# New Mac Portables for Pros



## MacDoc

My first glance and would like feedback,

Nice to have the i5 and i7 in a 13" version. No downside tho some may regret the loss of the SD card slot and a drop in battery life.

The 2.7 i7 at $1549 now makes some sense - over the 2.3 i5 entry - both look good.
That i7 could be the heart of a sweet and very portable Pro set up to go.

So mostly good on the 13" front - battery life loss a bit of a downer.

••••

*Sandybridge et al.* clock versus processing threads.

Concerned about the significant drop in clock speed given that many apps don't even access 4 processing threads fully let alone 8.
2.66 i7 down to 2.0 Quad is a steep drop.

Certainly apps like After Effects will benefit greatly and hopefully the upcoming FCP revision.
But apps like Photoshop may be slower.
I'd like to hear from Pros on specific applications and how well MP works for them. Activity monitor is your friend in this 

Also the drop in battery life is a downer for many and I suspect the 7 hours will drop way down under pro app loads.

It's good thing to have a Quad in the iMac - not certain on my lap.


Thoughts??

*( I'm particularly curious about Pro audio apps )*


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## CubaMark

MacDoc said:


> No downside tho some may regret the loss of the SD card slot and a drop in battery life.


MacDoc, could you clarify? The 13" and 15" have an SDXC, while the 17" drops the SDXC for the ExpressCard slot. But it sounds like you're lamenting it's loss in the 13" version...

...or am I misreading you?


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## MacDoc

Thought the Thunderbolt was across the board - my bad if not - does lessen the video/audio edit potential tho.


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## CanadaRAM

MacDoc said:


> Thought the Thunderbolt was across the board - my bad if not - does lessen the video/audio edit potential tho.


?
Thunderbolt is across the board

13" Thunderbolt & SDXC & FW800
15" Thunderbolt & SDXC & FW800
17" Thunderbolt & ExpressCard/34 & FW800


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## MacDoc

Ah - thanks - so the Thunderbolt is essentially an enhancement on the MiniDisplay port - sorry thought it was the SD card slot.


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## krs

Somehow I have difficulty getting my head around the practical aspect of the Thunderbolt port.
Reading up on it a little bit, that port can support displays, firewire and USB devices including USB 3.0 and also ethernet
Plus one can daisy-chain up to eight devices.
OK, sounds good at first glance, but how is that going to work in practice I wonder.
There is one Thunderbolt port on the Mac, right now I have the following connected - an external display which has to use that port plus say a mini display port to DVI adapter, then I have two external FW drives which I suppose I could connect to the FW 800 port, butsay I want to connect those to the Thunderbolt port as well since I can, plus twu USB 3.0 externals which have to be connected via the Thunderbolt port plus USB Flash drives (which I could connect to the USB 2.0 ports, but I want to use the Thunderbolt port as well.
Seems to me in the end one has to use a whole slew of new adapters to connect existing devices and would have a daisy-chain nightmare.

I would really like to see some examples how this would work in a practical situation - all I can visualize right now are more adapters all over the place and more daisy-chaining than is practical.


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## MannyP Design

There's a couple of demo videos—not sure if it'll give you want you're looking for:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kidmWiqKzqY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SY5TjnR5Z-c


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## BigDL

*Thuderbolt*

It seems impressive to me...but what do I know

Thunderbolt Demo

More info here


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## Guest

My problem with Thunderbolt -- aside from the horrible name which makes it sound like it should be wearing tights and a cape -- is that once again Apple is trying to re-invent the wheel with proprietary connectors. Will it catch on? Maybe. Aside from the tiny handful of peripherals that exist already I'd be surprised to see new peripherals built for this -- or at least the ones that are will have a premium price tag attached.

This reminds me of things like ADB and those silly 15 pin video connectors all over again :/ Except that now to attach to this bus you're going to have a bag full of dongles. Talk about a messy setup.

As for the new MBP's they don't carry much interest for me. I don't need that kind of power in a portable ... I have a couple of Mac Pro's for that. If you really do need that kind of power and to be portable I guess it's ok. As time goes by I keep leaning more towards the small portable that is super light and has amazing battery life, my next will probably be a macbook air.


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## Guest

BigDL said:


> It seems impressive to me...but what do I know
> 
> Thunderbolt Demo
> 
> More info here


A quote from that first link:


> Thunderbolt can transfer a full-length HD movie in less than 30 seconds.


And from the second link:


> Thunderbolt will be able to transfer a full-length high-definition movie from an external storage device to a PC in less than 30 seconds.


Sounds like the authors of those articles are only regurgitating the math part of the _theoretical_ bandwidth available, but not any of the logistics or the real world usage. eSata is (up to) 6Gbps but nothing I've ever seen or used can come close to saturating that bandwidth. Thunderbolt seems to be (up to) 10Gbps so there's that much more bandwidth available ... that you'll likely not be able to use up in your wildest dreams, especially given you can only have 6 peripherals on this new bus. Lastly what do they consider a "full HD movie"? An iTunes store overly compressed 720p 1.5Mbs video stream that is 1G or so or a *real* HD movie that is 30+ Mbps video stream and is more like 30G+. If it's the 1G file ... big deal, I can do that with eSata and FW already ... nothing new here.

Maybe I'm just being a pessimist here (well no maybe about it, I am a pessimist!) but a lot of this sounds to me like marketing spin. The proof is in the pudding ... when I see a ton of Superhero ... errr Thunderbolt ... devices hit the streets then I'll be a believer.


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## Guest

Just more fuel for the fire here ... I just did a "benchmark" and transferred a "full HD Movie" (an iTunes one that was 1.2G) on my eSata setup from one peripheral to another in *5 seconds*, screw you Thunderbolt and your 30 seconds of fame  Whoops, did I type that out loud?


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## krs

MannyP Design said:


> There's a couple of demo videos—not sure if it'll give you want you're looking for:


Thanks for the video, sort of confirms my point.
Here they show an ultimate set up that people may have a few years down the road - each of the peripherals is a "Thunderbolt" device. But even that doesn't get me excited,
I daisy-chain a couple of FW 800 externals together today and not only do I have to power them up in a specific sequence to get all of them to mount, I obviously can never just remove one of the middle devices.

I for one am not going to replace all my external enclosures and displays with Thunderbolt devices or even a bunch of dongles in the interim.


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## krs

BigDL said:


> It seems impressive to me...but what do I know
> 
> Thunderbolt Demo


Seems to me Intel/Apple are still in the design stage.
Earlier today an article quoted that with Thunderbold one can daisy-chain eight devices, then the next one stated that six devices can be daisy-chained and now the one above states seven devices.
Come on now Intel/Apple - make up your mind. There is a basic design parameter that will determine how many devices one can daisy-chain, if that is not known then the design is not complete.

BTW - Anyone see any spec on the maximum length of the cable that is allowed?
That is often an issue with high speed data transmission over copper.


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## K2ACP

mguertin said:


> My problem with Thunderbolt -- aside from the horrible name which makes it sound like it should be wearing tights and a cape -- is that once again Apple is trying to re-invent the wheel with proprietary connectors. Will it catch on? Maybe. Aside from the tiny handful of peripherals that exist already I'd be surprised to see new peripherals built for this -- or at least the ones that are will have a premium price tag attached.


If you have a problem with Thunderbolt, just pretend it's a Mini DisplayPort


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## crawford

MacDoc said:


> Also the drop in battery life is a downer for many and I suspect the 7 hours will drop way down under pro app loads.


I would reserve judgement on the battery life. I was under the impression that the 7 hours is based on a different (i.e., slightly more realistic) way of rating battery life, rather than an actual drop in battery life / capacity as compared with the previous generation.


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## MacDoc

There is some justification in large block of salt with this - but it does open up ( eventually ) very high speed for something like the i7 13".
I spoke to Larry at OWC and while the TB drives are a ways off - they are working now on TB to eSATA which means for instance a new 13" could access a 4 drive JBOD at near 400 megs per second sustained - all it needs is that adapter.

That is way way beyond the FW 800 port and importantly the chaining allows multiple devices.
The big bandwidth will help as its both directions.

The fact ( took a while to sink in  ) that he SD card slot is preserved, the eSATA slot is preserved, all the current peripherals work fine PLUS you have this awesome pipeline for future use makes this a well thought out move.

••••

*I'm more concerned about the real world performance of the lower clock speed *as I doubt Adobe is going to optimize.

FCP should be fine after the next update.

After Effects is now big time fully using the horsepower

CuBase - no idea when they will implement but not great at the moment from what I gather

Protools?? - need some commentary


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## Guest

K2ACP said:


> If you have a problem with Thunderbolt, just pretend it's a Mini DisplayPort


I don't like them either  I guess the days of having a proper dvi port on a portable from Apple are long gone.


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## boukman2

i notice in the video that there is a little card describing light peak as 'scalable to 100 GB/sec in the next decade'. now that would be quickish... probably contingent on fibre optics...


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## MacDoc

> I would reserve judgement on the battery life. I was under the impression that the 7 hours is based on a different (i.e., slightly more realistic) way of rating battery life, rather than an actual drop in battery life / capacity as compared with the previous generation.


I GET 9+ hours on my current Core2 Uni under light use conditions and have had 9 hours 45 minutes remaining at 95% level- mainly cuz the power draw is low.
You won't on the newer ones....no matter how it's spun by Apple there is a cost to the power both processor and to some degree video in terms of battery life.

Much use of laptops is not horsepower related - Apple has done a decent job of balancing that but still the 10 hours meant a lot at times and 7 published will translate lower.

That said the - the 13" refresh is a winner both now and down the road ( and there maybe 16 gigs memory coming in that category )

The 15 and 17 not certain for some users tho the side benefits of the video and eventually TBolt are substantial.

Putting the clock up on the Sandybridge would cook the lappie and the battery life.....TANSTAAFL.


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## Fox

I had a different take on the Thunderbolt; I was thinking of it as a "utility" port, like the old expression, "utility man" in baseball. Something that could be adapted to lots of uses, or different connections in this case. I recently bought two Seagate Goflex externals because I like the concept of being able to change the connector to whatever you need. In my case, the older Macs had FW400 and the newer ones FW800, but the Goflex also has a usb 3.0 connector option. With Thunderbolt I could use usb 3, or anything newer and better, assuming that Seagate makes the new connector.

However, I am disappointed about the battery life, especially given MacDoc's experience with the last generation MBP's. My 13" MBP that is one generation earlier is supposed to get 7 hours, but I rarely get 6 under light use. If one can really get 9+ out of the previous generation, it is worth having, and I wouldn't trade higher performance for battery life in a portable.


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## WCraig

*Thunderbolt = EXTERNAL PCI Express?*

Because Thunderbolt uses the PCI Express protocol, my impression was that it will make a bunch of specialized internal expansion cards available to laptops. (And maybe obviate the need for expansion slots in future desktops.) 

Suppose you're a manufacturer with some kind of PCIe device. Add the Thunderbolt controller chip, slap it in a simple case and suddenly you can sell it to all those laptop users. Who now make up more than half of the annual market for computers.

Will it take off? It is never a sure thing but the fact Intel is behind it sure helps. OTOH, pricing matters too and Intel and Apple are not shy about trying to make a buck.

Craig


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## screature

mguertin said:


> I don't like them either  I guess the days of having a proper dvi port on a portable from Apple are long gone.


DVI is going the way of the Dodo mg... you are starting to date yourself there.  Time and tide my friend, time and tide....


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## jeepguy

MacDoc said:


> ••••
> 
> *I'm more concerned about the real world performance of the lower clock speed *as I doubt Adobe is going to optimize.
> 
> FCP should be fine after the next update.
> 
> After Effects is now big time fully using the horsepower
> 
> CuBase - no idea when they will implement but not great at the moment from what I gather
> 
> Protools?? - need some commentary


I agree about the low clock rate, I have found that even thou a program is multi-core aware, it's still the clock rate that has the most impact. I was also hoping that the 17" would have been upgradeable to 16gb ram.


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## screature

jeepguy said:


> I agree about the low clock rate, I have found that even thou a program is multi-core aware, it's still the clock rate that has the most impact. I was also hoping that the 17" would have been upgradeable to 16gb ram.


It really all depends on the situation. If you have a program that is multi core aware and you have a processor(s) that is quad core running at 2.66 GHz it *is* an upgrade to to get octo cores (8) running at 2.33 GHz. So it all depends on programs multicore awareness, how much a difference in clock speed and the difference in how many cores as to whether clock speed will trump the extra cores. 

Everyone will have to make up their own minds as to what is more important to them based on their uses and existing situation.


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## Guest

screature said:


> DVI is going the way of the Dodo mg... you are starting to date yourself there.  Time and tide my friend, time and tide....


It is going the way of the dodo on mac portables, that's for sure. On monitors, standard video cards and finally windows based portables it's still rocking in the free world!


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## Guest

WCraig said:


> Because Thunderbolt uses the PCI Express protocol, my impression was that it will make a bunch of specialized internal expansion cards available to laptops. (And maybe obviate the need for expansion slots in future desktops.)
> 
> Suppose you're a manufacturer with some kind of PCIe device. Add the Thunderbolt controller chip, slap it in a simple case and suddenly you can sell it to all those laptop users. Who now make up more than half of the annual market for computers.
> 
> Will it take off? It is never a sure thing but the fact Intel is behind it sure helps. OTOH, pricing matters too and Intel and Apple are not shy about trying to make a buck.
> 
> Craig


It's not just an extension of the PCIe bus .. all the advertising mumbo jumbo just states that it runs on the PCIe bus of the machine (in the same way that built-on video in portables does).

Lastly, because this is an Intel only thing I think it's a bit doomed for wide adoption. Intel, while huge, is not the only chipset maker out there, Nvidia still sells a serious amount. No type of port or technology is going to seriously catch on if all the manufacturers can't use it.

From what I've read, at least at this point, Intel is willing to license it out to peripheral makers, but doubtful that it will license it out to the competition chipset makers ... but only time will tell.


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## screature

mguertin said:


> It is going the way of the dodo on mac portables, that's for sure. On monitors, standard video cards and finally windows based portables it's still rocking in the free world!


Display Port and miniDP as well as HDMI are making significant headway on video cards and monitors as well, even in the PC (Windows) based world. IMO the writing is on the wall... it is only a matter of time until DVI is no more or at least has the same level of user-ship as VGA which is certainly on the "endangered species" list.


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## screature

mguertin said:


> It's not just an extension of the PCIe bus .. all the advertising mumbo jumbo just states that it runs on the PCIe bus of the machine (in the same way that built-on video in portables does).
> 
> Lastly, because this is an Intel only thing I think it's a bit doomed for wide adoption. Intel, while huge, is not the only chipset maker out there, Nvidia still sells a serious amount. No type of port or technology is going to seriously catch on if all the manufacturers can't use it.
> 
> From what I've read, at least at this point, *Intel is willing to license it out to peripheral makers*, but doubtful that it will license it out to the competition chipset makers ... but only time will tell.


Licensing is where the BIG money is at... 

Why build it and incur all the associated manufacturing, distribution, marketing, etc. overhead costs when people will pay you just to use your technology and incur those overhead costs themselves. I suspect Intel *will* eventually license TB or LP (if and when it becomes fibre-optic) to anyone willing to pay the price.


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## Guest

Yep agreed that's where the money is ... but at this point there's nothing I've found that says they are licensing as of yet ... and the longer they take before they get to the licensing arena the more that will hinder wide-spread adoption. It's a vicious circle.


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## screature

mguertin said:


> Yep agreed that's where the money is ... but at this point there's nothing I've found that says they are licensing as of yet ... *and the longer they take before they get to the licensing arena the more that will hinder wide-spread adoption.* It's a vicious circle.


+1 Agreed. They can't wait too long.. They need to have those licensing agreements signed before a competing technology comes along to challenge theirs.


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## WCraig

mguertin said:


> It's not just an extension of the PCIe bus ...
> 
> Lastly, because this is an Intel only thing I think it's a bit doomed for wide adoption. ...


You missed the point--I said it uses the PCIe protocol. That appears to make it a familiar 'language' for the existing hardware companies. Presumably, that is a deliberate choice to make it easier to implement. I don't see why you expect Intel's involvement leads to doom.

I think it really makes sense. The lack of expansion slots in iMacs and laptops becomes a non-issue when you have this kind of bandwidth available. Who knows what else it will make possible? Lots of things can go wrong, but I think this has real potential.

Craig


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## krs

WCraig said:


> The lack of expansion slots in iMacs and laptops becomes a non-issue when you have this kind of bandwidth available.


Having the bandwidth available is great but being forced into daisy-chaining, breakout boxes and a bunch of dongles is not so great.
If they at least gave you a few of these ports, not just one - but that's probably too expensive.
Right now there are still Firewire and USB ports on the Macs but I can just see them disappearing and you're only left with one thunderbolt port for everything external.


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## adam.sn

Maybe I missed it... but isn't this the "christmas light" scenario all over again... one cable goes down, everything does? LOL


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## WCraig

krs said:


> Having the bandwidth available is great but being forced into daisy-chaining, breakout boxes and a bunch of dongles is not so great. ...


Yes, we need to find out if they've learned from the past. With power supplied on the Thunderbolt cable, I would hope that intermediate devices don't have to be on for subsequent devices to work.

I think one of the most obvious applications in the short term is an external box with PCIe slots (say 3 or 6). Bingo, one of the key things that people want in a 'Midi Mac' is a simple add-on. Any card that's supported on the Mac Pro is suddenly available to any TBolt equipped Mac. Want the latest video card or hardware RAID support? Plug them in.

Other short-term obvious possibilities: eSATA and USB3 adapters for the Mac. Probably wouldn't even need an external power supply. Maybe a cable with a spot to plug in one of those connections somewhere down its length.

Craig


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## krs

I must say, the more I read about Thunderbolt the less impressed I am.

Emphasis on all the demos is the 10 Gb/s transmission speed in both directions, backwards compatibility with existing external interface capabilities and "daisy-chaining"

Well, on the Intel article about Thunderbolt, they state this:



> And Thunderbolt enabled products are compatible with existing DisplayPort devices *so you don’t have to go buy a new display to take advantage of a Thunderbolt technology enabled computer.*


Thunderbolt™ Technology

Which is not only misleading but just plain wrong.
If one plugs an existing display into the Thunderbolt port on the Mac, the display will work fine but one forfeits Thunderbolt connectivity completely.

Couple of other points:

10 Gb/s bidirectional is a relatively small incremental speed step up from existing and other planned interface technologies, I assume FW 1600 and FW 3200 is essentially dead.

With copper cables, the maximum range of Thunderbolt is specified as 3 meters. Not bad but also not earth shattering.

Powering peripherals over the Thunderbolt link I think is a nice capability with a number of advantages, but that capability goes out the window when Thunderbolt moves to Opto-fibres

I couldn't find any details on the architecture itself to answer some of the questions and possible limitations when daisy-chaining.
If any of the daisy-chain cables or interfaces fail or become defective, then obviously any devices downstream from the failure will not work. 
If intermediate devices fail or are switched off, well, I don't know. This diagram suggests the other devices are not affected but that really depends on the implementation of the daisy-chain at each device.









Lots of questions in my mind with surprising few answers that can be readily found on the net.

One comment I came across that surprised me - If the first device in the chain uses up the full 10 Gb/s speed, then the second device in the chain can still attain its full speed.
I haven't gopt my head around how that is possible.
I suppose it depends what determines the maximum throughput.
Many videos emphasize that the Thunderbolt cable is a single cable - well, true enough, but there are 20 conductors in that cable, so this "single" cable is not ground-breaking either.


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## WCraig

krs said:


> ...If one plugs an existing display into the Thunderbolt port on the Mac, the display will work fine but one forfeits Thunderbolt connectivity completely. ...


The (existing) display has to be the last device in the chain. Other devices, almost certainly including future displays, will have two TBolt connections.

You also seem to be thoroughly confused about cabling. There are multiple strands in all cables--USB, Firewire, etc. When they bring out the optical version of TBolt, there will be a fiber optic strand along with several copper strands so power will still work.

Craig


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## krs

WCraig said:


> The (existing) display has to be the last device in the chain. Other devices, almost certainly including future displays, will have two TBolt connections.


All right!
Maybe my comment was a bit too strong.
What you do loose is the flexibility.
I ran into this first with SCSI where some devices came only with one SCSI connector and when I asked about that, the manufacturer told me to place their unit at the end of the chain.
Also ran into a somewhat related problem with firewire enclosures.
All the FW800 enclosures I bought had a second FW800 port for daisy-chaining but only one FW400 port - and feeding the signal into the FW800 port and then trying to daisy-chain from the FW400 port of the enclosure didn't work at all.
Maybe a FW800 to FW400 cable would have worked but it wasn't something I had so I ended up using my FW400 enclosure with a different Mac.
All that makes me a bit sensitive when manufacturers talk about daisy-chaining.



> There are multiple strands in all cables--USB, Firewire, etc.


Exactly!
So why emphasize that Thunderbolt uses a *single cable* as if that were something new and exiting. And to top it off, Thunderbolt uses 20 conductors in the cable, USB only four and firewire 4 or 6. If anything, Thunderbolt is a step backwards in that respect.
BTW - a bit nick-picky, but "strands" is the wrong terminology here."Strands" are multiple fine *non-insulated copper* conductors to make a cable more flexible.



> When they bring out the optical version of TBolt, there will be a fiber optic strand along with several copper strands so power will still work.


Not what I read, but then again one can't believe everything one reads.
Any credible source for the information that the Thunderbolt cable will be a combination optical and copper? That would be new, expensive and would require both new connectors and new types of cables.


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## Guest

krs said:


> Not what I read, but then again one can't believe everything one reads.
> Any credible source for the information that the Thunderbolt cable will be a combination optical and copper? That would be new, expensive and would require both new connectors and new types of cables.


I have to agree with this. That would be a pretty funky connector if it was trying to pass both.


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## WCraig

krs said:


> ...So why emphasize that Thunderbolt uses a *single cable* as if that were something new and exiting. And to top it off, Thunderbolt uses 20 conductors in the cable, USB only four and firewire 4 or 6. If anything, Thunderbolt is a step backwards in that respect.


I think you're the only one making a big deal out of the cable! 

Remember, TBolt carries digital audio and video like DisplayPort or HDMI connections do. The DisplayPort spec requires 20 pins:

DisplayPort - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You weren't concerned when DisplayPort was adopted, were you? Also, note that DisplayPort cables are limited to 3 meters for maximum bandwidth. This may be the source of the limit for TBolt, currently.

Craig


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## krs

WCraig said:


> I think you're the only one making a big deal out of the cable!


I wouldn't have brought that "single cable" comment up at all if it hadn't been emphasized in every article I read and every video I ever saw about Thunderbolt.
The first one was the video demo by the Intel Director of Marketing where he not only talks about it but proudly touches each of the "single" cables connecting the PC to the external drive, then the next one to the display and finally the last one to the break-out box.
The next video by some PC magazine was the same - emphasis on the 10 Gp/s transmission over a "single cable"
Same in the Yntel news release I just pulled up:
The Fastest Data Connection to Your PC Just Arrived

Somehow I can't get exited over a product that can transmit bi-directionally at 10 Gb/s over a 20-conductor cable. Maybe that's because we were shipping small customer premise switches 10 or so years ago that provided OC-192 connectivity which is pretty much the same speed. OK, the connectivity was via fibre, but the fibre cables and connectors were pretty rugged, the main thing to watch out for was the bending radius.


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## Amiga2000HD

Oddly, I'm more curious about the prototype Avid box they were showing in the second video than I am about Thunderbolt. We know a fair amount about Thunderbolt/Lightpeak but not much about the Avid box at all. The box looks more like an Adrenaline or Nitris DS box from the front panel than any of the ProTools HD boxes I've seen before. Now I'm wondering if that thing for their audio products or video editing systems, or have they made it so you can mix and match...


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## i-rui

I'd like to know more about Thunderbolt before rendering my judgment, It *DOES* sound exciting. If any USB, Firewire, eSATA device could be connected with the use of an adapter then i think it's a winner (since it uses PCIe protocol i imagine it should be possible) because that would solve many transition problems.


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## Amiga2000HD

i-rui said:


> I'd like to know more about Thunderbolt before rendering my judgment, It *DOES* sound exciting. If any USB, Firewire, eSATA device could be connected with the use of an adapter then i think it's a winner (since it uses PCIe protocol i imagine it should be possible) because that would solve many transition problems.


The $64,000 question to my mind is will there be Thunderbolt cards for MacPro owners? Since Thunderbolt does use the PCIe protocol, it shouldn't be too difficult to do.


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## hayesk

No, it requires a controller chip on the motherboard.


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## krs

Intel is going to be rolling in the doe.

No more cheap cable adapters - each adapter now requires a Thunderbolt controller plus the appropriate interface controller of the final interface.

On thing surprised me in the Intel technical brief about Thunderbolt:



> *Thunderbolt cables may be electrical or optical; both use the same Thunderbolt connector*. An active electrical-only cable provides for connections of up to 3 meters in length, and provides for up to 10W of power deliverable to a bus-powered device. And an active optical cable provides for much greater lengths; tens of meters.


I don't understand how optical cables can use the Display Port connector.


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## CubaMark

krs said:


> Intel is going to be rolling in the _doe_.


The _bucks_ will be pretty displeased, I wager!

:lmao:


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## WCraig

krs said:


> ... I don't understand how optical cables can use the Display Port connector.


They don't. Sounds like this will be a new version:

Ten things to know about Intel's Thunderbolt



> "Optics is in our future and will be needed over time, so we are still doing R&D in that area and assessing when the time is right," he said.


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## krs

WCraig said:


> They don't. Sounds like this will be a new version:
> 
> Ten things to know about Intel's Thunderbolt


Thanks for the link.

Very interesting reading - more questions than answers and a lot of the answers are very evasive.
As I mentioned in one of my earlier posts and this article confirms it - there is a lot of Thunderbolt still in the design stages and some of it may never come to market.
All depends on the aadaptation rate.
So the single combination Thunderbolt connector as in "Thunderbolt cables may be electrical or optical; both use the same Thunderbolt connector" is something we may see in a few years.
That should slow the adaptation rate down significantly.
For one, Intel stated that Apple has a one year head start over other vendors, so we are supposedly looking at early 2012 for more generally available Thunderbolt devices and Intel is promising opto-connectivity in 1013, just a year after that.

I have a hard time relating to the comment in that link that opto-connectivity is too expensive at this point so they had to go with copper instead.
TosLink for instance has been around for years, hasn't really caught on that well but cost is certainly not the issue.

Well, in general there is very little true technical information available about Thunderbolt so it's hard to argue one way or the other what the benefits and issues are.


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## screature

krs said:


> ...
> *TosLink for instance has been around for years, hasn't really caught on that well *but cost is certainly not the issue.


Uhhh?? If you are talking computers maybe... it is ubiquitous in the Home Theatre/HiFi realm.


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## krs

screature said:


> Uhhh?? If you are talking computers maybe... it is ubiquitous in the Home Theatre/HiFi realm.


Yes - I meant in the "computer world"
I think it's currently only used for digital audio but regardless - I was just taking exception with the Intel statement that optical connectivity (at the consumer level) is too expensive at the current time and that's why Thunderbolt was introduced using copper connectivity.

I'm not necessarily suggesting a TosLink connector type specifically, just looking at the cost of optical connectivity in general.
Seems to me this is more of a business decision to deliver new technology in tiny dribs and drabs to squeeze the most money out of consumers.


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## screature

krs said:


> Yes - I meant in the "computer world"
> I think it's currently only used for digital audio but regardless - I was just taking exception with the Intel statement that optical connectivity (at the consumer level) is too expensive at the current time and that's why Thunderbolt was introduced using copper connectivity.
> 
> I'm not necessarily suggesting a TosLink connector type specifically, just looking at the cost of optical connectivity in general.
> Seems to me this is more of a business decision to deliver new technology in tiny dribs and drabs to squeeze the most money out of consumers.


Yes as far as I know it is only used for digital audio. Mac Pro's have them I use it to hook to my Yamaha receiver, the sound is terrific. The cables are expensive relatively speaking especially for longer runs especially and they are also fragile relatively speaking.


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## Guest

screature said:


> Yes as far as I know it is only used for digital audio. Mac Pro's have them I use it to hook to my Yamaha receiver, the sound is terrific. The cables are expensive relatively speaking especially for longer runs especially and they are also fragile relatively speaking.


They are not really much more expensive than other cables if you get them in the right places ( < $9 at monoprice for a 50ft cable). They are also used for more than just standard 5.1 audio in home theatre setups. They have been around in the pro audio world for many years as they are used for ADAT type connections and pass 8 channels at once.

As for the same connector for copper or fiber .. it will likely be the same way that they do it with the line out on mac mini's right now ... you can use an adapter and run TOS Link out of it or standard copper pair line out ... except given the size and shape of the display port connector you probably won't need any adapters.


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## groovetube

I bought a handful at above all here in Toronto for like 4.95, and they work just as well as the more expensive ones at futureshop. And I don't mean the monster cable scams either.


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## screature

mguertin said:


> *They are not really much more expensive than other cables if you get them in the right places ( < $9 at monoprice for a 50ft cable)... *


Thanks for the info mg good to know. When I bought my optical digital audio cables, as an early adopter, they were significantly more expensive than that. Ahhh... the price of early adoption..... Oh well, It is a small price to pay for the sound quality (and speaker setup options) it provides .


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## Guest

Lightpipe cables have been around quite a long time ... you could always get them for a reasonable price if you knew where to look  They have more recently been adopted into the home audio realm as well for 5.1 as I stated earlier but they have been used for ADAT multitrack purposes for probably 20 years or a bit longer now ...

EDIT: Not quite 20 years ... the first ADAT multi track recorders were announced in 1991 but actually started shipping in 1992.


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