So basically, the new FCP is becoming the next FCE for prosumers and Apple is abandoning the professional market.
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ThunderBolt Products Starting to Roll Out at NAB
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So basically, the new FCP is becoming the next FCE for prosumers and Apple is abandoning the professional market.
Ah, so ultimately there will still be 7+ cables, just not connected to the computer itself.
I think that's the idea. Being able to keep all of those connected when you take your laptop elsewhere and then just having to connect the TB cable when you come back.
It's a great step. I can't imagine needing more speed than a Thunderbolt connection, for the next decade, IMO. Most people don't specifically need such speed, but it is good to have. As for professional use for large files and video editing: boffo. Looks brilliant.
Sadly the ThunderBolt name ain't unique.
Intel really should have tried harder
http://www.guru3d.com/article/asus-rampage-iii-black-edition-review/7
Intel really should have tried harder
http://www.guru3d.com/article/asus-rampage-iii-black-edition-review/7
Well, that isn't what I'm saying, no. It's what you are saying or thought I said, or wanted to think I said or something like that.
All I'm saying is that I think Apple might lower the price of FCP in order to kill FCE once and for all (as if it hasn't already realistically). All FCE is, is FCP stripped. No reason it can't sell FCP solo @ a prosumer price and then FCS at a higher price point.
Aperture is a good model for this. It's a pro app, and the boxed full version is a few hundred, but is also available @ a much lower prosumer price @ the Mac App Store.
Your answer is found in MR's story on TB when it first came out on the MBP's:
Since it's PCIe related, my guess is that its integration goes deeper than just a "PCIe socket" on the logic board. Just slapping a TB PCIe card in a MacPro won't do it, apparently. Bummer, yeah.
I'm glad I sold my 2008 Mac Pro and picked up one of those new MBP's. I love being able to take my Mac(Book) Pro anywhere with me. Couldn't have done that very easily/conveniently with the Mac Pro. Now hurry up TB dock/RAID.
Well, I guess in the beginning it could hurt the performance...for people, say, who are using 5 year old computers who pop in a USB 3.0 PCI card.
But for the folks who are buying computers these days with dual and quad cores that are tons of times faster than 5 year old chips, the performance hit will be minimized...and will continue to fade as the CPUs of tomorrow just keep getting better/faster while USB 3.0 stays the same.
I'm not an expert on USB...
Most people who have a computer that is 1-3 years old who upgrade to USB 3.0 are seeing 2-4x immediate performance improvements...which is killer for transfers that used to take 2 hours but now take <45 minutes.
It might not be at its tip top best but for a $30 PCI card and the same price for a USB 3.0 drive vs. a 2.0 drive, the $30 is a great investment.No way, USB is cheap and there's no reason to replace them for low bandwidth applications like keyboard, mouse, printers, controllers, etc.
Well, I guess in the beginning it could hurt the performance...for people, say, who are using 5 year old computers who pop in a USB 3.0 PCI card.
But for the folks who are buying computers these days with dual and quad cores that are tons of times faster than 5 year old chips, the performance hit will be minimized...and will continue to fade as the CPUs of tomorrow just keep getting better/faster while USB 3.0 stays the same.
I'm not an expert on USB...
Most people who have a computer that is 1-3 years old who upgrade to USB 3.0 are seeing 2-4x immediate performance improvements...which is killer for transfers that used to take 2 hours but now take <45 minutes.
I find USB 2.0 affects my C2D mini so I would suspect the progression would continue. A 2-4 fold improvement only brings it to FW800 territory in the real world. If TB had the same CPU overhead as USB, it would pull down even the fastest quad core very quickly. This is a 10 fold improvement over FW800. I can't argue with the price of USB 3.0 cards and peripherals. At least they are available.
Thunderbolt IO is fantastic...no qualms there. Im just not sure how applicable it is in the laptop arena. IMO, if youre a professional with massive external storage...which is needed to be accessed quickly: youre already using a desktop. Also, Im not sure what good ThunderBolt accessed HDD do you...as the drives are the bottleneck. Its gonna be a little while before I hook the ol' TB SSD enclosure(cause I dont have the cheddar to buy on) up to my ThunderBolt MacbookPro. Its kinda like Bugatti Tires on a Nissan Z.
Thunderbolt is absolutely amazing and I think most people here aren't looking far enough ahead. A single connection that can handle massive bandwidth, is scalable in the future, can handle display as well as just data throughput, and can do this over long distances is good for more than just hard drives. Imagine a wall of displays with one cable. Imagine a stack of external processors. Imagine owning your own private data center!
Thunderbolt is faster than the hard drive today, but when one component gets faster it lets the others get faster too. Without a data bottleneck in the cable, there is now an incentive for drive makers to develop faster storage. If you can move this kind of data around, why not build cheap little add on processors? You could buy a laptop and then buy a couple external processors that would bump you up to 12 core tower speed while remaining cheap and portable.
Who cares if you have a bunch of USB stuff today. Think forward!
Thunderbolt is faster than the hard drive today, but when one component gets faster it lets the others get faster too. Without a data bottleneck in the cable, there is now an incentive for drive makers to develop faster storage. If you can move this kind of data around, why not build cheap little add on processors? You could buy a laptop and then buy a couple external processors that would bump you up to 12 core tower speed while remaining cheap and portable.
Who cares if you have a bunch of USB stuff today. Think forward!
Intel says that direct connection to both PCIe and the graphics processor is required for Thunderbolt, but I wonder just why it would not be possible to use a PCIe card for a "data only" connection to external TB storage devices and leave the video to the existing connections? It seems to me that there should be a sufficiently large market for such a card to warrant third party development. I don't think that anyone would be upset at having a second connector for their display...seeing as how they have one now...and would be very happy to have a data connection quicker than FW 800.
Intel denies that Apple have an exclusive use of Thunderbolt, but it does not seem as though the PC motherboard manufacturers are making much of an effort to let people know that they will be offering Thunderbolt native motherboards anytime soon. In fact, the only thing I keep hearing is "late this year or early next year" which is not likely to build a base within the PC community which, IMO, is necessary for Thunderbolt to avoid becoming the next Firewire...not a complete failure, but not exactly a success either.
The NAB may tell the tale.
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Is "TB" going to be the abbreviation for thunderbolt?
It will be cumbersome when speaking of drives. "I bought a 2TB TB drive".
It will be cumbersome when speaking of drives. "I bought a 2TB TB drive".
I wonder how Thunderbolt will interact with the graphics card.
I expect that the video signals (DisplayPort) go from the graphics card back through the PCI bus to the TB chip and then out through the TB ports to the monitor. So when you upgrade the graphics card, it works (thinking of computers with replaceable PCI cards here, e.g. a Mac Pro with TB). But this will likely require the support of the graphics card manufacturers, so we have cards that are "compatible" with TB...?
Presumably one can still use the graphics cards' own video-out ports too.
Guess we'll see.
I expect that the video signals (DisplayPort) go from the graphics card back through the PCI bus to the TB chip and then out through the TB ports to the monitor. So when you upgrade the graphics card, it works (thinking of computers with replaceable PCI cards here, e.g. a Mac Pro with TB). But this will likely require the support of the graphics card manufacturers, so we have cards that are "compatible" with TB...?
Presumably one can still use the graphics cards' own video-out ports too.
Guess we'll see.
Are there any hard drives that can even unleash 1.25 GBps?
Not yet, but assuming that there won't be within a reasonable timeframe seems silly. Why on earth would you want a new standard that we're going to have to live with for the next 10-20 yrs that has its bandwidth saturated almost on day of release? Also, I think that looking at this as *just* another way of connecting external drives is to be massively missing the big picture with Thunderbolt. Finally, Thunderbolt is capable of much more than 1.25GBps. I believe in theory it can eventually scale to 100Gbps over optical.
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well TB seems to be add on to DP port. So VIDEO may work with a added in card and a voodoo 1 like loop back cable. But you don't TB tied to on board video and what about AMD / sever / upper mid - high end intel boards / other boards that don't have chipset / cpu based video. Some sever boards have on board pci based video.
Not sure if I would consider "AJA, BlackMagic, and Promise" to be "industry demand."
I would think having names like Western Digital, Sony, HP, Maxtor, Iomega, and Seagate a lot more proof that TB is being adopted. USB 3.0 has been gaining momentum by leaps and bounds over the past year.
I have a feeling TB is going to be the next Firewire: sure, it works, but USB is so much more dominant at basically the same speeds. But I don't really care at the end of the day...just something much much faster than USB 2.0 for my hundreds of gigs of data that I copy/move around a bit.
And yes, for the true true true speed fans that need the best of the best of the best in their profession...sure, buy what you need.
Matrox has already been highlighted at NAB ~ you missed that. LaCie is an original with "The Little Big Disk" being a small RAID SSD drive with TB expect that mid-summer (salivating over this with aluminum body and very small package).
USB3.0 will have its place for the commoner but with TB that'll be its last generation; I presume.
Question (I'm surprised nobody asked this yet): Does TB bring back MBP Disk Mode? The option to hold "T" on boot up to turn your Mac into a HDD and carbon copy data to external or migrate/image from external to internal?
I also vote for a port replicator type box for MBP/iMac lineup unit.
I'm still on the hunt for a Corei5 Quad-Core iMac (I'm still confused why Apple downgraded from that to dual-core i3's)?!!????
+1 for TB "Target disk mode"! I am happy they kept FW800 on the newest MBPs though.
Anyone think TB will be eventually used for connecting things like cameras as well?
Anyone think TB will be eventually used for connecting things like cameras as well?
USB3 is sucky as USB2, fast on sheet, slow in reality.
Thunderbolt is more like FireWire, fast as hell! You can target mode with thunderbolt, and future SSD external drives or raid will benefit a lot from Thunderbolt.
USB3 on Mac is useless, just need a Thunderbolt -> USB 3 adapter in case you need to plug an USB3 device and wanting native speed.
Thunderbolt is more like FireWire, fast as hell! You can target mode with thunderbolt, and future SSD external drives or raid will benefit a lot from Thunderbolt.
USB3 on Mac is useless, just need a Thunderbolt -> USB 3 adapter in case you need to plug an USB3 device and wanting native speed.
Thunderbolt
Usually, when a new technology comes out from Apple like Thunderbolt, (mini display port in look a like), I usually think "Why would other "non" Apple manufactures like WD, Promise etc... adopt Thunderbolt? as USB 3.0 or eSATA is their bracket... where as Apple likes to keep to themselves only tailoring to their own devices (eg. using WDS (or extenting wireless via Airport Express), for example. is not possible unless you have Time Capsule (Apple) )
I guess I was wrong when I saw this one on MacRumors.
Usually, when a new technology comes out from Apple like Thunderbolt, (mini display port in look a like), I usually think "Why would other "non" Apple manufactures like WD, Promise etc... adopt Thunderbolt? as USB 3.0 or eSATA is their bracket... where as Apple likes to keep to themselves only tailoring to their own devices (eg. using WDS (or extenting wireless via Airport Express), for example. is not possible unless you have Time Capsule (Apple) )
I guess I was wrong when I saw this one on MacRumors.