Thunderbolt

[loyukfai]

Slashdot just ran a story on Thunderbolt, as usual, the useful bits are not so much in the linked article but in the comments.

Besides lots of jokes making fun of it and comparison to FireWire, there are some interesting ideas.

For example, TB and USB together can replace most other ports on ultra-thin notebooks like the Air, while not sacrificing expandability (at least in terms of bandwidth).

But there are concerns that TB's direct access to the system memory will give rise to another attack vector. OTOH, the ExpressCard interface has the same issue...?

And of course, the cost of TB is obviously hindering the adoption. Apple.com is still asking 50USD for a 2M cable, which is... Unfathomable to me. Also where's the 50M optical cable...?

At least, with Intel pushing it together with Apple, it's got to do better than FireWire, right?

Your thoughts? Is TB something you would consider important in your next upgrade?

Reference: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/0 ... says-intel

[dr_st]

I see the potential in Thunderbolt, and I hope that Intel can / wants to push it enough to make it succeed in the mainstream more than Firewire.

The thing is that when a chip / platform company like Intel teams up with an OEM like Apple, the criteria for success are different.

From Apple's PoV - with Thunderbolt already being in all its computers and on all of its peripherals - it's already a success, end of story. But from Intel's perspective it would be considered a failure, I believe, if the rest of the PC industry does not adopt it.

In some ways this was the fate of Firewire. Being very much alive for a long time in the Apple world and as good as dead everywhere else. I really hope Thunderbolt will have a better fate.

Sony already has an interesting model with a Thunderbolt docking station connector. I would love to see the same thing on business computers, such as Thinkpads. It shouldn't be too difficult to rewire the docking connector at the bottom so that it carries Thunderbolt signals instead of the current PCI-Express, since Thunderbolt encapsulates PCI-Express anyway.

Another important part often forgotten is the driver/software. The good thing about USB2, is that for over a decade now, it has built-in support in Windows, and probably most distributions of Linux. You plug it in and it just works. You may need to install a driver for your particular device, but the stack (all the USB ports and hubs) is picked up instantly by the OS. Thunderbolt can work in a similar way, but currently the operating systems don't have support for that built-in. So either Intel or the OEM vendors will have to provide a driver of some kind.

One of the interesting points raised by the Slashdot discussion, that I haven't considered - the performance/security tradeoff. USB offloads everything to the CPU and gets no DMA access, so it's pretty secure. Thunderbolt and the underlying PCIe is faster, in part, because it handles physical memory access directly, which makes it vulnerable to a certain kind of DMA attacks. With PCIe it doesn't bother most people, since all the peripherals are usually internal, and here you potentially connect to an untrusted external device. Something to think about.

[loyukfai]

Interesting idea about the different PoV of Apple and Intel.

Reminds me that, one of the dominant market for FireWire was the DV ecosystem. There are a few usage scenarios that I can think of, but none of them seems very pressing at the moment.

4k video, universal docking station, multi-drive DAS, all can make use of TB.

Anyway, it's forward thinking on the part of Intel to push TB. It's unlikely to be as popular as USB, but it's probably going to be a standard with us for many years to come.

With regarding to the security, I brought it up based on the comments but don't think it's much of an issue for most of us. There's something called IOMMU that people mentioned that can mitigate this. Altogether it's a more complicated topic assuming situations that physical access can easily be compromised. And of course, this... http://xkcd.com/538/

Cheers.

[loyukfai]

Test on PC/Windows...

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5829/a-fi ... z77agd80/2

[dr_st]

Thanks for the link. Good job by the reviewer.

IMO it's appalling that the PCI Express hotplug feature, which has been in the standard forever is still not supported properly by Microsoft, even in Windows 7 (not sure what happens in Windows .

It's good to know at least that Intel is working on providing their own drivers which will hopefully address the issue. However, working closer with Microsoft to add the support into the OS would probably be a cleaner solution (though no doubt more difficult to pull off).

[Kaze22]

Will most likely be the next generation FireWire, reserved only for video production at 4k and beyond
Most likely Displayport will replace DVI for display io, Thunderbolt will replace FireWire for Video io, and USB 3 will be the jack of all trades.
I don't see TB becoming mass market, but definitely has its niche market appeal.
I suspect the most docks and mobile displays will choose USB 3 over TB simply because its more mainstream.

Lenovo's next Gen dock is already using single connection USB 3 with display link technology.

The fact that most people will never have the SSD RAID storage needed to saturate a TB bandwith already puts it into a niche market.

[loyukfai]

Or... If Intel integrates it into their chipsets...

Regarding the driver, I guess it's just lazy on MS's part. Given the lack of demand and her busy mutating Windows... It's understandable though.

Besides, personally I think it's quite useful on those ultra-thin portables. A jack to transform one's portable into a full-fledge desktop.

And think of plugging in an external GTX 690 for hardcore gamers...

Cheers.

[loyukfai]

Matrox DS1 docking station...

http://www.matrox.com/docking_station/en/ds1/

There's also an (quite expensive) external PCIe expansion chassis too...

http://www.mlogic.com/products/mlink

Otherwise, TB is still pretty much limited to storage devices.

Cheers.

[dr_st]

Matrox DS1 docking station...

http://www.matrox.com/docking_station/en/ds1/

I find it curious / funny that they are so blunt in their advertising:

Today's MacBooks are powerful enough for most corporate users but their cumbersome connectivity makes them inconvenient, and their small screens and keyboards make them uncomfortable to use in the office all day.

The new Matrox DS1 docking station changes everything!

[loyukfai]

The ironic thing perhaps is, Matrox is selling it for 250USD. Considering Apple is selling the 27" Thunderbolt model for 999USD, and a comparable (?) Dell model is available at 799USD, it may not be a good sell afterall.

Cheers.

[lead_org]

Price has to come down and the amount of consumer equipment using the TB must increase, otherwise TB adoption would lag.

I got my MBA 11 and T430s with thunderbolt figuring that mass adoption curve for the TB would occur, but right now i don't see much stuffs happening nor is the price of accessories coming down.

[loyukfai]

IDF 2014: Where is Thunderbolt Headed?

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8529/idf- ... olt-headed

[dr_st]

That is a great article, and it addresses the major problems for the PC market (lack of support from MS, which is in part, IMO, due to insufficient pushing from Intel). But there is still hope that it will change. The technology (hardware) itself is plenty fast enough to be useful for years, so even now, it is far from "too late" to add proper software support.