/1, FW 800/400, Ethernet 10/100/1000, eSATA, sound and video. And maybe even things we haven't thought of yet. Once it goes optical it will carry around 100-150Gbps and there's even talk of it carrying the power from the wall. Think of your current MacBook power adapter but with a couple USB 3.0 ports on it and a TB port to daisy chain from there. You could literally dock your MacBook with one cord when you get home. Brilliant and simple design, just the way Apple likes it.
USB 3.0 is a connector. Thunderbolt is the data connection that everything runs on. It's essentially external access directly to the PCI Express bus, feeding into the processor and ram at incredible speed. It's one cord where you can plug in USB 3/2/1, FW 800/400, Ethernet 10/100/1000, eSATA, sound and video. And maybe even things we haven't thought of yet. Once it goes optical it will carry around 100-150Gbps and there's even talk of it carrying the power from the wall. Think of your current MacBook power adapter but with a couple USB 3.0 ports on it and a TB port to daisy chain from there. You could literally dock your MacBook with one cord when you get home. Brilliant and simple design, just the way Apple likes it.
Is there anything known about whether this is licensed / patented by Apple and Intel or just Intel? I suppose Apple won't be taking Sony (or Intel) to court, will they?
First of all, your facts are wrong. USB 3.0 does not offer 750 MB/s speeds. Its theoretical maximum bandwidth is 625 MB/s. In real world application, it rarely surpasses 3.2 Gb/s, which is 400 MB/s.
Current generation SSDs can reach speeds up to 550 MB/s (again, theoretically), so even with single drives you are pushing the saturation point of USB 3.0. Combine even a couple together in an array and you've easily maxed out USB bandwidth.
Didn't you read the article? Nobody is saying TB drives are currently available for PCs. The article said that they will be getting TB soon! The point is that Intel will be integrating TB in with their chipsets in the near future, which means that people really won't have much of a choice in having it on their computers. - Whether or not they will buy the peripherals is a different story.
I think you're making 2 mistakes.
1. TB is not exclusively apple technology. They just got it first. It's Intel technology, which means, no there won't be any sort of "apple tax" on it.
2. TB is NOT in direct competition with USB 3.0.
Intel is not trying to get you to go replace all of your USB external hard drives with newer, faster TB drives. Its application is much broader than that.
Sure there may be some area of overlap - storage devices - which you seem to have honed in on, at the expense of ignoring all other applications of each respective technology. TB is basically a more convenient and usable PCIe. Which makes it useful for connecting a whole host of devices, which would be madness to try and connect via USB 3.0. Apple's TB display is a prime example of this.
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Is there anything known about whether this is licensed / patented by Apple and Intel or just Intel? I suppose Apple won't be taking Sony (or Intel) to court, will they?
While the word has been that this is a partnership Apple/Intel technology, Intel only worked with Apple on some of the final stages of the project. In essense, it's Intel technology, not Apple technology.
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Just put out some consumer priced produced and thunderbolt could make some good moves, please don't make this like firewire, that never got as popular as usb
You're right. USB 2.0 came out about 9 years before 3.0. There's no way we're going to saturate numbers like those by 2018, and anyone who thinks so is an Apple fan who doesn't know what they're talking about!
Please refer to my comment above when I say it's not about the connector. Thunderbolt is the PIPE. It can grow over time to accommodate all sorts of future tech. Flexible and fast, you could run all sorts of USB 3.0, 4.0, whatever on it going forward into the future. It's like a PCI slot shrunk into a port that you can access without ripping open the casing of your machine.
As for the second part of your post, THE ARTICLE SAID APRIL. If Intel is including it by default then it will be adopted. There really isn't a choice but that's a good thing. It means there will be all sorts of fun things we can plug into it. Funny, I never expected port fanboys to be a real thing. But Thunderbolt can carry everything. Nothing wrong with that! You can have your USB 3.0 and eat it too. TB is still maturing, everyone should be patient. They will all live in harmony because they're different things.
Is there anything known about whether this is licensed / patented by Apple and Intel or just Intel? I suppose Apple won't be taking Sony (or Intel) to court, will they?
Intel developed thunderbolt, and they are the ones who own it. They basically just used Apple's connector to debut it first on Apple machines. This question has come up before, but Apple simply has no real ownership of thunderbolt other than the connector used in imacs and macbooks. Sony routed it through usb.
http://developer.apple.com/softwarelicensing/agreements/minidisplayport.html
Note that even the mini displayport which was developed by Apple is free of licensing fees. It's mostly a pin remapping from displayport 1.2.
I know Apple has been suing a lot of people lately, but even if Samsung implemented it, you would not see this in a lawsuit.
Intel claimed around a month ago that it wouldn't be integrated with the chipsets. Did this change again or something? First the articles claimed it would be in the chipset with Ivy Bridge, then Intel said that was incorrect.
I am by no means an apple fanboy. But I think you're wrong here if you're saying we won't saturate USB 3.0 speeds by 2018. Just look at current SSD trends. Current sequential speeds peak at 550 MB/s for the fastest SSDs. So by 2018, when SSDs are much more affordable and widespread in consumer use, I would bet that they surpass the USB 3.0 peak of 625 MB/s.
And that's not even considering any RAID configurations.
I agree with you mostly. However, part of the ingenuity of TB is that it makes the whole width of the "pipe" accessible by a single "connector". So - for example if you are a video professional, and you need the type of bandwidth for 4K+ projects, you now have access to external storage with that kind of bandwidth. You can use the whole pipe for what you need.
The beauty of TB is that it is incredibly useful for both regular consumer and enthusiasts and professionals. Regular consumers can use it to hook up an incredible amount of peripherals to their computer via one small cord. Professionals can use the massive amount of bandwidth is provides for their own devices.
You know, I'm not 100% certain about that. Since its Intel's technology, I'd be very surprised if it didn't make its way natively into the chipset eventually. Either way, it'll be on mobos pretty darn soon.
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Bill Gates once said that "640K of RAM OUGHT to be enough for everybody", and back at that time he certainly was right about that. You know, there is always a context for a quote.
An IBM manager once also said that there would be a WORLD market for maybe eight computers or so. And back at that time, computers still filled factory halls.
I don't know how Thunderbolt will help you to reduce your backup time from over an hour to a few minutes. Thunderbolt does not magically boost the speed of your hard drives, you know. Unless you backup from SSD to SSD (which I strongly doubt that you do considering the astronomic costs), ThunderBolt does NOTHING to boost your system's backup performance; USB and FireWire are sufficiently fast enough to handle the data transfer speed that's possible with current disk drives.
I think that until hard disk technology has finally caught up with the theoretical potential of ThunderBolt AND has become affordable for the mass market, there will already be successors to ThunderBolt available. Why? Because bus technologies have always been far ahead of the devices that were attached to them.
Yes, just like Firewire. And look how well that went! oh wait...
You mean what? Used by 99% of pro users? FireWire did its job good, i work with professionals and all use FireWire HD.
In 5 years, we will be backing up from SSD to SSD. Or at least ... I will. HDDs will very soon be a thing of the past.
HDD technology will never catch up with TB. Its a deadend technology. Other drives will take its place - flash based SSDs now, and after that, drives that approach the speed of RAM I'd guess.
And I doubt that by the time SSDs become mainstream (5 years, give or take) there will be another bus that is faster than TB. TB is just PCIe routed externally. PCI has been around for a lot longer than 5 years, just as USB has. Sure it'll undergo revisions, just as TB, which is now 10Gb/s, but will be pushed to 100 Gb/s the next 6-8 years
And you are missing my larger point - that as useful as TB is for storage devices, its potential is so much broader that that.
I hope Thunderbolt really strikes with this news. Get it, strikes... ?
Honestly, I can't see myself using USB 3 as I hardly use any USB devices as it is. The only devices that I own that always use USB are my Apple Keyboard with Numeric Keypad and the Mighty Mouse connected to it. Occasionally I will connect a multi-card reader, my iPhone 4 (only to download photos/videos (I don't use iCloud) and syncing big apps and files, otherwise it's syncing over wi-fi), and very rarely a USB thumb drive. Other than that, the three remaining USB slots on my iMac are unused 90% of the time.
I see USB as a dying/legacy technology that companies still try to keep alive when there are better and far more advanced alternatives, like Thunderbolt. With cloud services and wi-fi syncing becoming more and more advanced and the norm, I can see USB being completely phased out in ten years. Of course by then, the only reason why anyone would ever need to physically connect devices with a wire is for transferring large amounts of data, and they're going to want to do it as quickly as possible. Hence, Thunderbolt.
I really hope that we see a wider adoption of Thunderbolt next year. I have two Thunderbolt ports on my iMac dying to have their cherries popped!
Honestly, I can't see myself using USB 3 as I hardly use any USB devices as it is. The only devices that I own that always use USB are my Apple Keyboard with Numeric Keypad and the Mighty Mouse connected to it. Occasionally I will connect a multi-card reader, my iPhone 4 (only to download photos/videos (I don't use iCloud) and syncing big apps and files, otherwise it's syncing over wi-fi), and very rarely a USB thumb drive. Other than that, the three remaining USB slots on my iMac are unused 90% of the time.
I see USB as a dying/legacy technology that companies still try to keep alive when there are better and far more advanced alternatives, like Thunderbolt. With cloud services and wi-fi syncing becoming more and more advanced and the norm, I can see USB being completely phased out in ten years. Of course by then, the only reason why anyone would ever need to physically connect devices with a wire is for transferring large amounts of data, and they're going to want to do it as quickly as possible. Hence, Thunderbolt.
I really hope that we see a wider adoption of Thunderbolt next year. I have two Thunderbolt ports on my iMac dying to have their cherries popped!
By the sound of it, the PC will stay the same. People will use laptops, but as the tasks grow increasingly demanding - the "anchor" will still be needed and there it is, the traditional PC - with a Thunderbolt (or what it will be called on PC) port for easy docking for your Air. The way I see it, there is nothing stopping you hooking up a keyboard and use your fully functional PC that way too
I think Thunderbold will change the game, just not as much. It will be perfect for creating easy docking - and not in the same way Apple is marketing the ATB ("The ultimate docking station."), but for real.
There is already some speculation that with the Thailand floods and elevated Hard Drive prices that SSDs may become a more viable solution in laptop and desktop PCs.
This is kind of the point it didn't need to, thunderbolt doesn't compete with USB it is an extension of the PCI/PCIe bus which has mostly been inaccessible due to it's location inside the computer.
+1. I'm a musician, and almost all the serious audio interface units use either Firewire or PCI. The loss of Firewire would be a huge problem for me and countless others.
I'm a big Firewire fan myself. I started shooting digital video in 2005... and currently use a Panasonic DVX100 camcorder today.
As a desktop PC user... I have no problem adding a Firewire card in case I buy a motherboard that doesn't include it.
But it makes me wonder how much longer Apple will provide Firewire ports on the Macbook Pro.
In 2 years will they still be around? Will pro-audio gear transition to Thunderbolt?
The whole USB 3.0 vs TB debate is redundant from the outset and comparing TB to Firewire is even more asinine. Apples, oranges, blah blah blah.
There is a definite place for both technologies and they do not compete with one another.
Thunderbolt is the highway, USB 3.0 is the on/off ramps. The former is a backbone that carries all other interface technologies, the latter is the most popular of all those interfaces. To argue that one is superior to the other is just retarded and no amount of blockquoting specs at each other or making Firewire comparisons will change that. They are not directly comparable technologies, they just fulfil some of the same functions.
There is a definite place for both technologies and they do not compete with one another.
Thunderbolt is the highway, USB 3.0 is the on/off ramps. The former is a backbone that carries all other interface technologies, the latter is the most popular of all those interfaces. To argue that one is superior to the other is just retarded and no amount of blockquoting specs at each other or making Firewire comparisons will change that. They are not directly comparable technologies, they just fulfil some of the same functions.
A non-issue really. Even if a different physical shape was used, the pinout has to be fairly similar so you could likely get an adaptor to convert it to the display port style connector. Its the same technology at the end of the day, just a different physical form on the connector.
Apple's implementation of Thunderbolt uses their proprietary mini displayport form factor. Surely in order for TB to become adopted widely they'll need to open source it? Otherwise we'll end up with Sony doing one thing, Dell doing something else...