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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

THunderbolt for PCs.. Am I missing something

Are there non-Apple Thunderbolt cables yet? Would like to see varying lengths.
 
Or Thunderbolt PCI cards to add it to our Mac Pros...
 
I believe that thunderbolt PCI express cards exist already for PCs.
 
I heard its not so stable on pc from one tech blog. And it may be since the motherboard manufacture use thirdparty cipsets for the thunderbolt.
I have no experies in this area and would love to here the opposite. Sucess storys.
 
I'm really puzzled by this. Companies like Blackmagic seem to be putting Thunderbolt sockets on a lot of their new gear, but I don't see many motherboards out there to match. I have only seen the Z77 chipset with socket 1155 so far, by Asus and Gigabyte. I was hoping for a motherboard with Thunderbolt, socket 2011, processor 3930K, or perhaps that is not possible. Either way, there's not too much so far.
 
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I have my hackintosh running with thunderbolt awesomely. Gigabyte up5 th
 
Haswell brings the sweet Thunderbolt loving to your desktop and notebook but as has been discussed before, it will take a while before manufacturers jump on the Thunderbolt Express as there's really no demand whatsoever for Thunderbolt coming from consumers. It's pretty much like Firewire as far as most people are concerned. It's there, they probably won't ever use it, and they will likely never own anything that can be plugged into the port. USB 3.0 on the other hand, just slides right in to replace 2.0, so they have no problems at all with adoption because everyone is going to be using it whether they like it or not.
 
Thunderbolt is perfectly stable on Windows with current drivers/updates.

Apple's exclusivity agreement with Intel was only for 3 months after the introduction of Thunderbolt over 18 months ago, LOL...

Why did it take Thunderbolt so long to come to PC land??? A few reasons: Lack of interest. Lack of peripherals. USB3 is good enough for 99.9% of what people use such an external connector for. Most motherboard manufacturers waited for Ivy Bridge, which has the Thunderbolt header support rolled right into the chipset on the mobile and low-power desktop platforms.

There are indeed PCI Thunderbolt cards for PC systems, however they only work in the motherboards they're designed to work with. They need the onboard Thunderbolt header to function. The theory behind doing it this way is people can choose whether to sacrifice 4 PCIe v2.0 lanes per Thunderbolt port, or have an extra PCIe v2.0 X8 slot open on their motherboard.

Like all Thunderbolt peripherals, cables must be approved and certified by Intel. This approval/certification process is a huge stumbling block for a lot of peripheral makers, especially many Asian manufacturers. With USB3, there is no certification, only a small licensing fee if you want to use the USB3 or SuperSpeed logos and naming. Third party Thunderbolt cables are available from some manufacturers. Mostly they just include them with their devices. Buffalo includes TB cables with their TB drives, for example.

Optical Thunderbolt cables have been approved and should start shipping from two different suppliers next month.

Thunderbolt is still a tough sell in PC land... most people don't understand what it is or why they would want it. Many see it as an "Apple thing". The same stigma kept USB from being adopted back in its early days too. Apple had it first and it took nearly 2 years before every PC motherboard started to include it. Thunderbolt would probably be adopted faster if Intel would relax on the device certification thing. OTOH, I don't want them to relax because the process is relatively quick and painless, not to mention cheap. Unfortunately they have a fairly high level of standards set forth and most devices submitted for approval fail. They tightened their requirements recently too. For example, all devices that require external power must also now include daisy-chain ability. They have put in place tighter controls on power drain from the connectors and TB bus. Drives like the LaCie Little Big Disk, which requires a wall-wart to operate, would not be approved if submitted today because there's no reason it can't run on power from the TB bus -- as the USB3 and FW versions are bus-powered.

While it makes everything take longer, even potentially raises prices in the end, I find it a welcome approach. There are far too many shoddy and shitty USB3 peripherals and storage devices out there.


Intel currently will not approve a PCIe to Thunderbolt adapter that is entirely self-contained and installable into legacy systems without TB chipset support. In other words, if you want to add Thunderbolt to your Mac Pro, it isn't going to happen. Probably never will.


IMO, Intel should have incorporated Thunderbolt into USB (actually paired with USB3.0) as originally planned. The mini-Displayport thing was somewhat of an unexpected direction when it happened. Not a bad idea and works just fine, but joining it with USB would have made the adoption of Thunderbolt almost seamless and a heck of a lot faster.
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
Drives like the LaCie Little Big Disk, which requires a wall-wart to operate, would not be approved if submitted today because there's no reason it can't run on power from the TB bus -- as the USB3 and FW versions are bus-powered.
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I thought it was because the Thunderbolt Little Big Disk has a Thunderbolt loop through connection, and bus powered Thunderbolt devices have to terminate the chain. Is that not so?
 
correct. to be self powered off TB, it terminates the daisy chain. the draw is way too much for TB to sustain the bandwidth and continue on the daisy chain. if you even look at some like the 2.5 inch dock seagate makes for TB. there's no loop at all. it's not just lacie, it's just the nature of the tech. if anybody can name a TB powered device that you can loop through I'm all ears.
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
IMO, Intel should have incorporated Thunderbolt into USB (actually paired with USB3.0) as originally planned. The mini-Displayport thing was somewhat of an unexpected direction when it happened. Not a bad idea and works just fine, but joining it with USB would have made the adoption of Thunderbolt almost seamless and a heck of a lot faster.
Click to expand...

Didn't that not happen because the USB industry group freak out when Intel showed Thunderbolt (then called Light Peak) using USB ports and publicly renounce it?
 
Stephen Gentle said:
Didn't that not happen because the USB industry group freak out when Intel showed Thunderbolt (then called Light Peak) using USB ports and publicly renounce it?
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The USB-IF group in charge of the standard was actually open to it. Intel is pretty much the primary member company within the group anyway. Although several group members, namely NEC and Sony, were not pleased with Intel's lack of support for USB3. That was a separate issue though and wasn't that Intel was trying to ignore USB3, but rather they wanted it to be truly ready before integrating into their chipsets and products. For the first 18 months USB3 was on the market, it was a crap-shoot getting hosts and peripherals to work properly together and even today some incompatibilities with SuperSpeed mode still persist. Anyway, that's a whole other discussion.

Intel is the primary developer of ThunderBolt, or LightPeak. Apple purchased and owned the trademark to Thunderbolt and then sold it to Intel. Intel has transferred or sold the LightPeak name to Sony to use for their implementation of the same interface, which will use USB3 connectors. Not sure what the status of it is, it seems Sony is having difficulty actually launching the product... They demoed a Vaio Z prototype with LightPeak-enabled USB3 port over a year ago, just after the Intel/Apple exclusivity window closed...
 
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