Intel Wants 100 Thunderbolt Devices by Year's End

[exfileme]

Intel is pushing for around 100 Thunderbolt peripherals by the end of the year as the tech begins to debut on Windows-based PCs.

Intel Wants 100 Thunderbolt Devices by Year's End : Read more

 

[phatboe]

I refuse to purchase thunderbolt devices until Intel opens the spec or at least allows others to license it to make competing thunderbolt controllers.

 

[icepick314]

i don't get the point of all these different specs...

USB, HDMI, DisplayPort, DVI, firewire, Thunderbolt....

it's just muddying up market for new devices and making them expensive to support all these different specs...

 

[soo-nah-mee]

[citation][nom]icepick314[/nom]i don't get the point of all these different specs...USB, HDMI, DisplayPort, DVI, firewire, Thunderbolt....it's just muddying up market for new devices and making them expensive to support all these different specs...[/citation]I think that's the idea: To replace all of those with one. Then in the future, there will be far less muddying.

 

[neoverdugo]

Well, that ain't gonna happen. Intel has been very busy making it's "Intel Only" PCs for years now.
Intel wants to ditch USBs, PCI-E, Third party GPUs, memory cards, Storage drives, MBs away from its processors. Intel already has the SSD, MBs, Thunderbolt, graphic chip-set; the memory division it still unavailable (Which AMD beat them to it with patriot's help). Intel is competing with apple in the "Closed Hardware System" category, especially with its "Ultrabook"

 

[jacobdrj]

@neoverdugo

Intel used to have Centrino... It was an attempt at a 'platform' for mobile.
USB was invented by Intel, and expressly gave rights to be licensed for marginal (if any) cost, to promote adoption...

Thunderbolt isn't a 'new standard' like USB or Firewire... It is standard agnostic, or at least, it is supposed to be...

I would very much like an all unified connectivity interface... I think the next iteration of Thunderbolt, when it gets revved to true LightPeak, we may finally have what we need in this context.

I want thunderbolt enclosures, so that I can install external boot SSDs that are native SATA on to hard-to-service iMacs...

 

[Guest]

Light Peak was developed by Intel actually. They rebranded it Thunderbolt and made it an Apple exclusive, but the only change was the 10 Gb/s both ways over copper instead of the original 100 Gb/s over fiber optic design. Apple in no way designed Thunderbolt.

Neoverdugo, you are smoking something. USB - originally developed by Intel. PCI - originally developed by Intel. You could go back to ISA, SATA, and the others and you'll find Intel was the company that spearheaded all of it. Intel has hardly closed the system. In fact, they are responsible for opening it up against the will of IBM (who did their own thing with microchannel and other proprietary technologies).

The issue with Intel is that they want $$$ for their tech now.

 

[chuckydb]

The only way I can see Thunderbolt being usefull is for an external desktop gpu plugged in your laptop.
Other than taht.... PASS....

 

[Guest]

[citation][nom]soo-nah-mee[/nom]I think that's the idea: To replace all of those with one. Then in the future, there will be far less muddying.[/citation]
That's only in a perfect world.
http://xkcd.com/927/

 

[danwat1234]

USB 3.0 is perfect for 95% of people out there and it's cheap. So what is Intel thinking? Oh yeah, $$$
I'm sure the new Ivy Bridge Apple laptops will have USB3. I mean the chipset has it and if they don't wire a USB3 header for their computers I'll be ROFL.

 

[Vladislaus]

[citation][nom]jacobdrj[/nom]@neoverdugoIntel used to have Centrino... It was an attempt at a 'platform' for mobile.USB was invented by Intel, and expressly gave rights to be licensed for marginal (if any) cost, to promote adoption...Thunderbolt isn't a 'new standard' like USB or Firewire... It is standard agnostic, or at least, it is supposed to be...I would very much like an all unified connectivity interface... I think the next iteration of Thunderbolt, when it gets revved to true LightPeak, we may finally have what we need in this context.I want thunderbolt enclosures, so that I can install external boot SSDs that are native SATA on to hard-to-service iMacs...[/citation]
Intel was involved in the development of USB but they didn't single handed invented it.

 

[CaedenV]

If you wanted the devices then you should have put it on your northbridge chipsets!

 

[CaedenV]

[citation][nom]icepick314[/nom]i don't get the point of all these different specs...USB, HDMI, DisplayPort, DVI, firewire, Thunderbolt....it's just muddying up market for new devices and making them expensive to support all these different specs...[/citation]
The nice thing about thunderbolt/lightpeak is that you can run multiple devices and connectors off of the same port. You can run USB protocol over it, you can run HDMI/DP/DVI-D over it, or 1394, or whatever. Granted it is not being used that way currently, but the idea is that you can, which is what makes it a great idea... except that they did not put it as a native port on the chipsets, so it will not be adopted for a long time now.

 

[Guest]

USB 3.0 works great until you need speed. It does not come close to its 5 Gbs rating. It is pretty useless for hard drives. Would never use it over eSATA. Thunderbolt means I can do hard drives, external GPU, external video sources, and any other type of technology out there at a MUCH greater speed than USB in a realistic scenario. USB 3 is definitely better than USB 2, but not by as much as they claim.

 

[Guest]

Laptops need 2 thunderbolt ports so they do not have to be an endpoint!

 

[danwat1234]

USB 3.0 works great until you need speed. It does not come close to its 5 Gbs rating. It is pretty useless for hard drives. Would never use it over eSATA. Thunderbolt means I can do hard drives, external GPU, external video sources, and any other type of technology out there at a MUCH greater speed than USB in a realistic scenario. USB 3 is definitely better than USB 2, but not by as much as they claim.

Maybe it's because the hard drive was the bottleneck? What speed were you getting and what hard drive were you using? It common to just get 70MB/s on a big 7200RPM hard drive if your doing 2 things at once or the file you are transferring a fragmented file.

 

[rantoc]

Slow adaptation ehh? Thats what you get when you only aim for 6% of the worlds computers (IE macs) not the 90% of the worlds coputers (ie Windows). Hardly shocking that the sales been abyssal!

 

[alxianthelast]

I'm confused.

I thought originally LightPeak was meant to have optical cables like optical TOSLINK where the interface cards were optical.. not the cables? But if you don't need to upgrade your Thunderbolt interface card.. how's it going to support optical later?

 

[joeman67]

Hmmm... I'm a computer geek who upgrades my home PC with new parts every couple of months.

And I've never heard of Thunderbolt before!

 

[JOSHSKORN]

You've been thunderstruck!

AC/DC, anyone?

 

[mavikt]

[citation][nom]Intel spokesman Dave Salvator[/nom]Running power over longer optical cable will cause a impedance-induced power drop and thus be impractical[/citation]

I've always wondered how to run power in optical cables, and now I know why it doesn't work.
I guess he is working for the marketing department... DOH!

 

[Guest]

Sounds like he was quoted out of context, was he talking about power distribution using the ports power, not good over long distance and the same inefficiencys apply for data transfer over long distance copper wires! For optical cables to be able to utilize the port power the optical cable would need to be pared with a copper wire to carry port supplied power, not a good solution, because of impedance-induced power drop, low wattage of the port supplied power. Optical cables, however can be much longer than copper cables for data transmission without having a repeater that a longer copper cable would require! For longs runs of optical cable it would be better if power could be provided through a separate cable to the wall outlet! For the folks in the entertainment industry where there are often no wall outlets, there is always the great fun of stringing those heavy runs of power cable to the nearby power distro box placed near the 500lb sound board FOH.

 

[ojas]

[citation][nom]TroooothSeeker[/nom]Light Peak was developed by Intel actually. They rebranded it Thunderbolt and made it an Apple exclusive, but the only change was the 10 Gb/s both ways over copper instead of the original 100 Gb/s over fiber optic design. Apple in no way designed Thunderbolt. Neoverdugo, you are smoking something. USB - originally developed by Intel. PCI - originally developed by Intel. You could go back to ISA, SATA, and the others and you'll find Intel was the company that spearheaded all of it.[/citation]
Intel also specified most of the ATX standard and its updated versions.

 

[Guest]

Thunderbolt is the copper wire variant of the Lightpeak optical controller, The optical controller had the circuitry to convert optical signals directly into electrical signals at a very high bandwidth and it was very high cost part! The thunderbolt controller has no optical transducers and is therefore more limited in the total amount of bandwidth that a copper wire can normally accommodate. The thunderbolt controller being all electrical is currently more affordable, and thus, the first to be used in the consumer market! The main selling point of the thunderbolt technology is in the number of different data transmission protocols that can be encapsulated and sent over the main thunderbolt data transmission protocol. This allows for one type of plug form factor (Thunderbolt) to take the place of the orginal plug form factors that are normally seen on most laptops and desktops PCIe, DVI etc. Thunderbolt controllers have 1 or 2 channels consisting of 2 lanes per channel and allow data to be sent on each lane at a rate of 10Gb per sec.