Friday, November 15th 2013
Intel Announces "Thunderbolt ready" Upgrade Program for Motherboards, PCs
The past year has seen a flurry of Thunderbolt related activity. Already present on every current Apple Mac, Thunderbolt has continued to grow within PC circles. And the Thunderbolt ecosystem responded, with over 100 Thunderbolt devices now shipping and available, most certified for both Mac and PC. Thunderbolt makes new experiences possible and developers are seeking to take advantage of Thunderbolt's key benefits, including simultaneous data and display transfer, with speeds of up to 10 Gbps, and daisy-chain connectivity of up to six devices. Building upon that foundation, the first Thunderbolt 2 systems were introduced in October this year, with speeds up to 20 Gbps, and support for the DisplayPort 1.2 protocol. Thunderbolt is clearly the fastest, most versatile connection to your PC.
Now we have a new announcement for you - an exciting new program to quickly expand the footprint of Thunderbolt for desktop and workstation users. This new initiative is called "Thunderbolt ready", and it enables PC manufacturers to offer Thunderbolt upgradeable motherboards within desktop and workstation computers. By using a Thunderbolt card, Thunderbolt's blazing fast speed and uncompressed video capabilities can now be added to any motherboard that includes a GPIO header (general purpose input/output header), so even if your system doesn't have Thunderbolt it is now possible to "upgrade" to it. Users that are interested in adding Thunderbolt 2 technology to an existing Thunderbolt ready system can combine a Thunderbolt card with a growing number of enabled motherboards, all identified by the use of the "Thunderbolt ready" moniker. The Thunderbolt ready program makes it simple to identify which components work together to upgrade your PC with Thunderbolt 2 capability.
The addition of a Thunderbolt ready card to a PC is a simple and straight forward process. All a user needs to do is connect the Thunderbolt card into the designated PCIe slot, connect a cable to the GPIO header, and utilize an available DP (DisplayPort) out connector from the motherboard processor graphics, or an external graphics card, depending on the system. And since a Thunderbolt card comes with all the necessary cables, software, and instructions, upgrading is a breeze.
The benefits of the Thunderbolt ready program are plain to see. If a user has a system with an existing Thunderbolt ready motherboard, all they will need to do is purchase the Thunderbolt card and follow the simple instructions for installation. For those looking to build a new system, the only requirement is to make sure both the Thunderbolt card and motherboard are Thunderbolt ready. Finally, for custom desktop resellers interested in expanding Thunderbolt within their available product mix, the number of potential motherboards that can be offered will increase dramatically.
The initial participant in the Thunderbolt ready program is ASUS, and they have developed the first Thunderbolt card, the ASUS ThunderboltEX II, to go along with the first Thunderbolt ready motherboard, the ASUS Z87 Pro. The ThunderboltEX II is based on Thunderbolt 2 technology, and will be available in December 2013. ASUS is also planning for additional motherboards to be certified within the Thunderbolt ready program in 2014.
"ASUS ThunderboltEX II is the first expansion card certified by Intel as a Thunderbolt 2 upgrade solution - and it gives users a simple, fast and flexible option to upgrade their existing hardware whenever they want," said Joe Hsieh, ASUS Corporate Vice President and General Manager of Motherboard and Desktop System Business Unit. "ASUS worked closely with Intel to ensure the best compatibility, quality and performance across ASUS 8-series Thunderbolt 2-ready motherboards."
Other OEMs are following suit, and a growing number of Thunderbolt ready cards, motherboards, desktops, and workstations will become available in 2014.
Since the beginning, "Is there an add-in card for this?" has been one of the more popular questions asked of Thunderbolt. Today, the answer is an enthusiastic "yes", and the introduction of the Thunderbolt ready program will dramatically increase the availability of Thunderbolt technology, bringing 20 Gbps bandwidth, data and display over a single cable, and daisy-chain connectivity of up to six devices, to a far larger range of users in the marketplace.
Now we have a new announcement for you - an exciting new program to quickly expand the footprint of Thunderbolt for desktop and workstation users. This new initiative is called "Thunderbolt ready", and it enables PC manufacturers to offer Thunderbolt upgradeable motherboards within desktop and workstation computers. By using a Thunderbolt card, Thunderbolt's blazing fast speed and uncompressed video capabilities can now be added to any motherboard that includes a GPIO header (general purpose input/output header), so even if your system doesn't have Thunderbolt it is now possible to "upgrade" to it. Users that are interested in adding Thunderbolt 2 technology to an existing Thunderbolt ready system can combine a Thunderbolt card with a growing number of enabled motherboards, all identified by the use of the "Thunderbolt ready" moniker. The Thunderbolt ready program makes it simple to identify which components work together to upgrade your PC with Thunderbolt 2 capability.
The benefits of the Thunderbolt ready program are plain to see. If a user has a system with an existing Thunderbolt ready motherboard, all they will need to do is purchase the Thunderbolt card and follow the simple instructions for installation. For those looking to build a new system, the only requirement is to make sure both the Thunderbolt card and motherboard are Thunderbolt ready. Finally, for custom desktop resellers interested in expanding Thunderbolt within their available product mix, the number of potential motherboards that can be offered will increase dramatically.
The initial participant in the Thunderbolt ready program is ASUS, and they have developed the first Thunderbolt card, the ASUS ThunderboltEX II, to go along with the first Thunderbolt ready motherboard, the ASUS Z87 Pro. The ThunderboltEX II is based on Thunderbolt 2 technology, and will be available in December 2013. ASUS is also planning for additional motherboards to be certified within the Thunderbolt ready program in 2014.
"ASUS ThunderboltEX II is the first expansion card certified by Intel as a Thunderbolt 2 upgrade solution - and it gives users a simple, fast and flexible option to upgrade their existing hardware whenever they want," said Joe Hsieh, ASUS Corporate Vice President and General Manager of Motherboard and Desktop System Business Unit. "ASUS worked closely with Intel to ensure the best compatibility, quality and performance across ASUS 8-series Thunderbolt 2-ready motherboards."
Other OEMs are following suit, and a growing number of Thunderbolt ready cards, motherboards, desktops, and workstations will become available in 2014.
Since the beginning, "Is there an add-in card for this?" has been one of the more popular questions asked of Thunderbolt. Today, the answer is an enthusiastic "yes", and the introduction of the Thunderbolt ready program will dramatically increase the availability of Thunderbolt technology, bringing 20 Gbps bandwidth, data and display over a single cable, and daisy-chain connectivity of up to six devices, to a far larger range of users in the marketplace.
29 Comments on Intel Announces "Thunderbolt ready" Upgrade Program for Motherboards, PCs
The thing that confusing though is that Apple's new Mac Pro seems to have Thunderbolt II on a Xeon Ivy Bridge-E based system that probably doesn't have Intel video,....
I have heard that Intel was working on their own version of an add in card which required motherboards be compliant though so I guess this is it.
I am interested personally. Although IMO Thunderbolt and Thunderbolt 2 is best suited and most needed by closed systems (mostly mobile) that have little to no expansion options otherwise. Desktop systems don't need anything like Thunderbolt for the most part because they already have easily accessible expansion via PCIe ports.
Still IMO Asus needs to make good on their original Thunderbolt ready "TB_Header" motherboards and ThunderbboltEX card promises.
People who don't want Thunderbolt / Thunderbolt 2 support need not worry about it though because chances are their motherboard doesn't support it anyway. If they ever get a Thunderbolt /2 ready motherboard (possibly due to standard GPIO proliferation) they need never implement it with an add in card. No big deal.
It sounds like they are allowing the use of external graphics in some way:but I believe all versions of Thunderbolt allowed this in some way or another if I am not mistaken.
No it makes negative sense - who in the right mind would short circuit thunderbolt and USB ports? Such a configuration will probably not boot at all. :laugh:
The reality is that Intel has done quite a few things to impede / retard adoption / deployment of Thunderbolt. In other words Intel has gotten in their own way and they have done so from day one when it comes to Thunderbolt,....and they are still doing it,....
Its probably more an issue of mismanagement then anything else.
Thunderbolt is really just the PCIe BUS and DisplayPort both of which have been readily adopted by the industry for years now.
They were the only company to ever end up fielding such a board and it was not very available. Not ever.
This is another desperate move on Intel's part to keep Thunderbolt from its destiny of being the next Firewire.
Too late, though. It already is. The first warning sign should have been when they used Apple to field the standard for a year.
probably so intel can charge a bit more for that chipset with an L at the end of its name, then obviously you have to do the hard work of fitting an add in card which has the Tbolt chip on it plus some balls and pointless cicuitry to run it and even more pointless shroude-idge all because there end to end cable price is off the chart funny and no one bar apple has really bought into it yet, what a surprise.
Hate to say it but heck its true Amd's lighning port(i think thats what its called) kicks its ass in Every metric especially price (to Oem and to us).as is usb3+ imho
Presumably something has changed and it might not just be the ThunderboltEX II card itself. So people may need a new Haswell Z87 ASUS Complaint motherboard with a new ThunderboltEX card for this to work,.....maybe. With any luck older ASUS Z77 motherboards will be supported but that's a wait and see proposition.
What motherboard do you have?
For what its worth, I believe the older ThunderboltEX card was cited as being on the order of ~$45 USD.
I think it has a future but like everything, when its cheaper companies will start to use it more.
With some luck it might work with your board but don't take that as a guarantee. It's a good idea to be prepared for it not to work until there is some more definitive info.