Only thing I can think of that I would use thunderbolt for is external hard drives. Apple should make their own thunderbolt external hard drives I reckon 
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New iMac more than one "thunderbolt" port?
- Thread starter Pachang
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For those asking, you couldn't have more than one 27" (2560x1440) display over the thunderbolt port. For two reasons:
This is why I dearly want two thunderbolt ports on the new iMac
- if a mdp device is going to be in the daisy chain it has to be at the end
- there isn't enough bandwidth.
This is why I dearly want two thunderbolt ports on the new iMac
So if you want to use an external monitor you can't use 10gbits I/O
No Thunderbolt is like Firewire, you can daisy chain. At present though you can only have one mini display port device in the chain and it must be the last.
Only thing I can think of that I would use thunderbolt for is external hard drives. Apple should make their own thunderbolt external hard drives I reckon
Just my thoughts, would make buying the iMac with just the 256GB SSD for OS and other programs ideal, and link external storage via TB, sounds like a perfect solution to me.
A thought, if someone came up with a cradle for TB, would that be suffice to run any hard drive at TB speeds?
It really wouldn't be much different than the eSATA/FW/USB2 cradles such as the NewerTech Voyager, etc., except they'll need the little Intel TB controller chip (like FW drives need the FW chip) in addition to a SATA support chip.
Intel has been pretty clear the TB controller chips will be widely available and that they'll provide the necessary engineering support and documentation.
The rest of it is essentially an external PCI Express bus.
Actually, all of those configs would work when the display in question is a native thunderbolt display. If the display is one of the current DisplayPort displays (like all displays on the market today), it needs to be the last device in the chain because the DisplayPort connector won't take in any of the ePCI data, and they don't have thunderbolt ports on them.
Native thunderbolt displays will have pass-thru on them, just like current firewire hard drives have pass-thru firewire ports.
There's so much confusion and misinformation out there about this new announcement.
Thanks for pointing that out, NorCal. I think we'll find that legacy devices will have restrictions that won't exist for hardware designed from the ground up for TB.
As new drive enclosures come out I'm sure they'll all take advantage of it, maybe not at 10gbps but certainly faster than we see from USB.
I think that will change when Apple (or other manufacturers) release displays that use the newer standard, rather than 1.1 that current cinema displays use.
Boy do I hope the next upgrade to iMacs is better than this lame upgrade done to Macbook Pros. Fortunately good screens are a given, however it remains to be seen if they are going to be willing to up the GPUs in the higher end models, let alone give us SSD boot devices; Gateway has done that for some time.
Give me a few more ports, strong gpu, and even better screen, then they can have my dollars.
Give me a few more ports, strong gpu, and even better screen, then they can have my dollars.
It really wouldn't be much different than the eSATA/FW/USB2 cradles such as the NewerTech Voyager, etc., except they'll need the little Intel TB controller chip (like FW drives need the FW chip) in addition to a SATA support chip.
Intel has been pretty clear the TB controller chips will be widely available and that they'll provide the necessary engineering support and documentation.
The rest of it is essentially an external PCI Express bus.
thank you John.B and mrsir2009, please forgive my lack of technological prowess but what I am thinking is that TB will be a lot faster with transferring data from an external HD and backing up data, maybe apple will introduce time machine thats compatible? [I dont own a Mac yet but wanting to learn all the options before I do]
thank you John.B and mrsir2009, please forgive my lack of technological prowess but what I am thinking is that TB will be a lot faster with transferring data from an external HD and backing up data, maybe apple will introduce time machine thats compatible? [I dont own a Mac yet but wanting to learn all the options before I do]
I'm hoping Apple will make their own thunderbolt external drive. It would look so epic, the same theme as the MBPs and iMacs!
Ironically, the knock against Thunderbolt right now is from people who are complaining that it's faster than any single drive can read/write data.thank you John.B and mrsir2009, please forgive my lack of technological prowess but what I am thinking is that TB will be a lot faster with transferring data from an external HD and backing up data, maybe apple will introduce time machine thats compatible? [I dont own a Mac yet but wanting to learn all the options before I do]
Though that may be changing as the new SandForce SSD controllers are released.
Ironically, the knock against Thunderbolt right now is from people who are complaining that it's faster than any single drive can read/write data.
Though that may be changing as the new SandForce SSD controllers are released.
Jesus thats fast!
You don't see the point of something that's twice as fast as USB 3 with the potential to be much, much faster than that?
And that it's basically an external PCI Express bus, almost anything you can build on a PCIe card for a desktop computer can be on a remote cable. People are thinking network cabling and external drives but this is potentially much bigger than just that.
Thunderbolt for more than just displays and hard drives
I understand why a lot of people are scratching their heads over the importance of thunderbolt right now. It's true that for the average user there will be little need to have 10Gbits/sec going both ways for hard drives and displays. The Engadget demo shows that the biggest performance increase is with video rendering software (like Final Cut Pro) when it's being pushed to an external monitor and that's definitely geared toward a high-end user.
What I think Thunderbolt will do for the average user is greatly speed up transfer times to devices like the iPhone and iPad. I know the biggest reason I don't use my iPhone as a media-device is because it simply takes so long to sync anything over USB. Thunderbolt could transfer movies and other large files to a range of devices a LOT faster than Firewire or USB can presently, and even getting a converter cable for Thunderbolt to USB/Firewire400 or 800 would probably bring at least a little bump of speed. That's what I'm thinking is going to be the biggest news for people with Macs and Apple devices.
I understand why a lot of people are scratching their heads over the importance of thunderbolt right now. It's true that for the average user there will be little need to have 10Gbits/sec going both ways for hard drives and displays. The Engadget demo shows that the biggest performance increase is with video rendering software (like Final Cut Pro) when it's being pushed to an external monitor and that's definitely geared toward a high-end user.
What I think Thunderbolt will do for the average user is greatly speed up transfer times to devices like the iPhone and iPad. I know the biggest reason I don't use my iPhone as a media-device is because it simply takes so long to sync anything over USB. Thunderbolt could transfer movies and other large files to a range of devices a LOT faster than Firewire or USB can presently, and even getting a converter cable for Thunderbolt to USB/Firewire400 or 800 would probably bring at least a little bump of speed. That's what I'm thinking is going to be the biggest news for people with Macs and Apple devices.
I'm confused by the whole daisy chain thing.
You only need only one port. Setup would be like so:
Code:
|Computer|__(TB cable)___|Hard Drive|__(TB cable)__|video capture card|
|
(TB cable)
|
|MiniDisplay Port monitor|I'm just waiting to see if they do a Mac Mini with thunderbolt. That'd make video editing a damned sight cheaper!
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Now that would be just sweet, and even more so if it was SSD as John.B mentions below
Ironically, the knock against Thunderbolt right now is from people who are complaining that it's faster than any single drive can read/write data.
Though that may be changing as the new SandForce SSD controllers are released.
So basically Sandforce SSD controllers would give the option to run OS/applications from an external source? or am I getting to exited to fast?
Sandforce SSD controllers just let SSD manufacturers like OCZ, OWC, etc. combine that speedy new controller chip with NAND memory chips in a package to make really, really fast storage that looks like a blazingly fast hard drive to your computer.
What the Thunderbolt port gets you is the ability easily extend the PCI Express bus outside of the computer -- in a really fast, low latency way.
The combination of the two will will let manufacturers leverage the 10Gb/s Thunderbolt port and these 6Gb/s SSD "drives" to make really, really fast external storage, like nothing we've seen before.
A little confused about this Thunderbolt malarky, will this mean I can connect my PS3 through the connection and use my iMac as a display for my PS3 or am I totally dreaming...?
is already coming from LaCie. With Intel 510 Series SSDs (up to 470MB/s per drive), it should boast with 900+ MB/s data rate!
I had the same dream too but too bad it is just a dream...
don't know why you dream this? any 27" iMac supports Target display mode, you could use this Box from Belkin, but the iMac resolution is a problem - you can only have 720p on it!
There appears to be a movement among the SSD community to use a PCIe interface so as not to be restricted to SATA speeds. Even SATA 3/600 connections will soon be saturated by the new generation of SSDs, especially if RAIDed. In the interim, there may be some PCIe cards with SSDs on them. On a 16x PCIe slot that should scream!
Two Thunderbolt ports should be the minimum on the iMac because you can saturate the port with a three drive RAID array, leaving no bandwidth for anything else. Please, Steve, pretty please, just do it!