My essay on Thunderbolt ports vs PCIe Slots

[barmann]

EDIT: Oh, and if you're concerned about the cost of TB peripherals, check out the sale prices on Amazon for Western Digitals TB Duo products. Their 8TB can be had on Amazon.ca for $649 which includes a cable. Their 2TB Velociraptor TB Duo can be had on Amazon.com new for $590 (MSRP of $959) and used (repackaged?) for $424. The latter is giving the TB enclosure away for free considering the cost of the drives. A pair of those Velociraptor Duo's in RAID0 will give you 4TB with faster STRs than an SSD! And, the TB situation will only get better.

That's a good offer, if you need that kind of thing, but a bit anecdotal .
The WD Duos are for people who wonder what to connect to that extra socket on their iMacs .

What WD is actually doing, they give away the drives for free .
Which are good for bugger all , when you look for a fast TB external drive solution .
Dual VRs in Raid0, really ? I've been using that for 6 years, was hoping for a little better than that . Granted, no SATA 3 in my MP, but that's splitting hairs .

Of course you can replace the HDDs with SSDs, and buy another USB enclosure for the HDDs, but what's the point ?
Considering the limiting design of the MacCan, externals like those won't cut it .

Show me a dual JBOD enclosure with TB and USB 3.0, for under $200 , and there is a backward compatible, possibly future proof and high performance storage device .
Or a single drive one for $100, 4 bay for $300, etc .

And a TB-FW/USB 3.0 hub, fully compatible, for $100-200 .

I have to disagree, I don't see the TB situation getting better right now .

 

[E.Lizardo]

As I mentioned in another thread, part of the reason there is a lack of Thunderbolt devices is because there is a lack of Thunderbolt on a lot of Macs. If you've been making devices meant for Mac Pro users, you've been forced to make PCI-E devices. That's not a judgement on Thunderbolt, that's the reality of the Mac Pro not shipping with Thunderbolt until now and only PCI-E.

The complaining about the lack of Thunderbolt devices for the Mac Pro is silly. With the Mac Pro adopting Thunderbolt, they'll arrive. The comparing of the number of Thunderbolt devices vs. PCIe devices for the current Mac Pro is just dumb.

Good point,I hadn't thought of that.

 

[Tesselator]

We're veering off-topic, but one more thing:

Isn't it ironic, SJ famously said he hated the enterprise market, but his most successful products (iPhone/iPad) might actually spearhead Apple's entry into that realm, not to mention it may give them an important advantage over Android, which seems not nearly as ready.

A headstart in enterprise sales may secure a substantial portion of that market before Android has a chance to catch up.

Anyway, back on-topic:

Thunderbolt vs. PCIe

I think they are different things. SJ didn't dig selling enterprise (server) systems but what they'll do with the iPhone thing is cloud-like services and probably not on Apple goods. So kinda different things.

 

[VirtualRain]

That's a good offer, if you need that kind of thing, but a bit anecdotal .
The WD Duos are for people who wonder what to connect to that extra socket on their iMacs .

What WD is actually doing, they give away the drives for free .
Which are good for bugger all , when you look for a fast TB external drive solution .
Dual VRs in Raid0, really ? I've been using that for 6 years, was hoping for a little better than that . Granted, no SATA 3 in my MP, but that's splitting hairs .

Of course you can replace the HDDs with SSDs, and buy another USB enclosure for the HDDs, but what's the point ?
Considering the limiting design of the MacCan, externals like those won't cut it .

Show me a dual JBOD enclosure with TB and USB 3.0, for under $200 , and there is a backward compatible, possibly future proof and high performance storage device .
Or a single drive one for $100, 4 bay for $300, etc .

And a TB-FW/USB 3.0 hub, fully compatible, for $100-200 .

I have to disagree, I don't see the TB situation getting better right now .

I was not suggesting the WD solutions were perfect for you or anyone.

My point was that some Thunderbolt peripherals have come down in price from their original launch MSRP considerably. In the case of WD Velociraptor product, you can now get one for about half the price it was just 6 months ago.

And I agree, we need more solutions... they will come... and the new Mac Pro will drive demand.

 

[deconstruct60]

Thunderbolt has been available to a large chunk of the general market, but a subset of the pro market, which was what Thunderbolt was targeted at.

Short-medium term? Yes. Long term.. I don't think so. Given that it has sold more units short term into the non Pro users should illustrate that.

Initially the costs were going to be higher than average but I doubt the intent is to keep they far above normal for the long term. At USB levels or lower long term no. But relatively very high mark-up 3-4 years out isn't going to work.

And that was my point. The number of Macbook Airs out there hasn't exactly helped Thunderbolt, because how many Macbook Air owners need Thunderbolt devices?

As I pointed out the ones who need fast Internet connections and/or need to work with some FW devices (e.g., mobile audio with legacy equipment they own).

It isn't the majority of MBA users but it is far bigger than the market new Mac Pro has right now. More than decent chance far bigger than the new Mac Pro will have if combined with the other "not pro" Macs (like mini , iMac ).

10M Macs with Thunderbolt per year is seeding the market. That is a big help. Thunderbolt would be dead and cancelled if they were around.

Sure, there are displays, but that's a different class of device that isn't really whats being talked about.

The class of device is Thunderbolt. I know folks try to cherry pick back into a myopic PCIe vs Thunderbolt discussion, but that misses the point. More than likely Apple is going to push TB docking station/displays big at Mac Pro 2013 users. Apple left the display business years ago.

 

[Inconsequential]

At the end of the day, the ridiculous cost of TB equipment is almost certainly going to decide if enthusiasts or pro-sumers like me do.

I'd need a 4 bay 3.5" enclosure + a 5.25" enclosure, which by my previous searches results in a £500 bill straight off the bat.

Then I need an eSATA and FW800 adapter (or change to USB 3 enclosures), another £50.

So without spending a penny on actual hardware, I'm well on my way to spending £600.

Unless the nMP is priced sensibly, I will not be buying a Apple desktop for the first time in nearly 18 years.

 

[Tesselator]

At the end of the day, the ridiculous cost of TB equipment is almost certainly going to decide if enthusiasts or pro-sumers like me do.

I'd need a 4 bay 3.5" enclosure + a 5.25" enclosure, which by my previous searches results in a £500 bill straight off the bat.

Then I need an eSATA and FW800 adapter (or change to USB 3 enclosures), another £50.

So without spending a penny on actual hardware, I'm well on my way to spending £600.

Unless the nMP is priced sensibly, I will not be buying a Apple desktop for the first time in nearly 18 years.

That's what I keep saying too. They need to offset even the potential extra costs incurred and that's about $1000 to $1,500 as I see it. I may not ever actually spend that but I can't justify a system where I can't do a decent normal migration because it all went into the main system unit. Or, I can't configure it competitively (price-wise) for the same reason. They need to offset the costs of two PCIe card edge <--> TB2 enclosures (and that's NOT TB1, that's TB2...) and they need to offset the costs of a 4-bay TB1 enclosure plus another 2-bay TB1 enclosure. And if 16GB DIMMs are more (I think they are the same but some people keep saying they're more) per GB then that needs to be offset as well.

And that is just to level the playing field. On top of that I think with SATA v3.2 and USB3-10Gb/s soon to arrive they will need another in$entive of between $500 and $800 somewhere. If the machine as demoed at WWDC doesn't sell for under $2k there are likely going to be a large percentage of folks (who can count) who migrate to Wintel or go Hackintosh - I know for sure I'll be one of them. OTOH if what they showed hits the streets at $1800 or $1900 (and stays there for a good long while) there's going to be a lot new folks who migrate to Apple.

I think if they're smart they can make up all that difference anyway - just by promoting and selling Apple brand enclosures of the types I mentioned above. And also sell system kits which come with those parts. Right, going down the configuration purchase list:

How many Apple 4-Bay enclosures?
How many Apple 2-Bay enclosures?
How many Apple Combo one 5.25" + two 3.5" enclosures?
How many Apple 5.25" enclosures?
How many PCIe slots do you want?
TB2 to two 10g Ethernet port adapter?

All with the Apple Logo (RDF!) on and in the same black-chrome aluminum.

 

[VirtualRain]

At the end of the day, the ridiculous cost of TB equipment is almost certainly going to decide if enthusiasts or pro-sumers like me do.

I'd need a 4 bay 3.5" enclosure + a 5.25" enclosure, which by my previous searches results in a £500 bill straight off the bat.

Then I need an eSATA and FW800 adapter (or change to USB 3 enclosures), another £50.

So without spending a penny on actual hardware, I'm well on my way to spending £600.

Unless the nMP is priced sensibly, I will not be buying a Apple desktop for the first time in nearly 18 years.

I see another essay coming on here. I'm going to collect my thoughts on this and start a new thread. Because storage strategy is not necessarily tied to TB or lack of PCIe... it has more to do with lack of internal SATA. But I believe, of all the issues with the new Mac Pro, the lack of internal SATA storage is probably one of the easiest problems to solve (admittedly with some expense).

 

[gnasher729]

Isn't it ironic, SJ famously said he hated the enterprise market, but his most successful products (iPhone/iPad) might actually spearhead Apple's entry into that realm, not to mention it may give them an important advantage over Android, which seems not nearly as ready.

The problem - for Steve Jobs - with the enterprise market is that the customers are not the users. If I buy a computer for myself, it is quite essential to the purchase whether I will enjoy using the computer or not. In the enterprise market, whether the user enjoys using the computer can be quite secondary. And there is Apple's biggest advantage gone.

 

[linuxcooldude]

At the end of the day, the ridiculous cost of TB equipment is almost certainly going to decide if enthusiasts or pro-sumers like me do.

I'd need a 4 bay 3.5" enclosure + a 5.25" enclosure, which by my previous searches results in a £500 bill straight off the bat.

Then I need an eSATA and FW800 adapter (or change to USB 3 enclosures), another £50.

So without spending a penny on actual hardware, I'm well on my way to spending £600.

Unless the nMP is priced sensibly, I will not be buying a Apple desktop for the first time in nearly 18 years.

Adapting to a new technology will always be an additional expense.

 

[ActionableMango]

Adapting to a new technology will always be an additional expense.

Agreed, but I wouldn't define the removal of internal SATA bays as a new technology.

 

[zephonic]

Agreed, but I wouldn't define the removal of internal SATA bays as a new technology.

Lol.

But seriously, replacing SATA with PCIe = good.

It makes my modest MacBookAir feel very snappy.

 

[linuxcooldude]

Agreed, but I wouldn't define the removal of internal SATA bays as a new technology.

All semantics set aside, replacing SATA by hooking the SSD directly to the PCIe bus is a better technology. Even the current thunderbolt is faster than SATA.

 

[handsome pete]

If you've been making devices meant for Mac Pro users, you've been forced to make PCI-E devices..

If you've been making devices for the Mac Pro, it's also likely you've been making them for the PC side as well. Aside from external drive enclosures, what kind of devices do you really foresee taking advantage of TB? Wouldn't most of these companies just continue to still develop using PCIE and just expect TB users to use a PCIE box?

 

[VirtualRain]

If you've been making devices for the Mac Pro, it's also likely you've been making them for the PC side as well. Aside from external drive enclosures, what kind of devices do you really foresee taking advantage of TB? Wouldn't most of these companies just continue to still develop using PCIE and just expect TB users to use a PCIE box?

There's a pretty good list of TB enabled products here... (Primarily storage, with some video and audio stuff too)... https://thunderbolttechnology.net/products

 

[flat five]

Aside from external drive enclosures, what kind of devices do you really foresee taking advantage of TB?

Monitors

for me personally, i foresee thunderbolt being used for my drives and displays.. everything else is wireless or usb..
possibly down the road a bit, some sort of external gpu modules via thunderbolt for more rendering power.

 

[dyn]

Unless the nMP is priced sensibly, I will not be buying a Apple desktop for the first time in nearly 18 years.

Actually the fun thing is that you don't have to with Thunderbolt. It is a technology that enables the user to choose if the machine has to be small and portable or very powerful with a bit monitor, etc. on the spot.

I've got a desktop and a laptop. Why? Because I hate plugging in all those cables and I also hate moving around the windows and resizing them. With Thunderbolt I only have to plugin 1 cable plus power (when needed). The other thing is something that should be solved within OS X and from what I've seen in Mavericks Apple is moving in that direction. At Hengedocks they are creating their own piece of software that deals with that. If they would only sell that application I'd buy it. It would mean that I can buy the very small MBA 11" so I have something small on the go yet still hookup the big screen and all the other stuff I have at home for the more powerful tasks. It also means I can easily upgrade it when something new comes along.

It gives me great flexibility at a smaller cost than my current 2 machine setup. Something you also see in businesses. They can buy Macs in bulk and add the power via Thunderbolt as needed. That's where things are going and where things should be going. It's a long term strategy.

Agreed, but I wouldn't define the removal of internal SATA bays as a new technology.

Neither is centralised storage but it is where lots of companies and consumers are moving to. Since a few years the segment of consumer NAS devices has gone from non-existent to very large. Same for home servers which are no more than a NAS in more than 90% of the case. There seems to be a big need for centralised storage so you can access the data from whatever device you have. You can't do that with internal sata unless you enable filesharing on the machine. It means an additional task (which affects managing the machine as well as security) and a more powerconsuming device to run it. A NAS is more suited for that task because it only does that and it has features to make it consume as little power as possible. There's also no affect of the workload of the workstation on the filesharing (if the machine is under high load the filesharing will be affected, it will be slow).

The only advantage of internal sata bays is also the only reason why people want it: it's the cheapest option. You only buy the disk because the casing you already have. With centralised or external storage there is an additional cost: the casing.

When it comes to ssd's the story is a bit different. They are moving towards PCIe ssd's making sata obsolete. In that case you want PCIe slots (mini-PCIe or smaller because that's where they are going).

 

[Inconsequential]

Actually the fun thing is that you don't have to with Thunderbolt. It is a technology that enables the user to choose if the machine has to be small and portable or very powerful with a bit monitor, etc. on the spot.

You may be missing the whole point of the powerful computer, the large files which necessitate the performance in the first place.

Ergo, you need large amounts of high speed storage which now you can only achieve by:

1. TB - Expensive, but closest in terms of SATA performance.
2. USB 3 - Cheaper, but performance is less than that of native SATA.
3. LAN - Performance significantly worse.

TB is NOT a replacement for internal storage. Period!!!

 

[VirtualRain]

You may be missing the whole point of the powerful computer, the large files which necessitate the performance in the first place.

Ergo, you need large amounts of high speed storage which now you can only achieve by:

1. TB - Expensive, but closest in terms of SATA performance.
2. USB 3 - Cheaper, but performance is less than that of native SATA.
3. LAN - Performance significantly worse.

TB is NOT a replacement for internal storage. Period!!!

Agreed, TB is not a replacement for ALL internal storage, but a large fast SSD is a great solution for your OS/Apps and working project files and TB can easily replace archived data, media libraries, and backups. You don't need everything you've ever done on an SSD or internal, just your active work. And certainly a 500GB to 1TB SSD at 1GB/s is the best recipe for a workstation user with a heavy workload. And Thunderbolt is not that expensive. As I mentioned above, a TB enclosure with a pair of Velociraptors offering 2TB at 400MB/s can be had for little more than the cost of drives.

 

[handsome pete]

There's a pretty good list of TB enabled products here... (Primarily storage, with some video and audio stuff too)... https://thunderbolttechnology.net/products

Monitors

for me personally, i foresee thunderbolt being used for my drives and displays.. everything else is wireless or usb..
possibly down the road a bit, some sort of external gpu modules via thunderbolt for more rendering power.

I get all of that. The post I was replying to though seemed to suggest that now that TB will be on the Mac Pro then companies won't be restricted to PCIE and we'll see a bevy of new TB devices because of that. I just don't see that happening. Of course we'll see more devices that will use it, but what was having to use PCIE over TB really limiting?

 

[freejazz-man]

You may be missing the whole point of the powerful computer, the large files which necessitate the performance in the first place.

Ergo, you need large amounts of high speed storage which now you can only achieve by:

1. TB - Expensive, but closest in terms of SATA performance.
2. USB 3 - Cheaper, but performance is less than that of native SATA.
3. LAN - Performance significantly worse.

TB is NOT a replacement for internal storage. Period!!!

I'm curious as to what you do that requires capacity more than an SSD can deliver, at rates SSDs deliver. When I think large amounts of high speed storage, centralization seems like a guarantee. Is there something about 10Gb ethernet that doesn't satisfy your requirements?

----------

I get all of that. The post I was replying to though seemed to suggest that now that TB will be on the Mac Pro then companies won't be restricted to PCIE and we'll see a bevy of new TB devices because of that. I just don't see that happening. Of course we'll see more devices that will use it, but what was having to use PCIE over TB really limiting?

The fact that it can only be used in a mac pro. Now TB products can be used with ANY other mac, as well as PCs. That's a much larger market.

 

[subsonix]

1. TB - Expensive, but closest in terms of SATA performance.
2. USB 3 - Cheaper, but performance is less than that of native SATA.
3. LAN - Performance significantly worse.

TB is NOT a replacement for internal storage. Period!!!

Thunderbolt is significantly faster than SATA, especially considering that the current Mac Pro uses SATA II. But more importantly a regular HDD will not saturate even SATA II, which assumes you are referring to either SSD or a large RAID. Such a RAID would be external even with the current Mac Pro, which means a similar cost to a Thunderbolt RAID, at least with an interface with the same bandwidth.

 

[Inconsequential]

I'm curious as to what you do that requires capacity more than an SSD can deliver, at rates SSDs deliver. When I think large amounts of high speed storage, centralization seems like a guarantee. Is there something about 10Gb ethernet that doesn't satisfy your requirements?

----------



The fact that it can only be used in a mac pro. Now TB products can be used with ANY other mac, as well as PCs. That's a much larger market.

Firstly, 10GbE whilst awesome at sequential speed is poor due to the relatively high latency and therefore reduces actual overall disk access performance, plus STILL costs the earth and requires a TB to 10GbE adapter!!!

Secondly, I have all my files (Photos, Videos, Documents) on my 7200 RPM internal drives for fast access when I need it.

95% of the time my machine is idle, spending the four figure sums is for that final 5% of the time.

Moving to TB, USB3 or whatever is a STEP BACKWARDS in performance or as I've previously said, costs an extortionate amount of money.

The bottom line is, I currently have everything I need in one box with one plug working at maximum, native performance, which is what I bought all the kit inside it to do.

Thunderbolt is significantly faster than SATA, especially considering that the current Mac Pro uses SATA II. But more importantly a regular HDD will not saturate even SATA II, which assumes you are referring to either SSD or a large RAID. Such a RAID would be external even with the current Mac Pro, which means a similar cost to a Thunderbolt RAID, at least with an interface with the same bandwidth.

I know, thanks.

The point I was making is that to get to near native (the additional chips in the way slow things down, see: http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/stora...tation-thunderbolt-portable-ssd-128gb/?page=2) costs a lot of money for what can be done internally, for pretty much free.

Plus, I have a separate SSD for Windows and OS X, can I do that in the new Mac Pro? Not a chance!!!

 

[VirtualRain]

Moving to TB, USB3 or whatever is a STEP BACKWARDS in performance or as I've previously said, costs an extortionate amount of money.

Not true. Any HD connected via SATA2 can be moved to USB3 without any loss of performance. AND as I've pointed out a few times now, TB enclosures are available for little more than the price of drives.

I have a separate SSD for Windows and OS X, can I do that in the new Mac Pro? Not a chance!!!

Huh? You could easily duplicate your setup of OS X and Windows on a single 500GB SSD using bootcamp. In fact, I haven't heard anything from you that can't be easily migrated to this new form factor. I'm guessing that your use of Windows may be more of a factor in migrating than your storage. Are you gaming on Windows? If so, I can understand how this new Mac Pro is not for you, but to try and blame it on your storage needs, is misleading to others.

 

[handsome pete]

The fact that it can only be used in a mac pro. Now TB products can be used with ANY other mac, as well as PCs. That's a much larger market.

Of course. However what kinds of devices are these that ultimately benefit from TB? That's the question. Monitors? You've always been able to plug into any other Mac/PC. Drive enclosures? Same.

I get that there are performance benefits, and even the allure of one cable fits all. But my original response was to address some implied limitation of PCIE. And it suggested TB would provide great opportunity for these developers. It could certainly play out that way in the long run, but TB has been fairly lackluster so far. Hopefully that will change and peripheral and cable prices will drop. But again, I was addressing this perceived limitation of PCIE.