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All About Thunderbolt
Jayesh Limaye, Feb 25, 2011 1718 hrs ISTThis is the best thing after USB 3.0 of last year
As has been reported earlier, the new MacBook Pros launched yesterday sport the newest and the fastest connectivity interface from Intel - Thunderbolt (previously known as Light Peak). Thunderbolt is the next big thing in connectivity boasting of data transfer speeds up to 10 Gbps bi-directional. You can therefore transfer several gigabytes of data within seconds. There is a lot of noise being made by this new technology, so let us have a look at what it really is and what it means to us.
What exactly is Thunderbolt?
Thunderbolt is a new connectivity interface technology developed by Intel, previously known as Light Peak. This is a high speed data interface based on the PCI Express and DisplayPort architectures, which also provides power through a single connection to peripheral devices such as hard drives, video capture devices, RAID arrays, etc. As a result of its direct connection to the PCI Express bus, its throughput is very fast. It is also capable of transmitting HD video using the DisplayPort protocol.
A Thunderbolt port can support a theoretical bi-directional throughput of 10 Gbps per channel, and each port has two channels. The estimated real-world performance of this port is around 8 Gbps, making it several times faster than any of the previous data interfaces including SATA 6 Gbps. The limiting factor here would be the actual device using this interface, which is bound to be slower than what this interface has to offer.
Since Thunderbolt provides 10 watts of power per channel to peripherals, it lets you run many more devices than what has been possible on previous connectivity interfaces. Thunderbolt is reminiscent of Apple's Apple Display Connector (ADC), which could also drive an Apple display through the same cable. It would carry the video, audio and USB signals, although ADC required a special graphics card, while Thunderbolt uses the Mini DisplayPort.
According to its specification, Thunderbolt port supports electrical as well as optical connection. The Thunderbolt port in MacBook Pros launched yesterday supports electrical connectivity and most other manufacturers are also likely to support this type of connectivity due to the cost of optical connectivity being much higher.
How is Thunderbolt better than other interfaces?
The first thing that sets it apart from the rest is that it is several times faster. Since Thunderbolt is able to carry data, video, audio and network data, along with power, this is surely going to be a truly universal standard interface, possibly replacing the USB in the near future.
Will I be able to use existing peripherals with this interface?
It is possible to use existing peripheral devices with this interface using the proper adapter. These adapters will be made available by third party vendors in due time. Please note that the speed of the older peripheral devices will remain limited to the interface present on them even though they connect to this faster interface. These adapters will be able to handle data, video, audio and network data as well.
How many devices can be connected to a Thunderbolt port and does it affect performance of the connected devices?
Up to six additional devices can be connected to a single Thunderbolt port in a daisy-chain manner, similar to FireWire devices. This requires the devices to support daisy-chaining as well, because each of them is required to have two Thunderbolt ports - one to connect to the previous device and the other to the next.
Connecting multiple devices may not affect the performance of any of them as long as they do not exceed the shared bandwidth available in Thunderbolt, and this is not likely to happen at present, because the peripheral devices are too slow. Also, connecting a legacy peripheral device at the end of the daisy-chain will not affect the performance of the rest of the devices, but connecting such a device in the middle of the chain may adversely affect the performance of the devices in the chain beyond it.
Would it be possible to boot from a Thunderbolt drive?
While this is yet to be confirmed, it is theoretically very much possible. Only real-world tests will confirm whether this is really possible or not.
The Thunderbolt port looks like the Mini DisplayPort on the earlier MacBooks. Is it compatible?
It does appear like a Mini DisplayPort, it is compatible too. Thus, you can connect any Mini DisplayPort enabled display to a Thunderbolt port.
What are the audio and video capabilities?
Since a Thunderbolt is based on PCI Express and DisplayPort technology, it can deal with audio and video in the same way as earlier devices. In fact, it has better capabilities due to its extremely high data throughput capability. It can handle up to 8 channels of audio, while the video resolution depends on what graphics card is being used. For example, on a MacBook, it supports up to 2560x1600 on an external display device, while the desktop Mac supports dual-display mode, supporting two high resolution displays.
Are any Thunderbolt peripherals available in the market?
While prototypes exist and several vendors have announced Thunderbolt-based peripherals, it will take a couple of months for them to actually reach the market and be available for purchase. External RAID array, hard drives, SSDs, etc. are the types of devices that will take advantage of Thunderbolt at the start.
While Thunderbolt is currently available on a few MacBooks, it will eventually come to the PC as well and that is expected to happen sometime next year. As of now, Apple seems to be pushing this new interface just like it was doing with FireWire for several years. Quite possibly, this promising interface may become the connectivity interface of choice on the MacBook and the Mac. Only time will tell. Whether it would become an interface of choice for the PC? There is a very high probability that it will indeed be the case sooner than later.
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