Expect Hundreds of Thunderbolt Devices, Says Intel 351
An anonymous reader writes "Thunderbolt ports have been spotted on a PC motherboard, but the reality is that the technology is far from mainstream outside of Apple products. Which is why it is interesting to hear Intel predict that 'a hundred' Thunderbolt devices are expected to be on the market by the end of the year. The comment was made this week at Intel's presentation at IDF in Beijing. Ultrabooks with Thunderbolt are expected to appear this year."
Not hundreds of different types (Score:5, Funny)
But literally, just hundreds.
Figuratively. (Score:4, Funny)
Literally now literally means "figuratively."
So three monitors and ninety-seven hard drives? (Score:5, Funny)
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I use mine! For HDMI only. I hope splitter exist for this because only having one port is really dumb.
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From what I understand it's like Firewire, it daisy-chains instead of splitting. That being said I'm sure someone will come up with a thunderbolt hub at some point.
Re:So three monitors and ninety-seven hard drives? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because Firewire was a data-only thing, the probability that a given device would daisy-chain was actually pretty decent in the real world, and you could put the non-cooperative freak on the end of the chain. Thunderbolt more analogous to a port that sneaks firewire into your VGA-out(albeit in a way that makes splitting much more complex than a simple mechanical pinout adapter, is my understanding). Because there are loads of video-only devices in the world, the vast majority don't daisy-chain because video devices aren't expected to.
This is the trouble for Thunderbolt: As with classy firewire devices, most of the "thunderbolt peripherals" daisy-chain just fine. However, your Thunderbolt port is also your only video-out port, and something north of 99% of monitors, TVs, projectors, etc. have never heard of this 'daisy-chain' business.
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You're not giving it proper credit here. Its not "bodged" it's multiplexed. It's a high speed data bus that can transport PCI express and Displayport data. This is helpful because it lets your GPU stay in your computer.
You're only going to connect a thunderbolt monitor to your thunderbolt port. If you're going to connect a non-thunderbolt monitor you're going to want some sort of breakout device that lets you continue the chain while providing a video out. However, sensible computers will have dedicated vid
Re:So three monitors and ninety-seven hard drives? (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact that getting the two signals into one connector is technically impressive is true; but it's still a handicap for all but terminal minimalists.
Re:So three monitors and ninety-seven hard drives? (Score:5, Insightful)
Except for a single cable that replaces a laptop dock. You might argue that there isn't much additional functionality that Thunderbolt has over a dock, the major advantage is that Thunderbolt will be universal while a dock is limited only to a manufacturer and even only to certain models from that manufacturer.
Also, DisplayPort or mini-DisplayPort is the the connector which is cable compatible with HDMI and you don't need to daisy chain it.
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There's a very simple reason –it's a universal, standardised, laptop docking port. One port, USB, ethernet, PCI, monitor, firewire, etc all connected.
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There are SSD's shipping today that are already bottle-necked by the throughput challenged USB3 and SATA/eSATA standards. Companies like Intel have moved to building performance SSD's on PCI cards because PCI is the only available bus that is fast enough.
If you have a laptop, PCI cards aren't an option, but Thunderbolt delivers an external PCI bus.
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Thunderbolt used to be on USB 3.0. The USB consortium balked and apple came to the rescue with MDP
Re:So three monitors and ninety-seven hard drives? (Score:5, Funny)
I see a Thunderbolt port as kind of like Sacagawea dollar. Just like I can trade my Sacagawea dollar in at the bank for a real dollar, I can go buy a converter for my Thunderbolt port to turn it into a real port.
Re:So three monitors and ninety-seven hard drives? (Score:5, Insightful)
You make a somewhat valid point, but think about it from the vendor's point of view:
You need to have computers support TB before you can really sell devices using TB. People don't buy a hard drive or monitor, and then find a computer that will use it; they find a computer they want and then buy a hard drive or monitor that will work with *that*, simply because it's cheaper to buy a new monitor than it is to buy a new computer.
The laptop I have on preorder has a TB port. I don't particularly care about that either way - it seems to have displaced the eSATA port, and the only eSATA device I have works as USB just as well. But, when I'm out shopping for [device] in a year from now, TB will be an option, and possibly the best option.
Vendors know, through long experience, to build up the supporting devices (ones that support the new standard as well as old ones) well before making devices that primarily or exclusively use the new standard. Even a decade after USB 1.1, computers had legacy PS/2 ports for keyboards and mice. Even years after DVI was itself made technically obsolete, computers were coming with VGA ports.
Remember when USB first came out? At first, nothing really used it. You'd see printers support it as an option, right next to the old parallel port; you'd see a few USB mice and keyboards, often packaged with a PS/2USB converter. But now, you have to look long and hard to find a computer *without* USB, and finding legacy PS/2 keyboards or parallel cables is rather difficult.
Thunderbolt isn't guaranteed to take off the same way (remember FireWire? Or the countless mini-DVI ports? Or any other failed standard?), but it *could*. And so device manufacturers throw it in, especially since Intel's chipsets support it *anyways*. It's another bullet point to put on the marketing, but it could be that small little edge against [competitor], right?
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Remember when USB first came out? At first, nothing really used it. You'd see printers support it as an option, right next to the old parallel port; you'd see a few USB mice and keyboards, often packaged with a PS/2USB converter. But now, you have to look long and hard to find a computer *without* USB, and finding legacy PS/2 keyboards or parallel cables is rather difficult.
The USB/PS2 thing causes some issues in certain scenarios. For example, mine.
I have a 2004-era motherboard, and it has a very useful feature: turn on PC via PS/2 keyboard. Can't do it with a USB keyboard. My old keyboard -- USB, actually, but connected through a PS/2 adapter -- died and I bought a new one. Unfortunately, it doesn't do jack shit with the adapter.
So, now I have to bend, open the case door and push the button on the computer case to turn on the PC. You might say it's not a big deal, and it isn
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USB Redux (Score:2)
schmuck (Score:3)
Which is why it is interesting to hear Intel predict that 'a hundred' Thunderbolt devices are expected to be on the market by the end of the year.
Intel designed Thunderbolt in conjunction with Apple. Which probably means Intel did most of the leg-work on it. How exactly is it "interesting" that Intel is promoting something they invented?
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You can forgive us for being confused. The last time Intel did something like this they included it for free on all of their motherboards. By the time Microsoft finally got around to support it, most of the machines out there already had support for it.
None of that is happening this time around.
TB gets confused for an Apple-centric followup to Firewire because that's what it looks like on the surface.
What is it? (Score:5, Informative)
In short, it's a combination of both Mini DisplayPort and PCI Express, multiplexed together and demultiplexed at the reciever, but the controller is smart enough to maintain backwards compatibility with regular old displayport 1.2, so your MiniDP adapters will still work.
External GPU (Score:2)
DMA Attack - so sorry, Intel (Score:2, Informative)
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And Firewire.
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Re:DMA Attack - so sorry, Intel (Score:4, Interesting)
No, they learnt from the old DMA Hacks on Firewire. Now Intel CPU's have an IOMMU to prevent those DMA attacks from succeeding. Whether a way to break that will be found in future remains to be seen.
If they do find a way to break it, then we are back to where we were before. Physical access always wins with hacking. DMA Attacks can be done via Firewire, thunderbolt, PCI, PCI express, PCMCIA, ExpressCard, etc... Basically anything that is connected to the bus. Yet we will still use it due to its performance/efficiency advantages, and the world will not end.
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Don't we have a saying around here about having physical access to a device?
Re:DMA Attack - so sorry, Intel (Score:4, Insightful)
Or your VESA bus, or your MCA bus, or your EISA bus. Or your firewire...
But what about my short, yellow bus? Can parent still use that?
Do cables count? (Score:2, Funny)
As the drives don't ship with them, and there only seems to be one on the market right now ($50 from Apple), there's lots of room to say, make more than one length available, or maybe other manufacturers. I mean, they're active cables, so that should count as a 'device' right?
Then there's all the mini-DisplayPort adaptors now rebranding themselves as 'thunderbolt' adaptors ... so there's a couple dozen right there ... (VGA, DVI-D, DVI-DL, miniHDMI, etc .. and those are already available from more than one
Wow, Slashdotters have gotten stupid (Score:5, Informative)
Thuderbolt just extends the PCIe bus to external devices, with all the speed and flexibility that entails, no biggie, right? Sure, it means you really could get rid of all the other ports completely and use a breakout cable if necessary (only in the interim as other types of ports might just go away), making devices much smaller and simpler. But we don't want fantastic new things, we just want solid legacy support for 10 - 20 year old standards.
Really. All a geek should need to know is "externalize PCIe". All the speed of an internal bus (and more) without having to physically put the card into the machine, and even being able to do it at a distance. Greater modularity, better performance. But apparently it's bad to have newer, better things, when we could just stick with the older, crappier. Right?
Those newer things need power right? (Score:3, Insightful)
So by taking the stuff out of the computer, and putting it into other "stuff", we are going to create an explosion of soul-sucking, space-sucking, power-sucking transformers and cheap little crappy enclosures for externalized ports.
That is until some vendor says: "Hey, let me put all those external ports you need into one box for you!"
And then the next vendor says: "Hey, let me put those ports in the monitor for you"
And then the next vendor says: "Hey, my monitor and computer are the same box, so lets
Re:Wow, Slashdotters have gotten stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
You left out "insanely expensive active cabling, safely locked up under patent for its entire realistic lifetime".
This will survive right up until people actually take notice, buy something using it, then shit a uranium brick when they go to buy a longer cord.
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Sure, it means you really could get rid of all the other ports completely and use a breakout cable if necessary (only in the interim as other types of ports might just go away), making devices much smaller and simpler.
Perhaps, if you like the idea of having 8 different boxes on your desk and a rats nest of cables. Does that sound smaller and simpler?
All a geek should need to know is "externalize PCIe".
Exactly, there's nothing new to be excited about here. It's just the same old shit on an external port.
Al
Right because I want all my devices having DMA (Score:5, Interesting)
You realize a device on the PCIe bus can do ANYTHING to a system, right? At that low a level it has complete access to memory, it can crash your system, or worse, and there's shit you can do about it. That's part of the reason for USB to be like it is. It provides very high level access, it is all controlled through the CPU. Means a lot of overhead, but also more security.
Also there's the fact that TB costs a whole lot more to implement in devices. USB slave devices are dumb, most of the logic is on the master, the computer. Not the case with PCIe, you need more logic to work on the bus, so shit will cost more.
It has its place, potentially, don't get me wrong. But this idea that it'll replace everything is silly. You don't want a TB mouse. You want a USB mouse.
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You see "legacy". I see something that is standardized enough to be used with just about any machine still running.
Well said!
Yeah... (Score:2)
Computer Monitors as an attack vector? (Score:3)
With direct pci access, how does this open up computer monitors as a new attack vector? I can see it now:
Step 1) Buy computer monitor
Step 2) Modify and return said monitor
Step 3) Someone plugs "open box" or "refurbished" monitor into their computer
Step 4) Profit!
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> Many keyboards already have USB ports on them, so there is no need to be so elaborate.
No. Not really.
The idea of plugging a mouse into your keyboard is very much a non-PC idea. A keyboard isn't going to have it's own hub unless it is made to be sold to Mac users. PC users simply are not used to plugging mice into their keyboard.
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I know Sun invented the idea, but surely PCs have been doing this for over 10 years?
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USB doesn't provide DMA access.
Quadrupling of design wins? (Score:2)
In January, Intel said 24 manufacturers embraced Thunderbolt, Lenovo, Acer, ASUS, MSI, Gigabyte, Seagate, Western Digital and LaCie among them.
Intel now says that the number of design wins will reach 100 this year.
http://www.wirelessdesignmag.com/ShowPR.aspx?PUBCODE=055&ACCT=0000100&ISSUE=1201&RELTYPE=CES&PRODCODE=000000&PRODLETT=IS&CommonCount=0 [wirelessdesignmag.com]
The Hundreds of devices... (Score:2)
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I understand it's just another port to plug things in. Just what we need, laptops with fifteen different input and output ports
You don't appear to understand it at all.
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I understand it's just another port to plug things in. Just what we need, laptops with fifteen different input and output ports
You don't appear to understand it at all.
So..., you're saying it's not another port to plug things in. I don't believe you. To me, it appears to be exactly that. What am I missing, coward?
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I understand it's just another port to plug things in. Just what we need, laptops with fifteen different input and output ports. VGA, DVI, HDMI, DP, USB3, whatever thunderbolt is, FW, eSATA, unique docking connector, Ethernet, unique power socket, and a card reader for eighteen different cards. I'm sure I've missed a few.
Kinda makes you long for the days of PCMCIA cards, eh? Does me.
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Re:What is it again? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What is it again? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah, finally we can have one port to rule them all! It's about time.
I think this [xkcd.com] is appropriate.
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Once you've gone to all that expense, you might as well have a separate machine. This seems to be a solution to problems that only Apple users have because of how Apple likes to design it's hardware.
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Ah, but this is one port to rule them all. Conceivably, this could be the only port (aside from the charger) on an ultrabook, maybe a USB port or two in addition. Add a Thunderbolt docking station and you can add ANY port that can be placed on a PCIe bus, even an external GPU.
But we've already had docks and ports for those docks that let you add ANY port that could be placed on ANY bus. Yes, they were proprietary, but they worked and had available accessories.
Furthermore, external PCIe came out 7 fucking years ago. Nobody (outside of people running Quadros and Firepros) cared.
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Ah, but this is one port to rule them all. Conceivably, this could be the only port (aside from the charger) on an ultrabook, maybe a USB port or two in addition. Add a Thunderbolt docking station and you can add ANY port that can be placed on a PCIe bus, even an external GPU.
Until the next generation of "one port to rule them all" comes along. Not saying that those things shouldn't come along, but the insinuation that this one is the be all and end all is utter bullshit.
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Those exist. Sony uses it in one of their ultrathin ultraportable laptops - it comes with a "media dock" that adds blu-ray and a GPU, so when docked, you can play games and when undocked, rely on a less powerful graphics card that'll g
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There are, in broad strokes, three variables that matter for an interface:
1. Cost: What does having a host port of that flavor add to a device's cost? What does being a slave device of that port cost?
2. Speed: What is possible, and what
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Will we be able to plug in actual PCIe devices?
The God Cable (Score:5, Informative)
I understand it's just another port to plug things in. Just what we need, laptops with fifteen different input and output ports. VGA, DVI, HDMI, DP, USB3, whatever thunderbolt is, FW, eSATA, unique docking connector, Ethernet, unique power socket, and a card reader for eighteen different cards. I'm sure I've missed a few.
The point is, it's a "God cable." It can, without exaggeration, replace all of those you listed, except the power socket one.
(For example, A MacBook Air has a thunderbolt port and one USB port, and can connect to all the other peripheral types you mention with just those. And that USB port is just for convenience.)
Unfortunately, it's currently priced accordingly. Also, it suffers from the Competing Standards problem [xkcd.com].
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the power socket one will be out in two years and called the thunderbolt 2+ ultrafast. It will not be compatible with current installations.
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No a macbook air has two USB ports, one on each side.
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Experience: Substitute PS/2 for USB, God Cable, PCI-E, whatever. The human aspect.
Will it allow team members, after shift when they think no one is looking, replacing their PS/2 mice and keyboards with the brand new USB mice and keyboards the new desktop units, idle and waiting for imminent arrivals, that are sitting on desks have? The new desktop units do not have PS/2 style sockets.
New keyboards and mice are included with a desktop order. All in one box.
Will it mean a filing cabinet is not accidentall
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Wiki knows about it (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbolt_(interface) [wikipedia.org]
since im against the whole LMFGI thing i will just drop a wikilink for you.
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Thunderbolt separates those who know how to use Google from the users.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbolt_(interface) [wikipedia.org]
Re:erm... what? (Score:4, Funny)
Thunderbolt separates those who know how to use Google from the users.
No, that's porn.
Re:erm... what? (Score:4, Interesting)
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> 99% of us knew what this was months ago. It's not our fault you don't keep up with your own field.
In my field any TB device would be considered a cheap consumer toy.
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AMD announced that they have something to compete with TB, but there is no details and I have not heard anything about it since a small blip in an interview from months ago.
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If you can't look something up you do not belong here.
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I also knew nothing about Thunderbolt, but I looked it up.
It wasn't that hard. In fact I would say it was easier to look up than it was to post.
Re:erm... what? (Score:4, Funny)
A. The Primary Weapon in Zeus' arsenal.
B. A loud noise, generally appearing (ha!) after a lightning bolt.
C. A sexual act involving [censored, for the sake of the children].
D. Some new port, similar to firewire, that won't catch on anywhere except with apple fanboys, who will claim is the second (third) coming of apple superiority while the rest of us just say "Nice OS, dude
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C. A sexual act involving [censored, for the sake of the children].
Cowboy Neil?
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If Intel is going to push it, it'll catch on. So far they haven't, but looks like that may change.
I can't see them pushing it with any zeal now that the 70-series chipsets feature native USB 3. It doesn't help that Intel has also shipped the best USB 3 controller in existence [techreport.com]. When USB 3 satisfies your average user's high-speed expansion needs, there's not much reason for Thunderbolt on mainstream platforms.
Thunderbolt silicon probably won't be integrated anytime soon (adding cost), and the $50 active cab
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"Thunderbolt [apple.com] (Apple's latest data transfer protocol) ports have been spotted on a PC motherboard, but the reality is that the technology is far from mainstream outside of Apple products. Which is why it is interesting to hear Intel predict that 'a hundred' Thunderbolt devices are expected to be on the market by the end of the year. The comment was made this week at Intel's presentat
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The speed listed already has overhead subtracted.
Also, since the fiber version should get cheap from mass production and maturity of the product, I would hope that fiber physical ports should start getting cheap for network devices also. I don't see why a network switch can't be made of a bunch of cheap 100Gb fiber TB
Re:erm... what? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:erm... what? (Score:4, Informative)
Your feelings are not mired in reality but flawed perceptions. Again, VESA controls the standard. This is some of the same illogical thinking when people listed Apple controlling AAC as a reason not to use iPods (Apple doesn't control that standard either). The fact that many, many devices are coming out with ThunderBolt says the manufacturers are not concerned about this or they would have objected to Intel.
I take it from your feelings that you avoid using any WebKit based browser like Chome, don't use CUPS, or any software that Apple contributes to Open Source.
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I don't feel comfortable about Apple's involvement in Webkit or CUPS either. And I am certainly not alone in that. See this [groupsrv.com] for example. Also, note that KDE, the original developers of the KHTML project that Apple forked and renamed as Webkit also would appear to be unwilling to jump into the arms of Apple. KDE supports both Webkit and KHTML, and KHTML continues to be developed entirely independently from Apple.
"Not feeling comfortable" does not necessarily amount to "actively avoiding". While Apple mostly
Re:erm... what? how dumb do you want it? (Score:2)
How far do you want the summaries dumbed down?
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So that they are informative enough to allow one to decide whether or not to read the applicable article.
What is an article?
What does applicable mean?
Should we explain what a port is?
How much information is enough? Is this a website for morons or for nerds?
If you don't know what something is look it up first, and then if you still don't understand put up the information you have found and post your questions regarding the sections you don't understand.
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The first mover has certain advantages in a market but they also have disadvantages. Namely that they get locked into descisions that made sense at the time but no longer do so. Afaict 10GBASE-T manages speeds comparable to thunderbolt without the need for active cables or fiber optics and over much longer distances, the hardware is expensive now but afaict it is coming down.
I'm pretty sure there will be a USB4, the main questions are 1: when and 2: will they decide to merely match thunderbolt or to surpass
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Except there will never be a USB 4. In order to get to the needed speeds USB 4 would need to do all the tricks that make Thunderbolt currently expensive (active cable, fiber optics, etc...). At that point Thunderbolt will already have a head start.
This right here. USB 4 may make it near 10Gb, but TB is going way past that. USB will have to ditch backwards compatibility in order to keep up, which is the only reason to use USB.
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Thunderbolt is a high speed device interface that has similar performance to PCI Express. It supports a wide range of devices that require very high bandwidth and low latency I/O operations, including displays, network adapters, mass storage devices (Disk Drives, RAID arrays etc.) and things like that. Like USB, the port can supply power to attached devices but it runs at much higher data rates than even USB 3.0. Currently it is generally only supported by Apple but the article is saying that it is star
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> Looking at the comparisons I've found, seems that Thunderbolt is likely to put a spanner in the works for USB 3.0 support.
I think you have that backwards.
Thunderbolt is NOT the same price as USB3. It is considerably more expensive. Forgetting the legacy support aspect for a moment, you've got the very real problem that TB is at this point mostly vaporware. There are few machines or devices available outside of the Apple reality distortion field.
USB3 is already being bundled with PC motherboards. USB3 a
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I think Thunderbolt requires more silicon for a hard drive than USB. Of course, it is also faster, so it may be worth it, but it isn't quite open and shut.
Where Thunderbolt shines is for displays. It can replace your video cable, your audio cable, your USB cable, your eSATA cable, and your FireWire cable all with a single wire. Now, you can plug in all your hard drives (via USB or FireWire or eSATA) into the monitor on top of your desk instead of fumbling around behind the machine underneath.
Re:erm... what? (Score:4, Informative)
> Now, you can plug in all your hard drives (via USB or FireWire or eSATA) into the monitor on top of your desk instead of fumbling around behind the machine underneath.
I just use front facing hot swap drive bays. Doesn't matter if it is drives in the main chassis or drives in an external enclosure. They don't sit anywhere near the monitor. I would not want them to.
For "fumble-devices", I have a hub sitting on top of the desk.
PCs also tend to have front facing USB and Firewire ports.
You're trying to invent problems that don't actually exist.
Re:erm... what? (Score:5, Informative)
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Your point on eSATA may be due more to being able to simply run a PCI bracket with an eSATA port on it from your motherboard, and most people have unused SATA ports. Also, eSATA is not normally powered on 2.5" external drives. Yes, there are powered variants, but they never took off. USB is far handier for portable drives. As for Thunderbolt, I think it's safe to say that other vendors will bring that cable price down. I don't see Thunderbolt making a big splash on desktops, but it could be a great thing for laptops, especially ultrabooks. One tiny port to a docking station that can provide you with just about any kind of port, from more USB ports to a friggin' SCSI connector.
How is that docking station use working out for all those thunderbolt-equipped macs? I think I remember the press conference went something like this:
Hey Mac fans, congratulations because your new Macbook will have another fantastically fast (and lonesome) connector on it starting in 2011! You can use it for all kinds of things, like a display (never mind the micro-displayport plug on there) or for really fast hard drives (never mind the USB3 plug on there) and of course the best part is that you can use it to plug really expensive cables in to! Let's open it up for questions, yes you sir, what, did you actually ask if it's going to be a good way to attach a docking station??? What. THE. FUCK. would a macbook owner want a docking station for? Are you out of your FUCKING mind? If they want a desk full of shit to do work on, they are going to buy a desktop Mac, not some motherFUCKING docking station! Where have you been for the past ten years??? Docking station! I think Steve Jobs just died a little on the inside...
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It would be nice to have just a grid of these connectors on the back of a PC though. I was poking a USB cable around the back of my PC the other day trying to find the port I thought was up by the mouse and ended up sticking it in the "EVBot Connector" resetting my PC. (Apparently, I'm not the only one: http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.aspx?m=676801&mpage=1 [evga.com] )
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Well, if you're buying the cable from the Apple Store, that's your first problem.
look at the cable teardown (Score:5, Informative)
This isn't something that Monoprice can make for $1.
There's a CPU and a significant transceiver chip the connectors on each end of the cable.
They're going to be more expensive than USB 3 cables no matter where you get them from.
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Still, pretty cheap: http://www.monoprice.com/products/search.asp?keyword=thunderbolt&x=0&y=0 [monoprice.com]
Re:look at the cable teardown (Score:5, Informative)
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Good catch, consider me corrected. It makes me wonder why they didn't just make a different connector so they didn't have to worry if it was DisplayPort or Thunderbolt though.
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I didn't see any thunderbolt-to-thunderbolt cables on that link. Those were all converters to a cheaper kind of cable.
Not that I think the Apple store is a place for good prices on accessories... :)
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..plus, by the time Intel expects Ultrabooks with Thunderbolt to hit the market, Ultrabooks will be dead already. Who wants to buy an Macbook Air clone for the same price but with all those silly stickers on it and the illuminated Apple logo missing?