Intel Thunderbolt To Go Beyond Macs in April 2012

[btarunr]

Intel notified its partners in the PC industry that its Thunderbolt 10 Gbps interconnect will enter the PC ecosystem in April, 2012. Around that time, Intel will launch its third-generation Core processor family, and waves of new motherboards are likely to launch. It is likely that Thunderbolt will be the defining feature of many of these motherboards. Along with PC motherboards, the technology is likely to feature on pre-built desktops, and notebooks. The propagation of Thunderbolt is limited for a variety of reasons. First, its host controller costs more than $20, second, there already an established ecosystem of USB 3.0, a slower, yet competitive interconnect that maintains backwards compatibility with its older versions, and third, Intel has restricted the technology to Apple.

The cost of adoption, starting with host controllers, is expected to drop in the second half of 2012, and so the technology should standardize gradually in the future. 10 Gbps might be more than plenty of bandwidth for now, but the demand for faster device interconnects will only rise. Among the companies that have come forward with plans to adopt the technology, Sony is expected to adopt it among many of its product lines; ASUS into its high-end notebooks, and so will Gigabyte. Gigabyte will also embrace the technology for its motherboards in April, in a bid to increase competitiveness against ASUS and ASRock. Thunderbolt will be the next "features USB 3.0 and SATA 6 Gb/s" marketing label for motherboard vendors.



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[nt300]

I don't like this, the original was suppose to be 100Gbps with 2way Fiber Optic, and going to compete with USB 3.0 which is very fast already and SATA III. Now they try to sell 10Gbps with Coaxial cable instead. Intel will have a hard time making this a standard. Without AMD adopting this, it won't take off imo.

 

[iLLz]

Yea right. AMD doesn't have to support it to make it a standard. And what difference does it make if its optical or copper, as long as you get the 10Gbps speed?

Intel worked it out to get the speeds without needing optical cables so that makes it cheaper for us to buy. Plus I heard you can still get the optical cabling but it will cost more.

At any rate this is good news. Now to see if it will become ubiquitous!

 

[EpicShweetness]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but is'nt Thunderbolt the "do anything" port? Meaning it can do video, data, etc? I for one think Thunderbolt is a good standard with USB. For peripherals such as your key bored Thunderbolt does'nt make sense USB does. However, if I got integrated graphics, and I use it for a fast file transfer at the same time!
I it's on the Z77 boards with Ivy Bridge, consider a upgrade!

 

[Yukikaze]

I don't like this, the original was suppose to be 100Gbps with 2way Fiber Optic, and going to compete with USB 3.0 which is very fast already and SATA III. Now they try to sell 10Gbps with Coaxial cable instead. Intel will have a hard time making this a standard. Without AMD adopting this, it won't take off imo.

Where was it stated at the original was supposed to launch at 100Gbps?

 

[qwerty_lesh]

Where was it stated at the original was supposed to launch at 100Gbps?

Look into before it was called Thunderbolt (Light peak)

 

[Yukikaze]

Look into before it was called Thunderbolt (Light peak)

I have. Nothing comes up except some FUD reports.

 

[NC37]

Too much competition. Apple tried ADC, failed. Thunderbolt may last a little longer because Intel is pushing it, but ultimately I doubt it will truly get widely adopted. Least not until consumers can be convinced of the value. Still got tons of monitors out there using VGA/DVI. Can't just replace those overnight.

 

[DriedFrogPills]

Anand article of lights peak tech from 2010. iwth it pushing 50gb/ps

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3834/intels-silicon-photonics-50g-silicon-photonics-link/1

 

[Yukikaze]

"Light Peak is what Intel is calling its first consumer implementation of an external optical bus, and will start at 10 gigabits per second"

So they are exactly where they said they would be, but with a cheaper, copper medium. Where's the problem again? No one claimed this would be 100Gbps out of the box (or even 50, or 40) in the first gen.

 

[Deleted member 3]

I'm only interested if I get cheap 10Gb Ethernet over Thunderbolt which won't suck due to CPU limitations.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

I'm only interested if I get cheap 10Gb Ethernet over Thunderbolt which won't suck due to CPU limitations.

This. I want consumer-grade InfiniBand dammit (up to 300 Gbit/s)!

 

[Deleted member 3]

This. I want consumer-grade InfiniBand dammit (up to 300 Gbit/s)!

I already have 10 Gb Inifiniband, it's limited by CPU. Getting around 200-250MB/s max. Plus cable length is an issue.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

How could it be limited by the CPU (last time I checked, L3s were running at 22+ GB/s)? That's only 1.25 GB/s so you should be able to completely fill the bandwidth if you were copying from the RAM of one computer to the RAM of another. It's almost always HDDs/SSDs holding InfiniBand/Thunderbolt back.

 

[Deleted member 3]

How could it be limited by the CPU (last time I checked, L3s were running at 22+ GB/s)? That's only 1.25 GB/s so you should be able to completely fill the bandwidth if you were copying from the RAM of one computer to the RAM of another. It's almost always HDDs/SSDs holding InfiniBand/Thunderbolt back.

Bandwidth of CPU cache has nothing to do with the speed at which the CPU handles the whole TCP stack. Infiniband controllers don't include any actual networking hardware, think of it as Realtek vs Intel NICs. The Realtek chips perform worse, no matter your L3 cache bandwidth.

Care to share the source that says "It's almost always HDDs/SSDs holding InfiniBand/Thunderbolt back"? Specially since there are no 10Gb Thunderbolt NICs available in the first place.

 

[Frick]

I already have 10 Gb Inifiniband, it's limited by CPU. Getting around 200-250MB/s max. Plus cable length is an issue.

Hey Dan, what happened to that "cheap infiniband" article you worked on for a while?

 

[Deleted member 3]

Been quite busy and actually forgot about it Have had time recently. Might have to revive that.

 

[qwerty_lesh]

I have. Nothing comes up except some FUD reports.

you didnt look very hard

Light Peak delivers high bandwidth using optical technology starting at 10Gb/s with the potential ability to scale to 100Gb/s over the next decade.

http://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&r...eS70DSTcWaeJMi13Q&sig2=fzppV-33PryQwsAE9N3uPw

 

[Fourstaff]

They decided to start off with the copper flavoured ones first to reduce the cost. And the article is a bit misleading, Sony Vaio Z uses Thunderbolt for its external graphics card. Intel wants to push this for its ultrabook standard docking system, but whether its cheap enough to be successful remains to be seen.

 

[Yukikaze]

you didnt look very hard

Which part of "in the next decade" you failed to catch?

 

[Super XP]

I have. Nothing comes up except some FUD reports.

CPU Mag has an article about Light Peak hitting 100Gbps via Fiber Optics. This is where I've read it.

 

[Yukikaze]

CPU Mag has an article about Light Peak hitting 100Gbps via Fiber Optics. This is where I've read it.

Yes, but what does this have to do with the fact that the original was never intended to launch with 100Gbps anyway?

 

[Fourstaff]

Yes, but what does this have to do with the fact that the original was never intended to launch with 100Gbps anyway?

To be fair they did extensive testing and it was intended to launch at 100Gbps, until quite late into the development.

 

[Yukikaze]

To be fair they did extensive testing and it was intended to launch at 100Gbps, until quite late into the development.

Is there a source for that?

 

[Fourstaff]

Is there a source for that?

There wouldn't be a definitive source, but if you have followed their development path you will have known that they started off with optical, but was so impressed with copper's performance that they decided to introduce Thunderbolt on copper first.

The wiki article will give you a rough idea, but again, its not a "source"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Thunderbolt