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Thunderbolt

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Re: Thunderbolt

#51

Post by bugsy »

Anechoic wrote: post #37
tghw wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously. As a non-Mac user, I really can't see going out of my way to use anything other than USB at this point, especially with USB3 being in the same ballpark in terms of speed.

> especially with USB3 being in the same ballpark in terms of speed. For some uses it's not just a matter of speed - USB2 and FW are similar in terms of speed but USB2 is pretty much unusable for multi-channel audio recording purposes.

And so is FW unless you buy one of the very expensive interfaces that happens to have highly optimized fine tuned drivers.

Source: personal experience finding the drivers of most FW audio interfaces under $1000 impose outrageous CPU loads when doing many channels and using more than one device on the supposedly daisy chainable FW bus.

Re: Thunderbolt

#52

Post by artaxerxes »

bugsy wrote: post #50

It really seems to me a lot of this is about making your current peripherals obsolete so they can sell you new ones.

It does USB, HDMI, Firewire, displayport et cetera... its one connector to rule them all (though there will need to be a few adapters!)

No need to replace your peripherals.

Re: Thunderbolt

#53

Post by robin_reala »

dpapathanasiou wrote: post #26
ugh wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All Macs except the low end plastic MacBook and the MacBook Air have a FireWire 800 port. So, no. (Also: Why would they dump FireWire without a replacement in place or even just the lab?) This will probably replace FireWire sooner or later.

This is what I meant, but thanks for your downvote anyway: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2008/10/apple-quietly-k/

A simple pin-adaptor turns a FW800 port into a FW400 port - they’re electrically compatible.

Re: Thunderbolt

#54

Post by maggit »

bugsy wrote: post #50

It really seems to me a lot of this is about making your current peripherals obsolete so they can sell you new ones.

In the long run, Thunderbolt aims to replace USB, FireWire, Ethernet, DisplayPort/HDMI/etc, eSATA and be considered an external variant of PCIe.

This is feasible and would be a good future, just like the future we live in now where USB has replaced serial ports, parallel ports and PS/2.

Re: Thunderbolt

#55

Post by modernerd »

sammcd wrote: post #48
jordanroher wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if Apple will eventually replace the dock connector on the iPhone/iPad with Thunderbolt? That would be a compelling reason to upgrade: your music sync time would be freed of another bottleneck. Of course, it kind of messes with the third-party accessory market, but I'm sure they'd love another reason to get people to buy new stuff.

Also remember that the doc connector is a revenue source. I'm having trouble finding a source right now, but if I am remembering right Apple sells the actual dock connectors to accessory makers.

Pretty sure that Apple's dock connector is sold directly by JAE -- it's the 'DD1' listed here: http://www.jae-connector.com/en/general_en.cfm?series_code=D...

Re: Thunderbolt

#56

Post by ZeroGravitas »

pyre wrote: post #33
rythie wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firewire was 400MBits for 5 years before USB2 was released (USB1 was only 12MBits). Look who won that one.

IIRC, it was because Intel made USB chipsets really cheap vs IEEE1394a (aka FireWire) chipsets.

I recall it being because Apple screwed up the licensing so bad ($1 per port) that everyone got together to create and then push USB 2.0 as a replacement even after the royalties got reduced to something semi-reasonable like 25c per device.

Re: Thunderbolt

#57

Post by sudont »

robin_reala wrote: post #38
sudont wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since there's only one port, you'll most likely need a splitter to use both the data and video simultaneously, unless you want your existing monitor to be at the end of the daisy chain. (DP was brought to market for terminal devices, not pass-through like Firewire, any Thunderbolt devices will most certainly have two ports.) I assume most monitors will transition from DP to a Thunderbolt pass-through quickly, but in…

Display Port has allowed daisy chaining monitors since 1.2 at least, if not earlier back.

Apple's displays don't have that second port, but you are correct about the daisy chaining, I see.

Re: Thunderbolt

#58

Post by [deleted] »

artaxerxes wrote: post #52
bugsy wrote: post #50

It really seems to me a lot of this is about making your current peripherals obsolete so they can sell you new ones.

It does USB, HDMI, Firewire, displayport et cetera... its one connector to rule them all (though there will need to be a few adapters!) No need to replace your peripherals.

[deleted]

Re: Thunderbolt

#59

Post by TillE »

hop wrote: post #42
maggit wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bandwidth is apparently entirely unimpressive. DisplayPort is currently at 17.28 Gbps, so Thunderbolt can push ... 0.6 monitors? ;) (In the worst case, at least) I have been excited about Light Peak/Thunderbolt for a year or so now, but in that time it seems the ambitions have become smaller, and the competition has developed as well.

Well possibly, if it's in displayport mode using all four lanes in one direction, it can push that much bandwidth. How much bandwidth does a 27" apple display use?

Well, let's see:

2560 x 1440 resolution at 24 bits per pixel = 88,473,600 bits

At 60Hz, that's 5,308,416,000 bits per second. So a little more than half the claimed 10Gbit bandwidth of Thunderbolt. I guess you're not going to be running two of them on the same port.

Re: Thunderbolt

#60

Post by thematt »

rudiger wrote: post #35
yread wrote: post #13

So the whole USB2.0/Firewire is going to repeat? Sigh.

Thunderbolt aims to replace nearly every kind of single-use connectors (HDMI, DisplayPort, eSATA, USB, Ethernet). Unifying the connector for displays, peripherals, network and power is a great idea, so I can't complain if they're going up against USB 3.0.

If it's backwards compatible with USB then why do they still have USB ports on the side of that MacBook? Why not replace all the ports with this?
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