If you ask me, externalising access to the PCIe bus is a baaaad idea until they have a proven security concept, which VT-d is not.

I'm all for higher bandwidth conections having a lightning bolt icon is not exactly the most intelligent thing not only will that confuse noobs who will think its realted to power , its going to be stupid in 6 years time when its jokingly slow compared to other interfaces.

also with external ports like this compatibly is probably more important than speed for example many people have SATA outputs on the mobo but most people use usb.

Hook me up with this and SSD drives.

He says it's 10 gigabit. I think it's two independant channels of 10 gigabits.

Must be a RAID array of SSD at those speeds.

I'll wait for "thunderbolt" 2... oh, and I'll also wait for it to be standardized, oh, and common... and cheap... and I absolutely won't buy until they have a commercial where the soundtrack includes Thunderstruck by AC/DC.

magnets. how do they work?

Neat, but this kinda smells like firewire to me, besides it's not that much faster than USB 3 which is already out there in the market

One USB3 connection has 25% of the aggregate throughput capability of a Thunderbolt connection

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

I was going to say the same thing. I think my next Macbook will have an SSD. Finally, no moving internal parts. >> ^deathcow:

Hook me up with this and SSD drives.
He says it's 10 gigabit. I think it's two independant channels of 10 gigabits.

> Finally, no moving internal parts.

this describes our personal futures too!

*electronica

Adding video to channels (Electronica) - requested by DerHasisttot.

This would be really awesome if I ever had any intention of transferring huge amounts of data between local computers. But I don't. And I gotta wonder how many people do.

I might, on rare occasions, want to transfer my music library to a different device, or perhaps a folder full of videos. But that is pretty unusual, so USB or ethernet is fine. Just start the transfer then go do something else. But people who do this kind of thing on a daily basis have got to be pretty rare. Maybe just professional video editors.

I'm much more excited by advances in SSD speeds, which translates to tangible results with tasks I perform every day. Like starting programs.

> And I gotta wonder how many people do.

Necessity is the mother of invention. Lots of people have terabytes of videos.

>> ^deathcow:

> And I gotta wonder how many people do.
Necessity is the mother of invention. Lots of people have terabytes of videos.


And I cant tell you how many times per day I feel like moving my ripped movie collection from one PC to another PC sitting right next to it...

Like I said, this is probably great for untold dozens of professional video editors worldwide.

Posted this via some sort of facebook plugin first which I don't enjoy. So sorry about double post.

My theory is that this type of technology will finally allow us to have a "mainframe" PC in the basement with a stack of disks and a pile of ram so that we can just plug a monitor, keyboard, and mouse in any room we feel like it and run session of the main PC. With existing interconnect tech this would be very hard. Now it can be one cable. Poof: computer is now a black box service for the house, simplifying life for those of us with a couple of TVs, media library, kids, portable devices, etc.

but does it blend?

I have 10 terabytes here online and I am not particularly fanatical about video. A few years ago nobody would have casually had that much space. By the time Thunderbolt is common on every desktop, it will seem an appropriate speed for typical user needs.

>> ^MaxWilder:

>> ^deathcow:
> And I gotta wonder how many people do.
Necessity is the mother of invention. Lots of people have terabytes of videos.

And I cant tell you how many times per day I feel like moving my ripped movie collection from one PC to another PC sitting right next to it...
Like I said, this is probably great for untold dozens of professional video editors worldwide.

>> ^dag:

I was going to say the same thing. I think my next Macbook will have an SSD. Finally, no moving internal parts. >> ^deathcow:
Hook me up with this and SSD drives.
He says it's 10 gigabit. I think it's two independant channels of 10 gigabits.



I'm not sure I can tell much of a difference with mine.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

Seriously? What about the instant-wake from sleep? >> ^blankfist:

>> ^dag:
I was going to say the same thing. I think my next Macbook will have an SSD. Finally, no moving internal parts. >> ^deathcow:
Hook me up with this and SSD drives.
He says it's 10 gigabit. I think it's two independant channels of 10 gigabits.


I'm not sure I can tell much of a difference with mine.

The chances of this technology catching on is somewhat unlikely for several reasons, most of which have already been pointed out. First off, there's the cost of the technology. The cables alone cost around $50 apiece, and that price is unlikely to drop considering the hardware inside the cable alone. Secondly, because of the licensing, there isn't a lot of third party support. If you recall, this is one of the major reasons firewire never caught on as big as USB, even though it had some nice features that made it more ideal for large amounts of data transfer. then there are also the insecurities, backwards compatibility, etc.
I suspect that in the end it will be more of a niche product, much as firewire is. (And considering Apple's attitude about any technology they've had a hand in developing, I think I'm rather glad of that.)

>> ^dag:

Seriously? What about the instant-wake from sleep?

I think I'm just spoiled now and have taken it for granted.

>> ^deathcow:

I have 10 terabytes here online and I am not particularly fanatical about video. A few years ago nobody would have casually had that much space. By the time Thunderbolt is common on every desktop, it will seem an appropriate speed for typical user needs.
>> ^MaxWilder:
>> ^deathcow:
> And I gotta wonder how many people do.
Necessity is the mother of invention. Lots of people have terabytes of videos.

And I cant tell you how many times per day I feel like moving my ripped movie collection from one PC to another PC sitting right next to it...
Like I said, this is probably great for untold dozens of professional video editors worldwide.



10 terabytes? And you are not fanatical about video? I'm not sure you have a well-adjusted perspective.

I watch all my movies and tv off my hard drive. And I watch a LOT. Several hours per day, at least (while I'm between jobs). I keep most of it on one external 500 Gig hard drive. For the most part I delete as I go, but there's quite a lot of stuff I have saved and/or haven't watched yet. 500G is enough for almost 1500 television episodes at standard bitrate. 10 terabytes is almost enough for 30,000 tv show episodes, or 15,000 movies. Even if you increase the bitrate for 720p resolution, you've got enough space to store over 7,000 movies.

If that isn't fanatical about video, I don't know what is.

But more to the point, we're talking about technology that is specifically designed to transfer that kind of massive data from one pc to another pc . . . IN THE SAME ROOM.

So even if it becomes completely normal for people to have massive collections like yours (for instance on a home server), Thunderbolt will still serve absolutely no purpose for day-to-day tasks like viewing video and downloading from the internet.

TL;DR - What the hell are you doing with 10 terabytes that would be assisted by massive LOCAL bandwidth?

I'm not saying 10 TB of video. Several TB of astronomical images, etc. Stuff that takes a long time to move around. USB2 is not up to modern requirements for speed.

>> ^deathcow:

I'm not saying 10 TB of video. Several TB of astronomical images, etc. Stuff that takes a long time to move around. USB2 is not up to modern requirements for speed.


You are still not answering the question. What is there to get excited about???

Hard drives (SATA 3.0) are topping out at 6Gbps, which means that a typical PC can't get anywhere near the max Thunderbolt speed. USB 3.0 (available right now) peaks at 5Gbps, which is more than most hard drives can handle. PLUS USB 3.0 is backward compatible. In the real world, there will be no noticeable difference between USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt unless you have multiple RAID arrays in close proximity, and are pushing your systems to the limit on a daily basis. It would be about a thousand times more useful to have that kind of speed on your network connections, and 10G ethernet has been around for years!

Thunderbolt is nothing but a small incremental improvement over USB 3.0 that most people will not be able to notice, except for the fact that all their old peripherals won't be compatible.

If you're just geeking out about the new shiny, that's cool. But please just say so.

I spend my entire professional life in front of computers. Lost productivity to waiting for things has a real cost. I've been computing for the last 30 years almost. I've spent a lot of time waiting for things.

My SSD I have already are too fast for SATA-2 and SATA-3 drivers (for the eqpt I have) all suck. (Marvell).

Yep, I'm geeking out about it, and I hope it explodes into the commonplace. I will get more done in my on-time and off-time if it does.