
Thunderbolt in current and future laptops - icey
http://www.marco.org/2011/05/08/thunderbolt
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kylec
In addition to being able to reduce the size of laptops, I hope Thunderbolt
will enable the next generation Cinema display to feature gigabit ethernet and
firewire connectors, making it possible to connect a single cable (two, if you
count the MagSafe) to seamlessly transform a laptop into an iMac.

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bengl3rt
I was actually hoping that they would build a small, low-power GPU into the
Cinema Display so that I can daisy chain five off them off a Macbook Air and
have each provide its own "graphics card" over Thunderbolt.

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Groxx
There's an interesting idea... though I have no idea how well it would work.
The bandwidth is still massively below what graphics cards typically need.
With some OS changes and essentially half-remote-desktopping to a dumb
terminal display, it could work, though...

You have given me thoughts. Thanks :D

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daimyoyo
I'm excited to see what devices are created for Thunderbolt. It seems to me to
be like the LED was: a solution in search of a problem and history seems to
indicate that exciting things come from solutions in search of problems. For
example, imagine being able to connect to FIOS directly through Thunderbolt
for 10GB/s bidirectional speeds. You could livestream 4K video with bandwidth
to spare. Welcome to the future, gentleman.

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gst
From a security perspective Thunderbolt is one of the worst things that can
happen.

Imagine being a speaker at a conference where you use your own laptop for a
presentation and where (at some point in the future) the projector only has a
Thunderbolt interface. Are you going to connect your laptop? If you do the
projector has basically full access to your laptops memory - and therefore
full control over your laptop. Even if you use disk encryption this does not
help, as the key is still stored somewhere in memory.

I think that if there's one thing that we've learned in the past two decades
it's that physical interfaces should try to provide a little bit of security.
With Thunderbolt, all security is traded for a little bit of additional
performance.

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Groxx
Don't USB and Firewire both have DMA as well? This sort of attack has been
possible for a long time:
[http://replay.web.archive.org/20090402130220/http://storm.ne...](http://replay.web.archive.org/20090402130220/http://storm.net.nz/projects/16)

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gst
Yes, Firewire also uses DMA, but hardly anyone uses Firewire anymore :) And
even the people who still use Firewire typically don't use it to connect to
third-party devices (such as projectors).

With USB I must to admit that I'm not 100% sure. I've always assumed that USB
does not use DMA, but after googling it it seems that there's some DMA support
in USB. Would be interesting to know if there's some kind of fallback mode -
e.g., in order to use a less efficient (but more secure) protocol if the
computer does not support (or enable) DMA.

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zdw
Turning on the firmware password on a Mac blocks Firewire DMA access to main
memory, if you're concerned about that.

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cloudwalking
I hope somebody is planning an external graphics card.

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masklinn
Would be very slow, considering a thunderbolt channel is roughly similar to 1x
PCI-E v3.

I would also expect greater latencies than on internal PCI-E.

While it would probably be nice for GPGPU cases where not (if mot all) the
working set stays on-board, that's far from the general usage case for GPUs
right now.

Even for multiple-screen it would not be that useful: DisplayPort 1.2 handles
chaining, and where you have two Thunderbolt ports you have two DisplayPort
ports.

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masklinn
Oh god, how did I manager to submit a comment containing "where not (if mot
all)"?

I, of course, meant "where most (if not all)". Sorry about that.

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randall
To be clear, is Thunderbolt the remains of LightPeak? Or is that still
happening...

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cdmckay
Thunderbolt is LightPeak.

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riobard
sans Light, though

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whatusername
But when it moves from copper-->optical then it can become "lightning bolt"

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kingsidharth
When exactly are we expecting new line of MacBook Pro's?

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joahua
<http://guides.macrumors.com/Mac_Pro_Buyer%27s_Guide> is a reasonable resource
(not sure if you're already aware of it?)

Time since last update aside, I reckon a June release timed to coincide with
that of the new version of Final Cut Pro (
[http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/04/12/apple_unveils_...](http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/04/12/apple_unveils_new_64_bit_final_cut_pro_x.html)
) would make a lot of sense.

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greattypo
Seems reasonable for the Mac Pros. But for MacBook Pros, they just updated the
line, so the next revision is probably going to be a 2012 thing.

