

The technology inside Apple's $50 Thunderbolt cable - mtviewdave
http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/06/why-apples-2m-thunderbolt-cable-costs-a-whopping-50.ars

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blueskittle
Apple should just sell the cables at cost (or near-cost) so that they maximize
adoption of Thunderbolt. They can make money elsewhere and therefore afford
not to profit, but they would gain better adoption in the long-run.

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jws
That only looks like a cable. If you think of it as a pair of 10gps NICs and a
wire between them it seems like a bargain.

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catch23
I wonder if it's possible to increase the speeds, without having to revise the
chip-on-the-motherboard. Then users could upgrade their speeds by buying a new
"faster" cable.

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nchlswu
It looks like that's what they're doing (unless I misinterpreted this quote):

> Our telecom source noted that Intel made an unusual choice in also using
> active cabling for future optical-based iterations of Thunderbolt. Passive
> cabling is more common, but active cabling could offer some advantages. For
> one, active cables could combine fiber optics with electrical cabling for
> power transmission. Another good reason to use active optical cables,
> according to our source, "is that your current electrical ports can be
> forward compatible with future optical cables."

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wmf
Those future optical cables won't be faster. Some people are optimistically
misinterpreting Intel and thinking that they'll get 100 Gbps out of existing
Thunderbolt ports, which is definitely not true — those ports are already
going as fast as they can. Optical only gives you longer distance.

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ars
Previous discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2711918>

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dasil003
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Thunderbolt will be more successful
than Firewire. It won't trickle down to the cheapo stuff, but it's not
designed for that. What it really does is solve the external storage problem
for low-profile devices (Air, and eventually maybe even iPad) allowing
professionals to finally leave their Mac Pros behind and move to an Air +
Thunderbolt Display "docking station" setup that is an order of magnitude
increase in freedom and convenience.

Other vendor adoption is not as much of a problem as it was for Firewire (or
SCSI for that matter) because Apple's position is so much stronger today.
Thunderbolt can go far on Apple's ticket alone. I know I'll be willing to pay
a premium for active cabling if it means the data rates hold up to their
advertised potential.

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bugsy
I agree that's going out on a limb, a bold move. It seems to me the adoption
curve and history of Apple dropping fringe technologies they grow bored with
after significant investment by a few firms will keep adoption far below FW
rates. USB 3 has supplanted USB 2 for high speed disk access already. That
battle is over and done with before Apple has even entered the race. Very high
speed external disk access uses eSATA.

For video cameras, it will be USB 3 for everything other than Sony which has
its own special precious non-compatible variation Thunderbolt that only works
on VAIOs since Sony loves to play the special precious protocol game with
their little princess friend Apple.

In 5 years no one will support Thunderbolt and Apple will be on to some new
thing. Between now and then there will be at most a dozen devices supported,
and all massively overpriced. The failure to adopt USB 3 and BluRay, in
addition to their locking down their OS to be iOS with Big Screen will lead to
Apple losing significant market share. After the big plunge in a few years,
people will say that things all went wrong when Tim "Cost Cutting at any Cost"
Cook was foolishly put at the helm rather than someone, anyone, with the
slightest design sense, taste, or concern for the customer's experience.

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dasil003
Your post is very entertaining, but let's bookmark and come back in 5 years.

The reason I don't buy your argument is because I think in practice
Thunderbolt is going to be well more than twice as fast as either USB 3.0 or
eSATA, and the smart cabling is a future-proofing engineering move that will
make sense as drives and busses become faster. If that pans out, then Apple
will be in good shape with this technology to not have to fuck with it for the
next 5-10 years, and the pros will happily pay the premium.

As for the Lion hate, well, my biggest fear is that people eat it up and they
are emboldened to move quickly to an App-Store-only model. Until that day
though you still have a respectable Unix + The Best Commercial Apps OS that
led so many geeks to Apple over the last decade.

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aparadja
I fully expected the article to show a monstercables-like revelation of
nothing but plain copper wire inside. Happily disappointed now.

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Aga
Any pointers to how these active cables actually work and why it is better to
do signal processing in the plug instead of doing it after the plug in the
devices?

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sp332
You can use thinner copper and make longer extensions, because active cabling
help compensate for attenuation and crosstalk. Really you can put any kind of
DSP you want in there: skew, equalization, etc. DisplayPort is only spec'd for
3 meters over a passive cable, but goes up to 33 meters over an active cable.
Also, although I can't remember a source, the Thunderbolt over copper uses
about 25% of the power compared to the original optical version.

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Someone
Also, the chip inside a cable and/or its firmware can be tuned to that cable,
and the chip could offer some overcurrent/spike/whatever protection.

Blowing a $50 cable is no fun, but blowing a chip in your laptop is even less
fun.

[I do not know whether see cable do either of those]

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curt
Always get a kick out of the markup on cables. USB cables in bulk are less
than $0.50, HDMI cables aren't much more. Profit margins on them are
ridiculous.

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notyourwork
Did you read the article?

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kristopolous
Place some patented IP in the cable to shut out third parties. That's classic
Apple innovation.

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catch23
I thought lightpeak was from intel?

"Our telecom source noted that Intel made an unusual choice in also using
active cabling for future optical-based iterations of Thunderbolt ... Intel
would not say when official specs would be released to other manufacturers" --
from the article

