

Superspeed USB 3.1 Announced, Could Bring the End of Thunderbolt - bgar
http://www.maclife.com/article/news/superspeed_usb_31_announced_could_bring_end_thunderbolt

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Moto7451
Mmmmm the warm smell of link bait in the evening. This reply will probably be
longer than it needs to be but I find this stuff silly and want to vent.

TL/DR: The media loves writing "Apple v.s. the World" pieces and TB isn't
really meant to compete with USB.

I, as well as many others based on comments I've seen elsewhere, think there
are a lot of parallels between USB and Firewire and USB and Thunderbolt (TB).
USB is a flexible interface you can use to connect to a camera, keyboard,
printer, video adapter, hard drive, etc. It does a lot of this in software
which means there's some overhead and various versions of the spec have had
their own funky issues (like USB 1 & 2 being half duplex[1]). In the end it's
"good enough" and no one except device implementors will have to deal with
those problems. Firewire and TB are "better" technologies, designed to do some
fairly interesting things. Firewire being essentially hot pluggable daisy
chain-able SCSI and TB being an external PCI Express interface that can run
over fiber optic cabling (whenever that shows up). As a device maker, unless
your customers need any of those cool capabilities there's no reason to to use
it. Same deal as with Firewire.

My take on articles like this is they're another case of some relatively
boring technical enhancement being turned into the usual "My side must win"
sort of religious war by the media (and parts of the general tech public)
loves to turn these things into. Clicks are clicks after all. Partly this is
because TB has been labeled an "Apple technology" because they helped with
some trademark paperwork[2] and embraced it at launch. Unlike Firewire, Apple
didn't do anything with the spec except say "Hey lets use this type of
cable/connector." But honestly, that doesn't really matter because if it's
related to Apple, they MUST be in some sort of battle against some force. In
this case, the evils of USB...

Honestly, Thunderbolt seems great for Apple as their design aesthetic mandates
(annoyingly IMO) a minimal complement of ports and TB doubles as a display
connector and a data port. They won't see a cent by it becoming popular[2]
aside from the sales of Apple branded accessories, but regardless TB makes it
a lot easier for their customers to plug in an Ethernet adapter,
keyboard/mouse, and a couple monitors without the need for a docking station
(which is what I do with my MBPr) or a USB HUB/assorted mess (which is what I
did with my MacBook Air).

Intel, as the creator of Thunderbolt, stands to make the most by it becoming
popular (they make all the controller chips). That said, Intel is part of the
USB consortium as well and it's hard to see how they can "loose" either way
this goes.

[1][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB)
[2][http://www.anandtech.com/show/5425/why-thunderbolt-wont-
come...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/5425/why-thunderbolt-wont-come-to-the-
iphone-anytime-soon)

~~~
IgorPartola
Exactly. As far as I can tell, you cannot connect an external monitor to a USB
port and have a GPU drive it. Thunderbolt serves a different purpose than USB:
it is an interface between a small number of external devices and a small
number of hardware components. The fact is that it can only at this point be
useful for three things: displays, drives, and Ethernet. USB is what you use
when you do not have another option. It is nice since it can support almost
any kind of device because the protocol is not burnt into hardware, but of
course the downside is that it has to implement the host side of things in
software. Anyone trying to use a "USB video card" to play an HD video will
notice how much of a toll it takes on the CPU. And when the CPU is fast enough
not to be bothered by a 1080p video, we will instead be talking about 3D 8k
video.

Basically, it is nice that USB just got faster, but IMHO direct access to the
specific hardware (disk controller, video card, etc.) will always win.

~~~
Moto7451
Agreed. I used a USB 2.0 video adapter on my Air and while it was fine for a
terminal, it probably managed 25FPS at best (Youtube is choppy). It also has
to be by itself on its own USB controller (well KB & Mouse are fine) due to
the Half duplex nature of USB 2.0. Using it on the same bus as a HD makes the
display lag badly. Still cool that it can be done.

The new USB 3.0 ones probably fix all/most these problems but I just use
monitors 1 & 2 for that ;).

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jotm
I'm not knowledgeable in this area, but isn't Thunderbolt a more direct
interface (since it's basically external PCI-E) with less overhead than USB,
making it a better choice for devices requiring low latency (audio interfaces,
graphics cards, SSDs, etc.)?

Regardless, I believe _Intel 's_ Thunderbolt is here to stay, along with USB
3.x...

~~~
zanny
Having never tried to program a thunderbolt bus driver, but knowing that
writing USB packet control code as being the biggest pain in the ass because
the entire standard is a hodge podge mess, I wonder if Thunderbolt is easy to
implement connectors for.

Really though, the problem is like most licensed Intel tech they charge out
the ass for licenses. They heavily jack up Intel CPUs and Thunderbolt to
subsidize their huge R&D budget.

~~~
rogerbinns
Greg Kroah Hartman wrote about implementing Thunderbolt for Linux:
[http://www.kroah.com/log/linux/hardware.html](http://www.kroah.com/log/linux/hardware.html)
(not a pretty story)

I suspect Intel has realised that people who need Thunderbolt have no
practical alternative. May as well charge what that market will bear for a
while.

AMD does have a low cost alternative - Lightening Bolt
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_Bolt_(interface)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_Bolt_\(interface\))
\- and I will admit that if it takes off and beats Intel/Thunderbolt I will
smile a bit. It will be AMD64 all over again.

~~~
zanny
I'm curious as to how the hell Intel can charge huge license fees on a pci
express passthrough port. Though, it doesn't sound like Lightning Bolt is
similar - the Displayport part, maybe, but USB is serial and has high latency
compared to the pcie bridge.

~~~
rogerbinns
> I'm curious as to how the hell Intel can charge huge license fees on a pci
> express passthrough port.

They aren't - they charge the fees for Thunderbolt. You can't claim something
supports Thunderbolt without paying licensing fees.

> it doesn't sound like Lightning Bolt is similar

You can draw a venn diagram and find that all three have an overlap. A desire
for fewer cables, to be able to connect lots of stuff, and bang for the buck.
Display, storage, peripherals etc. Outside of the venn diagram, Thunderbolt
does have low latency, but most don't need or want to pay for it. If
Thunderbolt support was as pervasive and cheap as USB, it would be a different
conversation.

------
nwh
Thunderbolt having direct memory access makes me slightly uneasy. I'm more
inclined to fill the ports with superglue than actually find a use for them (I
won't mind you). If the price of the accessories comes down, then it'll
certainly be an incredible boost for some applications.

If anybody is interested in learning about them, there's direct key stealing
attacks for both TB and FireWire if you look around.

~~~
XorNot
Thunderbolt devices are currently a joke. The use case would be being able to
push a laptop's GPU out to an external display card, so when you're docked you
can run whatever desktop GPU you want.

But the cheapest connectors for that sort of thing can't to x16, and cost
$800. Which, for the price, would let you buy an entire desktop.

~~~
StuffMaster
The use case would be to connect to the dock with 1 cable rather than a huge
port on the bottom. Or connect to an external drive bay for fast and low
overhead access.

The external GPU thing has always been the most fanciful use case.

------
NelsonMinar
Is anyone doing anything interesting and consumer-friendly with Thunderbolt?
All I've seen it used for is DisplayPort, a slimmer DVI connector.

~~~
ics
Apogee has at least one interface that's Thunderbolt ready and I'm sure a few
other audio companies are working with it as well. Edit: Universal Audio.
Others have plans/announcements.

Other products: external drives, external GPU (demoed by Lucid).

While trying to refresh my memory I came across this:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Thunderbolt-
compatible...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Thunderbolt-
compatible_devices)

~~~
haberman
The Apogee Symphony can be connected to Thunderbolt via the $1000
"ThunderBridge"
([http://www.apogeedigital.com/products/symphony-64-thunderbri...](http://www.apogeedigital.com/products/symphony-64-thunderbridge.php)),
but it feels more clunky than using USB which can connect directly to the
Symphony without the intermediate hardware.

The ThunderBridge gives extra benefits (the Symphony with USB alone can't go
above 96kHz or 16 channels).

------
sytelus
Any idea what is driving these advancement? Why USB was slow in past and
suddenly it is possible to get 10X more speed?

~~~
Someone
USB 1 was slow because it was designed to be a cost-effective way to connect
keyboards, mice, etc. result: it did not require high-quality cabling, had the
PC poll all devices for data, etc.

USB 2 stretched the USB 1 interface to its limits (for the technology of the
day, and for a desired cost level). Devices could indicate that they could
handle higher-frequency signalling and if so, they would be sent such signals,
Backward compatibility meant that low speed devices kept using the slower
timing, even if they shared the bus with higher speed devices. So, low-speed
devices still use the same fraction of the total bandwidth. For example, a
mouse will want to be polled a hundred times per second. It also will want be
cheap, so it will use the slowest USB speed. Result: if it took 1% of USB 1
bandwidth, it still takes 1% of USB 2 bandwidth, while USB 2 is a lot faster.
And because devices have to be polled, that is regardless of whether you use
your mouse (yes, your mouse can take 4Mbps of your USB 2 bandwidth)

If USB 3 went along this line, things would have gotten ludicrous. Because of
that, USB 3 uses different cabling. That allowed the, to also fix some issues
that USB had. For instance, devices can now signal that they have data to
deliver, whereas they had to be polled before.

Summary: USB 3 is a totally new protocol that uses different (higher quality)
cabling and only shares some terminology with USB 2.

~~~
XorNot
But are usb plugs now a noticeably different width to ethernet ports?

------
zanny
I'm really interested in the 100 watt power bandwidth. That borders on making
usb laptop chargers, saving a port on the side. Really expensive ones to
support 3.1, though.

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kayoone
The new Mac Pro coming out this year and its slim design is only possible by
Thunderbolt. Apple expects you to use your huge Raid Arrays and other 3rd
party hardware through a thunderbolt connection. USB can do this too of
course, but not as fast.

If size matters at all in a workstation class device is a different question
entirely, but in case you need a portable workstation (for mobile audio/video
work for example), Apple is now the way to go.

------
mtgx
Is USB 3.1 going to get faster charging for mobile devices, too? That should
be one of their priorities.

~~~
stinos
I fail to see how charging would be a priority of a protocol essentially
designed for data transfer. I mean, it's a nice idea and there's enough
consumers that would benefit from it but imo they'd better focus on the
communication part of things instead of cranking up the amount of mA it should
be able to deliver.

~~~
mtgx
USB is also a standard for chargers now, so why wouldn't it be?

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beedogs
Good. Thunderbolt is another lame Intel scam.

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AsymetricCom
Thunderbolt is a back door. Generally, physical access to any machine and "all
bets are off", but still, I'd rather not have an orifice on my machine that
says "fuck me here please" no matter what my business. USB can be implemented
in ways that are more secure, but they are often not.

~~~
kabdib
Yeah, I won't have an enabled 1394 connector on my PCs; USB is highly filtered
and won't give you the bus-level keys to the kingdom.

That said, USB is a huge pain in the rear to deal with, especially isochronous
traffic.

