Why Thunderbolt Is Dead In the Water 568
adeelarshad82 writes "In the same way that Apple championed FireWire for the replacement of parallel SCSI, Thunderbolt is meant as the next big thing in video and audio peripheral interfaces. Plus, it's Apple's move to beat USB 3.0. However, Thunderbolt is off to a slow start, for a number of reasons — from cost to the technology's features in comparison to USB 3.0 — which is why it may be dead in the water."
Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
New technology is expensive and uncommon a couple months after release. News at 11.
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All things being equal, an external eSATA SSD drive should utterly smoke any USB 3.0 device, even if you ignore all the CPU overhead with USB....
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And anyone who needed a disk faster than FireWire has been using eSATA.
So far, the only use I've seen for USB 3 is over-priced flash drives.
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Conversely, we had an old fileserver used for a group which had Firewire drives chained off it. That worked surprisingly well for them.
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That because Firewire and USB really are not comparable. Firewire has DMA for instance. USB has way to much CPU overhead to be used for external discs. eSata is the correct choice, firewire a runner up.
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eSATA has power, plug and play, and daisy chaining limitations/issues that FireWire doesn't. Also, FireWire is useful for much more than just disks.
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eSata is the correct answer for that problem. There is or will be very shortly esata 6gbit/s.
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Firewire 400 smokes USB 480 in my real life tests - connecting the same hard drive to the same computer using either a USB cable or a Firewire cable. mbit/s clearly isn't everything.
Re:Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
Technically speaking Firewire also tops at 3200Mbps. Unfortunately most products don't actually implement that. Exceptionally, the Mac Pro supports 3200Mbps and has done so for quite some time. However, the rest of the Apple products offer only 800Mbps. That is OK because I haven't yet seen any consumer products that actually use a 3200Mbps link over FW.
With Thunderbolt it's not about external disks. Except for a few users (think movie editing), most people will end up having a reasonably fast NAS at home. It is however about Thunderbolt based port replicators/docking stations, since it extends the PCI bus, thus being able to add USB controllers, NICs, FW cards and other devices physically to the computer by a single cable. They missed a great opportunity by not including also power over Thunderbolt. It could of been the single cable required to charge, dock and extend the screen of a Mac.
It's not the speed of Thunderbolt that matters, it's the PCI-E part that matters. Being able to extend the PCI-E bus has a lot of applications. Imagine an ultra-high density mac mini tray that extends the mac minis to add a second NIC (for redundancy), display and a LOM. That would make the Mac Mini the best server out there for hosting websites. In the width of a rack you can put 12 mac minis. In 800mm of depth plus 200 for cable routing you can put 4 rows of Mac Minis. That means 48 mac minis in 5u. That equals 384 mac minis in 40u. Simple math tells you that you can get at under $700/core a total of 768 cores with 4GB of RAM/core (including UPS and switches) in under $500k and under 33W/core in 2 racks (one with UPSs and one with the actual Mac Minis. No blade solution out there can beat that and even the cheapest ones are still at over $1000/core.
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That's the argument in TFA. "If there's demand, it will sell" and there's no pressing demand. USB 3.0 is fast enough for most peripherals. Thudderbolt is a crippled (non-optical) incompatible version of Light Peak, which WOULD have been a sweet, optical, backward plug compatible extension to USB.
All the video people who couldn't use USB 2.0 have no problems with USB 3.0, so much so that Firewire 800 is now effectively dead.
I think Apple simply wants to follow their previous pattern of providing proprieta
Re:Really? (Score:4, Informative)
People calling Thunderbolt dead are idiots jumping the gun. Will it take off? Time will tell, but there are DEFINITELY good uses for it.
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Apple abandoned their previously beloved Firewire right after I purchased several peripheral that used it. For me, that's reason enough not to trust them with Thunderbolt.
I'll just stick with USB.
Firewire is still on all macs, how is it abandoned ? Besides this is an intel tech, do you trust them ?
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Guess what? Same VGA cable does 2560x1600 @75Hz on my U3011 with a DVI-D adapter on the end. You need two physical DVI cables otherwise.
One cable is better than two.
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So you can hook up a high res CRT and send it a signal over a VGA cable ...
The result is you end up saying something on slashdot that basically translates into:
You don't know what you're talking about, FM radio is WAY better than CD quality audio.
Your CRT is unable to reproduce colors accurately without constant calibration, simply placing a magnet or coiled power cord near your cable will effect the output on your CRT since the signal is analog.
The DVI based LCDs on the other hand should be fully capable o
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
That much is obvious, yes. But if you read the article, you will see that the author's primary problem with Thunderbolt is that it offers practically no improvement over USB3, while cutting out the backwards compatibility that was originally intended in the LightPeak demo. Combine that with the high cost of entry, and why would anyone want to switch to the new technology? Without high volume, the price will never come down. THAT is what the author meant.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Thunderbolt is at 10 GB/s per channel giving 20 GB/s total.
s/channel/direction/
e.g. if you are capturing video, you have a max of 10 GB/s for the incoming video data, and 10 GB/s to send "stop" and "play" commands to the device.
Re:Really? (Score:4, Informative)
Or to send the video data back to an AJA or Avid outboard at the same time.
I have seen some Avid Thunderbolt prototypes, they do away with internal PCI Express boards.
Standardizing is a big win (Score:4, Insightful)
Thunderbolt is designed more to replace eSATA and FireWire than USB.
Neither one of which has taken the world by storm... Frankly we don't really need a replacement for either of those. They're fine but niche. There is more to having a successful interface than transfer rates. Cost to manufacture, legacy hardware compatibility, current equipment needs, licensing terms, customer demand and more all play a role. The opportunity for Thunderbolt is if it can combine the video (usually VGA/DVI/HDMI) and peripheral ports (usually USB) into a single interface. USB replaces several types of cables but it isn't quite capable enough to replace dedicated video cables. It's not clear that USB3 will be fast enough either. If Thunderbolt is cheap enough to manufacture and has a performance advantage that lets people further reduce the number of different cables they need, then it will have a chance.
What is wanted is something that is fast, cheap, compatible, reliable, easy to configure and minimizes the number of different cables we need. Frankly most PCs should ideally have no more than two cable types - one high power cable to power the device (when needed) and one type of data cable that can also handle low voltage DC power needs. Nothing wrong with using specialized cables for specific performance needs but that doesn't apply to most of us most of the time. I don't really care if the data cable is USB, Firewire, Thunderbolt or something else entirely but there is a lot to be gained by standardizing on a suitable general purpose data cable. USB comes closest to this ideal right now. (Yes Firewire could do the job but it's too expensive and lost that battle with USB long ago) Perhaps Thunderbolt will take it the next step. Only time will tell.
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My understanding is that USB3 has a max theoretical transfer rate of 4 GB/s while Thunderbolt is at 10 GB/s per channel giving 20 GB/s total. Also overhead limits USB3 having a peak of 3.2 GB/s. Thunderbolt is designed more to replace eSATA and FireWire than USB.
If USB is like it always was, it's not only 1/3 of the speed of Thunderbolt, it's probably much less than that. More than ten years ago I had a 8-speed SCSI cd-burner, and a 32-speed IDE burner. The IDE cdrom should have been 4x faster, it was about 2x slower. I've seen the same with USB2.0 and Firewire, although less extreme. If Thunderbolt is said to be 3x faster than USB3, then in real life it will probably be 6x or even 10x faster. Thunderbolt will have its place, but like SCSI and Firewire, it will pro
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Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
The author is an idiot. Comparing USB and thunderbolt just proves it. Thunderbold will expose pci-express lanes to external devices. USB does not even have DMA.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
External DMA is extremely useful - it dramatically reduces system load when accessing storage devices (whether single drives or drive arrays). This lets a notebook be used for data-intensive work (like video and photo work) with minimal overhead. DMA makes the difference between a pleasant experience and whimpering in the corner.
Claiming that external DMA is horrible idea is disingenuous; winlockpwn (or FireWire, or Thunderbolt) requires physical access to the machine, at which point security becomes a non-issue because there is none - DMA has nothing to do with it. If an attacker has physical access to a machine, the game is over.
More to the point: Winlockpwn is not a weakness of DMA, but in how Windows uses DMA. Windows has enough remote security problems; we don't need to go into the problems it has when an attacker has physical access.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean no improvement other than basically making the PCI Express bus available to any device that wants to use it?
No improvement other than running TWO bi-directional 10 Gbps channels through a single connector? (4x USB 3.0)
No improvement other than allowing manufacturers to build Firewire, eSATA, USB, and even USB 3.0 adaptors and docks connecting to a single port?
No improvement other than (in the future) allowing you to snap in a MagSafe power cord and get power AND Thunderbolt connectivity?
No improvement other than letting you run multiple monitors simultaneously? (new iMac)
Those "no improvements"?
Re:Really? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, that's not true. Thunderbolt provides a significant win over USB 3 in nearly every way. The author just doesn't get it.
First, Thunderbolt is based on PCIe for transport. That means that it's a very lightweight protocol, unlike USB, which is very heavyweight. For things like audio interfaces, USB 3 is dead in the water because it offers no advantages over USB 2 (because throughput doesn't matter past a certain point). Thunderbolt, by contrast, should offer a significant advantage in latency over FireWire (and a huge advantage over USB 2), while requiring less CPU overhead than USB or FireWire.
Second, it's entirely unclear to me why anyone supports USB 3 at all. For hard drives and similar, USB 3 offers no advantages over eSATA. For almost all other devices, USB 3 offers no advantages over USB 2. So ignoring portable devices that only have room for one port, USB 3 is a solution in search of a problem.
Third, the author doesn't know what he's saying about copper being "crippled". It's not crippled at all. Thunderbolt is intended to eventually be supplemented with new cables that have an optical PHY (transceiver) inside the cable instead of on the logic board. Such a design provides exactly the same advantages as LP (distance), but without all the problems that optical interconnects inherently suffer. To describe thunderbolt as "crippled" because it uses wires is to fail to understand the technology at all. It's exactly as fast as Light Peak was originally intended to be for its initial rollout.
Fourth, using LP in a USB connector turns out to be a bad idea in general. USB is a great interconnect for low bandwidth devices. It's not so great for talking to displays. With desktops tending to go under the desk, and with more and more people using laptops with external displays at home, there's good reason for wanting all of your external devices to be plugged into your display. Sharing a single data connection for your display cable and your peripherals is a tremendous win—so much so that support for transport of USB data was actually built into the original DisplayPort specification. Thus, Thunderbolt shouldn't be thought of necessarily as a replacement for USB, but rather as a replacement for other display technologies. With Thunderbolt, you could trivially build a monitor that provides full-performance, low-latency FireWire, USB, and eSATA connectors on top of your desk. Try that with USB 3.0.
Finally, the cost of Thunderbolt hardware is probably greatly exaggerated. Sure, it probably does cost $90 to add TB into a motherboard design right now, but that's because A. it isn't integrated into the motherboard chipsets yet (wait for Ivy Bridge), and B. it likely requires a significant board redesign to free up enough PCIe lanes to support the metric crapton of bandwidth involved.
Thunderbolt will become a lot more interesting when Intel starts integrating it into their chipsets in Ivy Bridge. Until then, it's really not feasible to most folks to start using it yet. Thus, it's not at all a surprise that adoption has been slow. Right now, it's basically at the developer preview stage, with AFAIK exactly one working motherboard implementation (Apple's).... The author should at least wait until Ivy Bridge before making predictions about the technology....
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Just a couple of points. USB vs eSATA. USB carries power, and can power most laptop style hard drives, while eSATA does not (meaning you need an extra cable, and possibly an extra power source). So that's an advantage of USB over eSATA.
I agree that it's too early to dismiss Thunderbolt yet. The problem is that it's yet another connector.
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USB 3 offers no advantages over eSATA
The power is in the connector.
Everything has a USB port.
Therefore it Just Works.
Re:Really? (Score:4, Interesting)
USB 3 offers no advantages over eSATA
Did they deprecate hubs in the USB3 spec?
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Actually, that's not true. Thunderbolt provides a significant win over USB 3 in nearly every way. The author just doesn't get it.
Well, one thing USB 3.0 has going for it over thunderbolt is that you can plug USB1.1 and USB2.0 devices into it. There's an *awful* lot of those. USB 3.0 is slowly replacing USB 2.0, just as USB 2.0 replaced USB 1.1. I still have a couple of pci USB 2.0 cards I got when USB 2.0 was still a fairly rare beastie on motherboards. Give it another couple of years, and the majority, if
Re:Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
Back when USB was introduced the same could be said versus the serial/RS-232 port. And interestingly Apple was one of the first manufacturer to support USB, too...
Business success means selling the consumer what they did not know they wanted, e.g. the iPad or the Roomba.
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If I plug in an eSATA drive I not only have to reboot, my motherboard likes to SUBSTITUTE the new drive for one of my original SATAs.
I submit that is one hell of an advantage USB 3.0 has over eSATA.
You motherboard sucks. Sorry 'bout that.
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FTFY
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
I still have a Mac with HDI-45 connector for Apple's AudioVision 14 display. The monitor died years ago (Florida thunder storm) but was nice, having ADB connections on it. And I'm currently using 4 Apple ADC monitors, each on $100 adapter box that allows me to connect their single cable connection up to a modern Intel Mac.
Do I like the idea of single cable monitors? Hell yeah!
Do I think they'll take off? Eh... not likely. And I'm still bummed Firewire never took off as AV equipment interconnects. Would make my home theater setup a lot cleaner.
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Actually, it's from Intel.
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"is dead" or "may be dead" (Score:3)
The title and the summary seem to be in disagreement. How do i know which to trust?
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Perhaps if Netcraft would have some sort of means of confirmation it might finally be settled.
Huh? (Score:2, Insightful)
Let's not turn all the world into a pro wrestling match...
Apple built Thunderbolt with Intel, not against them. If it was only about fighting USB, they wouldn't team up.
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Let's not turn all the world into a pro wrestling match...
Apple built Thunderbolt with Intel, not against them. If it was only about fighting USB, they wouldn't team up.
Intel "built" thunderbolt, and partnered with Apple to put it into the market on Macbooks first. a non-trivial difference.
Apple didn't build Thunderbolt (Score:5, Informative)
Intel did. Intel designed and developed the tech, and Apple just came to them and said "Hey, here's some ideas for the final implementation, and we'd like to put it in our devices soon." It is an Intel technology, and one in development for quite awhile.
It is targeted at something of a different market from USB3. It is more expensive for devices to implement, and less secure, since it is really just an external PCIe port. However that means full DMA, low latency and so on.
They are complimentary technologies.
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Yes, but remember, if it fails in the market its another example of Apples shitty track record with developing standard connectors and it is becomes a huge success and the Mac Book pros cause a a bunch of equipment manufacturers to build devices for it, then its Intel's technology and Apple had nothing to do with bringing it to market or helping to make it successful.
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I wasn't paying much attention, but I thought USB came out of Microsoft (or maybe Intel) - at the time Apple was all about Firewire. Weren't the earliest USB ports on Intel PCs?
Anti-Slashdot Effect (Score:2)
It seems these days any new technology which Slashdot takes a dislike to goes on to enjoy huge success. Take for example the iPad, Facebook, Twitter... I am almost tempted to predict that Thunderbolt will be a huge success :)
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It seems these days any new technology which Slashdot takes a dislike to goes on to enjoy huge success. Take for example the iPad, Facebook, Twitter... I am almost tempted to predict that Thunderbolt will be a huge success :)
There are many excellent reasons to dislike every one of your examples independent of their successes. You might as well predict that Window Phone 7 will be a huge success.
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However their positives vastly outweigh their negatives. Otherwise they wouldn't be successful.
You're so right. I can't believe I didn't see it before. I'm dumping my installation of Ubuntu and getting a shiny new copy of Windows 7 immediately. I thought Thunderbird was pretty nice, but Outlook is much more popular, so it must be better. It's going to be expensive, but following the simple principle that if something's successful, it must be good will vastly simplify my life.
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It's more likely the fact that people here actually understand the implications of Apple's iPad strategy, the privacy problems with Facebook. I'm not sure specifically what is wrong with Twitter, but it's probably the fact that it encourages twats to tweet about twits and give people the idea that we care about those sorts of arrogant gits.
As far as Thunderbolt goes, I think it's at least a reasonable debate to have. Right now I can't imagine it being of any particular utility for the mainstream. Although,
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Most people, it turns out. Who'da thunk?
(Most people, it turns out.)
Article reads like a big Apple bash (Score:3, Interesting)
The article reads like a big Apple bash, even though Thunderbolt is Intel's tech. The points about cost are probably valid but the whole thing comes off as a big unsourced bitchfest.
Sensationalist article with no substance (Score:2, Insightful)
If you think theres no compelling difference between the CPU-bound USB 3.0 and what is essentially an external PCIe connector, you need to go back and do some more research. LightPeak /Thunderbolt is just plain better than USB3.0; downsides do include lack of backwards compatibility, and that may prove to be its biggest obstacle, but to argue that "USB3.0 is good enough" is just wrong.
As for price, USB3.0 has been out for about a year now, with Thunderbolt only having rolled off the shelves-- and this, onl
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That said your final line says the key thing. "Its(sic) way too early to tell, and anyone saying otherwise is full of it."
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>If you think theres no compelling difference between the CPU-bound USB 3.0 and what is essentially an external PCIe connector
Don't confuse merit with popularity/cheapness.
Firewire was the superior standard 10 years ago and USB killed it. Non-tech savvy consumers will shake their heads at Thunderbolt (silly name) and demand the "new" USB. They'll say they have lots of USB stuff and it needs to go faster. The tech geek in their family will be talking up USB 3.
Its impossible to predict the future, but the
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Firewire was the superior standard 10 years ago and USB killed it
Firewire was superior in some respects, but inferior in others. For example, wasn't there a dollar per port license fee?
Re:Sensationalist article with no substance (Score:5, Informative)
You just spent 3 sentences telling people why anyone who argues differently from you is wrong, yet you provided not a single reason. The only fact you provided is easily disproven:
Right now, on newegg, im only seeing USB3.0 on highend multi-hundred-dollar motherboards, so it seems to be a wash in that regard.
Most certainly not! I see 29 USB 3.0 motherboards less than $100 at newegg. [newegg.com]. The $500 HTPC I bought this year has 2 USB 3.0 ports, as does my 8 month old laptop. By next year even the low-end will have it because manufacturers will have unloaded their USB 2.0 chipset boards.
Re:Sensationalist article with no substance (Score:4)
Right now, on newegg, im only seeing USB3.0 on highend multi-hundred-dollar motherboards
Newegg says you're [newegg.com] wrong [newegg.com].
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If you think theres no compelling difference between the CPU-bound USB 3.0 and what is essentially an external PCIe connector, you need to go back and do some more research. LightPeak /Thunderbolt is just plain better than USB3.0; downsides do include lack of backwards compatibility, and that may prove to be its biggest obstacle, but to argue that "USB3.0 is good enough" is just wrong.
As for price, USB3.0 has been out for about a year now, with Thunderbolt only having rolled off the shelves-- and this, only in Apples computers so far-- a few months ago. Right now, on newegg, im only seeing USB3.0 on highend multi-hundred-dollar motherboards, so it seems to be a wash in that regard.
Its way too early to tell, and anyone saying otherwise is full of it.
You see, only what you want to see: USB 3.0 Motherboards starting at $69 [newegg.com]
The expansion cards for USB 3.0 start at $29.
USB 3.0 consumer devices were released about a year and a half ago.
Apparently you belong to those who "need to go back and do some more research". You make blanket claims of thunderbolt > USB3.0 but offer no specifics to support this argument. Finishing your post with "anyone saying otherwise is full of it" is just bait for someone like me to come and blow holes in your fail of a tho
Room for both (Score:2)
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I foresee a lightpeak docking station being introduced. You could even put USB3.0 in it :)
Cross Platform (Score:2)
A standard which I can currently only plugin to an Apple computer but not PCs? DOA.
Portable HDDs are supposed to be portable. Part of portability is working on multiple platforms. Until Intel gets their PC release in line it's only going to be used by those who know they'll only ever want their data on a Mac.
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Only FAT filesystems are truly portable between Windows and Macs & FAT is a terrible file system no big (> 4 or 2 GB) files. Totally useless for many tasks.
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Portable HDDs are supposed to be portable. Part of portability is working on multiple platforms. Until Intel gets their PC release in line it's only going to be used by those who know they'll only ever want their data on a Mac.
The target market for the first batch of TB peripherals is going to be Mac-using video pros, who are gagging for something better than FireWire800 and are frustrated by the removal of the Express card slot from all but the 17" MacBook Pro. So far there are kick-ass RAID arrays, Fibre Channel adapters, Pro video digitisers and extra Ethernet/Firewire ports. There is one "portable" HD (TB only) but it looks pretty high end (2 SSDs in a RAID) and its one of those big aluminium bricks from Lacie, not what I'd c
Firewire a replacement for SCSI? (Score:2)
In the same way that Apple championed FireWire for the replacement of parallel SCSI
Hmm... I've been in the datacenter a LONG time... and a photographer even longer. I don't recall many devices in the datacenter replacing their parallel SCSI with firewire, and I don't recall many cameras/camcorders using parallel SCSI and transitioning into firewire.
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(It's been a while since I checked this out, so I could be wrong.)
It's mostly camcorders and drives. Not cameras.
All miniDV camcorders use Firewire. The ones you see now using USB are AVCHD camcorders.
All HDV (pro-level) camcorders use Firewire as well.
One of the benefits of firewire is that it's fast and predictable enough to allow for direct streaming in realtime from one piece of video hardware to another, building up your realtime processing pipeline.
As in, you can take a HDV video source, connect it to
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it's about devices (Score:2)
a zillion usb devices already available, work with usb, even if not at full speed
almost nothing works on thunderbolt
same thing happened with firewire, although at least cameras are using it
thunderbolt and usb are both techs of intel so there isnt a lot of real competition anyway. the advantage of thunderbolt being that you can use it like a pci express lane.
yeah - but. by the time there's enough devices that make sense, usb4 might be around (just like usb "killed" fw)
I'm sure somebody said the same thing about USB (Score:2)
I have neither the time nor the inclination to research this, but I'm sure someone said the same thing in the early days of USB.
We'll see if "rumors of its death are premature". I am just happy we are moving towards a faster local I/O standard and applaud Apple for having the guts to champion the technology it thinks is best.
Hope it does better than Displayport and Firewire (Score:2)
OK by me, probably OK with Apple and Intel too (Score:3)
This is OK by me, if Apple will stick with LightPeak/Thunderbolt for at least as long as they've stuck with FireWire. I don't want to buy a bunch of devices that are obsolete in 2-3 years, but I can still use my FireWire 400 drives from 10 years ago, along with my FireWire 800 drives from this year. Who cares if Thunderbolt doesn't wipe USB3 off the face of the earth? It's cool, it' works well, and as long as it isn't forcefully obsoleted, I will be happy with it for years to come.
I'd say Apple won't care; the port will be seen as a useful feature that is unique to Macs (or at least most heavily used in Macs). Intel probably doesn't mind if Thunderbolt stays a Mac niche thing either, as they are making money off Thunderbolt and USB3 both. No matter which way the hardware makers go, Intel is making sales and/or collecting royalties.
So what's the big deal here? Does every new connector type have to become a universal standard to be considered a success? If you want a drive that will work on Mac/Win/Linux, get USB.
Re:What the hell is Thunderbolt? (Score:5, Informative)
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I'm not really seeing how it's like LightPeak at all, given that they've ditched the optical connection altogether.
yes, about two years ago. Thunderbolt is EXACTLY like LightPeak, as they are the same thing. LightPeak was the project codename, Thunderbolt is the formal product name.
Re:What the hell is Thunderbolt? (Score:4, Informative)
yes, about two years ago. Thunderbolt is EXACTLY like LightPeak, as they are the same thing. LightPeak was the project codename, Thunderbolt is the formal product name.
No, Thunderbolt is an offshoot of LightPeak. LightPeak actually used light (fiber), Thunderbolt is LightPeak over copper with some other differences. Thunderbolt was created because fiber switching is way to expensive for consumer use.
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That matches with what I've read, and is also the reason for the high power output levels of the Thunderbolt port.
Re:What the hell is Thunderbolt? (Score:5, Informative)
Well, it used to be called Light Peak, and it's an Intel technology that Apple is championing. It's all Intel. It's basically DisplayPort plus x2 PCIe.
The Thunderbolt name is actually trademarked by Intel, so they're probably going to promote it heavily.
And Intel is promoting it heavily - the Intel chipsets all have Thunderbolt controllers built in. Whereas, if you wanted USB 3.0, the manufacturer will have to throw in a separate chip and supporting components for that - USB 3.0 isn't coming to Intel chipsets until next year.
This is an issue as laptop manufacturers who want USB 3.0 have to throw in a separate chip (lots of $$$) and its support components, while Thunderbolt comes "for free". At least, if the laptop runs Intel chips with an Intel chipset.
As for dead in the water - it's hard to tell. A lot of manufacturers have thrown their hats into the ring of Thunderbolt accessories - hard drives, capture carts, etc. It can provide up to 10W of power (4x USB, but short of FireWire power), plus with daisy chaining and the like.
The best answer is that it's really to replace FireWire moreso than supplant USB 3.0. FW3200 is pretty much dead.
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This is an issue as laptop manufacturers who want USB 3.0 have to throw in a separate chip (lots of $$$) and its support components, while Thunderbolt comes "for free". At least, if the laptop runs Intel chips with an Intel chipset.
TFA says the hardware is ~$90, compared to ~$3 for USB, so I don't think this is correct.
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Don't forget that Thunderbolt will also replace the VGA/DVI connector on a machine, either directly, or using an adapter. Because an adapter can be used, PC and motherboard makers have zero to lose by changing to this for video out on laptops, where space is a premium. Desktop video is still a tossup, but a video connector that takes less space and also supports a high speed interface would be welcomed.
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This is an issue as laptop manufacturers who want USB 3.0 have to throw in a separate chip (lots of $$$) and its support components, while Thunderbolt comes "for free". At least, if the laptop runs Intel chips with an Intel chipset.
This isn't what the article's author has led me to believe.
Thunderbolt is prohibitively expensive. USB 3.0 controllers cost just a few dollars, while Thunderbolt hardware, we've been told, cost no less than $90. Matrox's new line of Thunderbolt-enabled products are $200-300 more than the eSATA or USB equivalent!
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Did I miss where Ivy Bridge came out a year early? All Intel chipsets are scheduled to have Thunderbolt controllers in them, beginning with Ivy Bridge. In 2012. It will also have USB 3.0 built into the chipset. That means it's at least a year too early to say much about the potential for Thunderbolt.
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All Intel chipsets are scheduled to have Thunderbolt controllers in them, beginning with Ivy Bridge.
Do you have a source for that claim? anandtech say "Though some rumors reported Panther Point would include support for Thunderbolt, there is absolutely nothing in the current roadmap to suggest its presence in the 7-series chipsets"
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A good parallel is the 3.5mm headphone jack. Frankly, it's stupidly large and poorly designed for what it needs to do (USB isn't). But it will never be replaced by another (wired) connector in it's application space. There's just too many of them, and it's hard to make a compelling case for replacement for 98% o
Re:Bullshit. (Score:5, Interesting)
No it won't. USB will be the next USB. The connector is too common now to ever be replaced as the default digital interface for most things. It's on the front of my car radio, for damn sake.
A good parallel is the 3.5mm headphone jack. Frankly, it's stupidly large and poorly designed for what it needs to do (USB isn't). But it will never be replaced by another (wired) connector in it's application space. There's just too many of them, and it's hard to make a compelling case for replacement for 98% of users.
That is a bad analogy. The 3.5mm jack is easy to use because there is no wrong way to plug it in. Now the USB connector on the other hand is crap because a lot of people probably have to make two or three tries before then can plug something in. It is a really poor design which is only marginally better than those stupid PS/2 keyboard/mouse ports.
Now the Thunderbolt connector, on the other hand, has just one right way that you can try to even plug it in. It is easy to see which side is up.
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Now the USB connector on the other hand is crap because a lot of people probably have to make two or three tries before then can plug something in.
Who exactly are you hanging out with? I'm picturing those infomercials, where they try to convince you that straining spaghetti is really hard, then cut to a clip of some moron accidentally dumping spaghetti on the floor. Fortunately, they have a new spaghetti strainer which will help you avoid this, and they have it for sale.
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That's called being too incompetent to operate a regular blanket [tvtropes.org]
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And they'll never replace 5.25" and 3.5" floppy drives
The 5.25 and 3.5" floppies had significant drawbacks that begged for an improvment. First it was the Zip drive. Then some people used CDR/CDRW's. Finally, the thumb drive became king. Each was a significant improvement. USB will remain forever as a wired interface, because it's too close to the perfect port for a mouse, keyboard, etc to be replaced. That means volume, and volume means cheap. Device makers go where the volume is for most of their products.
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Scanners?
Yes--my particular area of specialty. 300x300dpi x 24 bits x 8.5x11 x 130 pages x 2 sides / minute = 875Mb/s of actual data. You have to compress that a decent amount to shove it down a USB 2.0 pipe. (Especially considering that these scanners' protocols were typically designed ages ago for SCSI and slower models, and fall about 15% short of USB's actual max ~300Mb/s throughput by virtue of back-and-forth comms with transfer sizes that are not all that large.) Anyway, I'd really like to get the raw data and
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The speed to a camera only matters if you're streaming data in real time. If you're moving stored video from internal storage to a PC, the average consumer will pick price over throughput, which means USB.
The longest cable an average household has is ouside the house used for transmitting water, not data, and even that's far shorter than 100 meters.
Re:Excuse me? (Score:4, Insightful)
The USB logo goes "up", Brainiac.
Neither of my Flash drives have a USB logo on them. I've no idea about my other USB devices.
In any case, even if that was true it's a piss-poor substitute for a properly designed connector.
Netcraft confirms Thunderbolt is dead (Score:2)
There, happy now?
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Hmm, if that's all it costs, I want one. Seriously, a good SATA card will set you back more than that. Granted that is like double the cost of a USB 3.0 card, but given that this is a somewhat different type of interface with other uses, that doesn't seem to be unreasonable. Especially given that Thunderbolt isn't being manufactured at scale yet.
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What is this magic that they would have been able to do with fiber?
Ever worked with it? For a consumer connector it sucks. It's delicate, futzy about cleanliness, and really not much gain over copper. Hell, without huge waste and high expense it can't even carry power.