Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Thunderbolt in current and future laptops

marco.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 27 posts

Re: Thunderbolt in current and future laptops

#11

Post by bengl3rt »

kylec wrote: post #2

In addition to being able to reduce the size of laptops, I hope Thunderbolt will enable the next generation Cinema display to feature gigabit ethernet and firewire connectors, making it possible to connect a single cable (two, if you count the MagSafe) to seamlessly transform a laptop into an iMac.

I was actually hoping that they would build a small, low-power GPU into the Cinema Display so that I can daisy chain five off them off a Macbook Air and have each provide its own "graphics card" over Thunderbolt.

Re: Thunderbolt in current and future laptops

#12

Post by joahua »

kingsidharth wrote: post #8

When exactly are we expecting new line of MacBook Pro's?

http://guides.macrumors.com/Mac_Pro_Buyer%27s_Guide is a reasonable resource (not sure if you're already aware of it?)

Time since last update aside, I reckon a June release timed to coincide with that of the new version of Final Cut Pro ( http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/04/12/apple_unveils_... ) would make a lot of sense.

Re: Thunderbolt in current and future laptops

#14

Post by gst »

From a security perspective Thunderbolt is one of the worst things that can happen.

Imagine being a speaker at a conference where you use your own laptop for a presentation and where (at some point in the future) the projector only has a Thunderbolt interface. Are you going to connect your laptop? If you do the projector has basically full access to your laptops memory - and therefore full control over your laptop. Even if you use disk encryption this does not help, as the key is still stored somewhere in memory.

I think that if there's one thing that we've learned in the past two decades it's that physical interfaces should try to provide a little bit of security. With Thunderbolt, all security is traded for a little bit of additional performance.

Re: Thunderbolt in current and future laptops

#15

Post by eliben »

gst wrote: post #14

From a security perspective Thunderbolt is one of the worst things that can happen. Imagine being a speaker at a conference where you use your own laptop for a presentation and where (at some point in the future) the projector only has a Thunderbolt interface. Are you going to connect your laptop? If you do the projector has basically full access to your laptops memory - and therefore full control over your laptop. E…

What makes you think the projector "has access to all your memory" any more than any random card has? That's simply not true, and completely depends on the driver. Maybe the projector can get your computer to hang or crash, but it seems to me that building security feature into this isn't very hard, even without sacrificing performance.

Re: Thunderbolt in current and future laptops

#16

Post by greattypo »

joahua wrote: post #12
kingsidharth wrote: post #8

When exactly are we expecting new line of MacBook Pro's?

http://guides.macrumors.com/Mac_Pro_Buyer%27s_Guide is a reasonable resource (not sure if you're already aware of it?) Time since last update aside, I reckon a June release timed to coincide with that of the new version of Final Cut Pro ( http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/04/12/apple_unveils_... ) would make a lot of sense.

Seems reasonable for the Mac Pros. But for MacBook Pros, they just updated the line, so the next revision is probably going to be a 2012 thing.

Re: Thunderbolt in current and future laptops

#17

Post by Groxx »

gst wrote: post #14

From a security perspective Thunderbolt is one of the worst things that can happen. Imagine being a speaker at a conference where you use your own laptop for a presentation and where (at some point in the future) the projector only has a Thunderbolt interface. Are you going to connect your laptop? If you do the projector has basically full access to your laptops memory - and therefore full control over your laptop. E…

Don't USB and Firewire both have DMA as well? This sort of attack has been possible for a long time: http://replay.web.archive.org/20090402130220/http://storm.ne...

Re: Thunderbolt in current and future laptops

#19

Post by namaxwell »

cdmckay wrote: post #10
randall wrote: post #9

To be clear, is Thunderbolt the remains of LightPeak? Or is that still happening...

Thunderbolt is LightPeak.

So when are we ever going to see an optical version of some universal interface? Maybe the components are still too expensive?

Re: Thunderbolt in current and future laptops

#20

Post by gst »

eliben wrote: post #15
gst wrote: post #14

From a security perspective Thunderbolt is one of the worst things that can happen. Imagine being a speaker at a conference where you use your own laptop for a presentation and where (at some point in the future) the projector only has a Thunderbolt interface. Are you going to connect your laptop? If you do the projector has basically full access to your laptops memory - and therefore full control over your laptop. E…

What makes you think the projector "has access to all your memory" any more than any random card has? That's simply not true, and completely depends on the driver. Maybe the projector can get your computer to hang or crash, but it seems to me that building security feature into this isn't very hard, even without sacrificing performance.

Because Thunderbolt is basically an extension of the PCI bus. This means that the protocol _is_designed_ to grant full memory access to external devices (in fact that's the way how the DMA data transfer in Thunderbolt works).

With other protocols such as USB or DisplayPort you don't have those issues. Of course, a faulty driver could be used to compromise the system, but the protocol itself is secure.

Post reply on HN