Thunderbolt

I am delighted that Thunderbolt isn't reusing the USB plug form-factor. Early rumors showed Light Peak plugs that were the standard rectangular USB shape with fiber optic channels blended in: <a href="http://www.macrumors.com/2011/02/19/apple-to-introduce-light-peak-high-speed-connection-technology-soon/" rel="nofollow">http://www.macrumors.com/2011/02/19/apple-to-introduce-light...</a><p>The outer rectangular, doubly symmetrical shape of USB is a usability nightmare! You know what I'm talking about. Good riddance.

Pleasantly surprised that it's backwards-compatible with the mini-DisplayPort. Was expecting another round of buying dongles.

Technically it seems nice, but what's up with reusing the "high voltage" symbol for this? And "thunderbolt" is a very tacky name...

So I guess the official branding of Lightpeak is Thunderbolt, even from Intel? And the standard connector (even outside of Apple products) is essentially Mini-Displayport?

Two questions:<p>Is it royalty-free?<p>If the answer is negative, what are the licensing terms?

Intel's page sheds some more light on it, too: <a href="http://www.intel.com/technology/io/thunderbolt/index.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.intel.com/technology/io/thunderbolt/index.htm</a>

The problem with USB 3.0 is that it still isnt supported by Intel and probably never will since they developed Thunderbolt. If you want USB 3.0 today, you need an extra Chip on your board because its not integrated in any chipset. When Intel integrates Thunderbolt nativly the game is over for USB 3.0

So the whole USB2.0/Firewire is going to repeat? Sigh.

So thunderbolt is PCI-E at the end of a cable, Cool. I can see people building neat, cheapo numa boxes with this. Think sgi altix on the cheap.<p>For those that don't know, the SGI Altix has a special chip that intercepts memory accesses and maps other systems memory to be seen as "local" on each system. If thunderbolt is just pci-e on a wire, you may be able to connect a few systems together and just map memory across systems. It'd take some trickery, and wouldn't be quite as fast as infiniband, but the thought of building a ghetto supercomputer would be useful to many people.

Anybody notice how it shares the name with HTC's 'ThunderBolt' 4G phone being released, and how it looks like both Intel and HTC have trademarks on the word?

Is this peer-2-peer like FireWire was or it is a client-server model like USB? I see people talking about this being copper or fibre. If this is fibre, then it can't supply power to the device like USB? I don't see that catching on for most portable devices (e.g. hard drives). It's extremely convenient to just have one cable for a device that needs connectivity <i>and</i> power when it comes to portable devices.

I can't seem to find an answer to this in the materials - is this optical or copper? Light Peak was supposed to be optical, but the Wikipedia page has unsubstantiated claims of it initially being copper.

Has anyone considered using an external video card with this? That would be a great use with desktop replacement laptops since it would actually be upgradeable.

Codenamed Light Peak.<p>Intel's page on Light Peak (not the same as theirs on Thunderbolt): <a href="http://techresearch.intel.com/ProjectDetails.aspx?Id=143" rel="nofollow">http://techresearch.intel.com/ProjectDetails.aspx?Id=143</a><p>Wikipedia has a very informative article on it: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_Peak" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_Peak</a>

Can anybody shed light on the possibility of DRM or some implementation of Tilt-bits to restrict output from this port to high resolution screens etc?

Not that it hasn't been possible strictly due to lack of a suitable interconnect technology, but I wonder if this could facilitate using your mobile device as a sort of "personality module" that could plug into a monitor with a built-in graphics chip and maybe some additional processing power (accessed via OpenCL).<p>Obviously the OS would have a long way to go to support that kind of thing, but I would be surprised if in five years your typical "home directory" isn't either entirely cloud-based or uses a scheme like this.

How long before we can buy external graphics cards that utilize thunderbolt? It'd save me the hassle of having to build gaming PCs every couple years.

Can a Thunderbolt device (eg display) expose USB to peripherals? With my current setup, I connect my display via USB and DVI to my MBP in order to connect USB peripherals via the display. I'd love to break that redundant USB connection with Thunderbolt.

It would be awesome if iPad2 had the same port... I say it's a possibility!

Wonder how many monitors this can push. Also, what will happen to Apples 30pin connector on their iPods,iPhones... I guess we will know Tuesday. Are there any external hard drives with thunderbolt yet?

I might have missed it shooting through the threads, but has anyone announced a PCI express card with thunderpeak? I'd love to have 10gbit between my workstation and my NAS without having to buy multiple FC HBAs.<p>In fact, I'd probably take all of my current DAS and add it to the NAS pool as well. It would make my home office much quieter if I could hide all the spindles in another room and still have fast storage access.

Five years ago I would have been eagerly anticipating this, but I can't really get excited anymore. USB3 has probably already won, and while I love the idea of monitors and other devices all using the same port, I don't think it will be enough to drive adoption.

For a moment I thought the device on the left side of the image was an apple version of this on its side ...<p><a href="http://gemsres.com/story/apr08/536976/ENGELBART_2.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://gemsres.com/story/apr08/536976/ENGELBART_2.jpg</a>

i sense multiple external screens on a MBP :D

So if PCIe x16 is rated between 8GB/s and 16GB/s would it be possible for someone to come out with a PCIe enclosure so I could hook up a semi decent nVidia or AMD/ATI card to my MacBook?

Awesome. Two monitors on a MBP with Thunderbolt. Now, where the hell is the adapter to buy that will actually let you connect two monitors?

Kinda cheezy name. Also, the plugs on the Intel site don't look like mini displayport. Is the Apple version proprietary?

Now the question is how long it would take market to catch up with adapters/hubs or updated hardware.

What happens if I plug a PC into another PC via thunderbolt?

It really seems to me a lot of this is about making your current peripherals obsolete so they can sell you new ones.

Is this why Apple dumped FireWire a few years ago?

I wouldn't be surprised if the 10Gbps chips are interoperable with 10Gbps Ethernet chips at some level.

Sounds like the sequel to Steve's Disney "classic" Bolt(2008).

On another note the new MacBook Pro is nothing special: - still no SSD drive built-in (+$250) - still no 8GB of RAM built-in (+$200) - less battery duration than last generation

no doubt it is a great innovation, but it is a Epic Fail with its logo or symbol or branding whatever you call it. it should be something special like USB, Ethernet, Sound symbol etc.