Talk:Thunderbolt (interface)

Rename to Thunderbolt?

Is not it totally the new name of Light Peak? [1]--Meow✉ 14:38, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Since Intel has now dubbed the technology as Thunderbolt, it seems right to rename the article to Thunderbolt and mention that it was developed under the name Light Peak. There a lot of double mentions at the moment, for example the first sentence. HectorMalot (talk) 16:29, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

There's a merge discussion for this at Talk:Thunderbolt (interface). --- Barek (talk) - 19:25, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

No longer optical, but now copper based

It seems like Light Peak will be first introduced as a copper based technology according to various sources at CES 2011. I could not find concrete data but there are many articles out there talking about it. Here is one of them. http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9204158/Intel_says_Light_Peak_interconnect_technology_is_ready The article should be updated accordingly when more info is available Frenchgizmo (talk) 00:49, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Commenters believe in a limited bandwidth for copper, and the article should say that. But this too strong: "very much higher than what Copper Peak is expected to be capable of". I think that statement should be attributed (honestly, I am not convinced that it is true, so ... lets not put wikipedia in a state that it will need to retract from later). gnirre (talk) 08:39, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

on board

Apple seems to be on board, I say seems because so far it's only in mac blogs. Some of them must have references saying more than might/probably/secretly plan to. 217.39.57.220 (talk) 10:35, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

This link may be interesting to you, then; it says Apple is the originator of the concept, and asked Intel to develop it. --moof (talk) 15:10, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Powered cable

Will the Light Peak cable include electrical power to the gadgets? Thue | talk 19:21, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Found the answer: Intel is working on it. Thue | talk 19:29, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Measly 10 watts DC. Only a bit more than USB 3.0 (5) or Firewire (8), and nowhere near Power over Ethernet. This is a major advantage (along with standard cabling, cheaper switching, etc.) to Power over Ethernet over Thunderbolt for any powered applications. Daisy-chaining 10w across 7 devices? Really? This is effectively an unpowered interface that should be compared to USB 3.0 or unpowered 10 GbE, it isn't competitive with 1G powered ether for things like servo security cameras, etc., though it might be fine for small cameras and low-power VoIP phones. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.177.110.239 (talk) 16:54, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Competing optical technologies

Are there emerging/competing technologies with a similar goal and performance spec? Alanbrowne (talk) 20:51, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

On data transfer there is 10 Gbit Ethernet that is available today. However there is no solution to tunnel USB, SATA, HDMI/DVI or other protocols over it. There is AoE, iSCSI and NBD but little or no support in Firmware, so it cannot be used as a boot device. Tunnelling HDMI/DVI most likely also need hardware support, like a 10 Gbit Ethernet port on graphic cards. There are KVM solutions that can tunnel VGA/HDMI/DVI over Ethernet but they are not a full replacement for such a port, as they are intended for server management and at most handle gigabit Ethernet.

This is issues that should be further elaborated on. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.112.38.78 (talk) 09:17, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Transfer Rate

Gb/s = Gigabits per second, not Gigabytes. Can someone please clarify which of these two is the correct transfer rate? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.106.5.150 (talk) 08:13, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Suggested characteristics by public section

I'm just curious where this section came from. I've performed several google searches on the subject, and haven't come up with anything. Who are the "public" this section is referring to? Cyclonius (talk) 03:00, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

Any new info?

It's the middle of Februrary 2010... and there been any new developments with Light Peak? --70.167.58.6 (talk) 16:54, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Bulky cables

Optic cables aren't bulky in general. Only multi-fiber types designed for "outside" use are equipped with heavy armouring. Those used to connect devices in racks are even thinner than an ordinary USB cable. I admit, however, that more convenient plugs should be developed for customer use (OFC_ST) but unlike USB and FW they still should feature latches. Stlman (talk) 19:37, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Afaict the patch cables used inside racks are indeed thin BUT afaict they are designed to be installed once and left alone within the relative safety of a rack. Light peak cables OTOH will need to be ruggedised sufficiantly to handle consumer use (e.g. it should be very difficult to damage one accidently by over-bending it). Plugwash (talk) 15:07, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

ClearCurve speed

Even the single-mode version, with a single carrier frequency, offers maximum data rates of 25 Gbps.[4]

If I remember correctly my physics courses, monomode fibers are always the fastest, as you don't have any modal dispersion; only chromatic dispersion (insignificant). So the word Even is superfluous or wrong.

I'm not totally sure (that's why I post this comment and don't edit the page) but I guess it should be replaced by

The monomode version offers maximum data rates of 25Gbps. [4] --7e'o (talk) 08:40, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Connector picture

Is there a picture of any connectors for cables using this standard? Also, is there already a pictorial convention on how the connectors would be labeled? Demf (talk) 18:12, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

To this date the connectors are stil not defined. For the prototype shown during IDF 2010 Intel used a modified USB connector.

http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20100915/185684/ 212.99.48.166 (talk) 11:27, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

chances are it will use the prototype connector, due to it now being extensively used for over 3 years in testing by intel&partners. Markthemac (talk) 21:41, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Large section removed

In April a single-edit anon editor removed a large portion of the article with no notice, checkin note, or anything of the sort. Should this be reverted? Maury Markowitz (talk) 14:41, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

I have done so, let's see if anyone pops up to explain the deletion. 90.195.73.153 (talk) 18:04, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Removing "written like an advertisement."

I'm of the opinion that it's going to be difficult to write a truly NPOV article about technology that hasn't been released to the public. This is to be expected because the company has a near monopoly on all the information regarding their product.

That being said, I'm going to go ahead and remove the "written like an advertisement" header. I think the article does a pretty good job of maintaining an encyclopedic tone and, when I read through it, I didn't notice anything that sounded like advertising.

If you believe that the WP:SOAP tag still belongs, please provide explicit examples of where the article needs improvement. If something is not properly cited, well, that's what [citation needed] is for. Robert Seaton (talk) 16:36, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Reads with USB bias currently. Phil.andy.graves (talk) 12:36, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

No "USB bias" evident now. The article seems well balanced now that the fact that intel has admitted that it can't deliver fibre at all as of January 2011, and has announced strong and unequivocal support for HDMI and DisplayPort, and of course will also be shipping 10 Gb and 100Gb Ethernet and USB 3 devices. The article seems to skeptically analyze the reasons why a single fibre optic cabling standard will not displace these purpose-specific standards (USB for peripherals, Ethernet for networking, DisplayPort for monitors) before at least 2014 or so. Those reasons being:

No clarity on the power interface. Now that there's a copper interface, will it include power? No answers from Intel, and it's pretty late in the game not to have that clarified.

Need for certainty among makers of consumer items like televisions and lower end commercial items like monitors. These tend to outlast desktop and laptop systems and stay in use for ten years or more (how many 10 year old monitors do you have in your house? what are they doing? when you replace your box do you replace your monitor too, or only with every other box or so?)

Inability to deliver fibre - Copper Peak basically admits that whatever advantages the process of IC fabrication for Light Peak has, it just cannot make the interface and connector and cable so cheap as to displace copper just yet, and probably not for five years.

No compelling reason to believe that 10 Gb, 40 Gb and 100 Gb Ethernet will not come down in price (as 1 Gb Ethernet did and 100 Mb Ethernet before it) and be used for peripherals, monitors and other high-bandwidth devices. Already we see a lot of media drives and devices supporting Ethernet, and that includes HDMI (HDMI 1.4e). Blu-Ray only needs about 40 Mbps to move its encoded data stream off the disc, so HDMI 1.4e's 100 mbps interface seems good enough until Hollywood re-encodes everything. Is that really going to happen any time before 2020? When they do, is the next interface really going to require even 100 mbps, or will encoding be so good they can get 4x the resolution through only 2.4x the bandwidth? HDI 1.4e is a strong bet that 100 mbps is enough. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.177.112.60 (talk) 03:41, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Timeline?

When does this techonology actually come to the marked? (probably a stupid question, but i didn't figure it out while reading the article). When will Intel push for the adoption of the technology?

Sorry for reposting from other articles, but i'll put it in here anyway: In December 2010 it was announced that Intel and AMD, with backing from various computer vendors, would stop supporting DVI-I, DVI-A, VGA and LVDS-technologies (i.e., Firewire) from 2013/2015, and instead speed up the adoption of DisplayPort and/or HDMI.technewsworld.com - VGA Given 5 Years to Live (9. December 2010).

"Legacy interfaces such as VGA, DVI and LVDS have not kept pace, and newer standards such as DisplayPort and HDMI clearly provide the best connectivity options moving forward. In our opinion, DisplayPort 1.2 is the future interface for PC monitors, along with HDMI 1.4a for TV connectivity." - AMD, Dell, Intel Corporation, Lenovo, Samsung Electronics and LG. Dec 8, 2010. [2].

Since they apparently seem happy with DisplayPort and HDMI and say it's the future, are they allready now planning to campaign against it?

From the first source: "IDC's figures show DisplayPort was on 5.1 percent of commercial desktops in 2009, but that figure will grow to 89.5 percent of them in 2014. In commercial notebooks, DisplayPort's penetration will increase from 2.1 percent in 2009 to 95 percent in 2014.

Only 24.5 million of the 427 million laptops in users' hands in 2014 will be VGA-enabled, Daoud stated. Another 279 million will use HDMI, while 167 million will use DisplayPort."

Does Intel work for the adoption of DisplayPort and HDMI now, and then want them removed later? Sometime after 2015 perhaps? Or will this hit the marked next year? :-S

The information sources are at least coherent about firewire: "Both Intel and AMD will also stop supporting low-voltage differential signaling (LVDS) by 2013." was stated now December 8. Yosh3000 (talk) 23:40, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

10Gb Ethernet section: reach, comparison, power capabilities

This section states that for 10Gb 'Ethernet cable is supported but using copper cables the maximum reach is only 5 to 7 meters'.

10Gb Ethernet is supported up to 100m on Cat6A copper twisted pair. (See 10G-BASE-T).

Biff77 (talk) 19:44, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

I have made the corrections you suggested, but in the future, please consider making them yourself! I'm not sure if the section should be relabelled as I am unsure if 10 Gb Ethernet over twisted-pair copper is still unpowered. --68.148.77.239 (talk) 15:06, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

10 Gb powered standard isn't out yet, is it?

On the reach: the majority of 10GbE equipment only practically supports a short run. The 100m distance is expensive to support. So a different wording like "only 5 to 7 meters on most commercially available equipment as of 2010" would be more accurate than citing the 100m number.

Now that the actual interface is out there, a more direct comparison table should maybe be put together. Notice that daisy-chaining 10w across 7 devices means basically the interface is effectively unpowered - 10 watts divided even by two is not enough for most 10G speed devices. So in practice when using the power the daisy-chaining is of no value, and when not using it the proper comparison is to 10GbE. This should be reflected in the comparison charts now needed.

Merge with Light Peak

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Since Light Peak is just a codename and Thunderbolt is the final name as according to Intel, the old article should be merged to this one, what do you think? --93.187.43.113 (talk) 15:12, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

• AGREE riffic (talk) 15:16, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
• Yes 94.193.201.215 (talk) 15:25, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
• Agree. Acabashi (talk) 15:26, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
• makes perfect sense —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.39.172.207 (talk) 15:28, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
• But, but, but, think of all the poor minority who will forever call it Light Peak!  ;) YES, completely agree with it (LP should have been simply renamed IMHO). Light Peak, sounds like bright flash (Peak of Light), so Thunderbolt sounds very appropriate. I hope someone will reveal how name was chosen.  :) --Flightsoffancy (talk) 15:34, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
• Yes, do it. Tweisbach (talk) 15:38, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
• I fully agree. As Intel has renamed the technology (now marketed to the public) as Thunderbolt, I think people are going to look there for info.--Paracel63 (talk) 17:21, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
• Disagree. I think that we should wait for more information on Thunderbolt before any merging is done. As far as I know, the implementation in the new MacBooks doesn't actually have any optical lines, because Intel was able to do 10Mbps using copper. So my suggestions are:
  1. If you want to merge anything, then merge Thunderbolt into LightPeak as it's early implementation. You can always rename LightPeak to Thunderbolt later.
  2. Or don't merge it at all and wait. Just add links to both the articles so users can quickly get to the other one. --User:Nolwendil —Preceding undated comment added 15:46, 24 February 2011 (UTC).

  Quoted from Intel: Developed by Intel (under the code name Light Peak), . Their is no debate, Light Peak is now called Thunderbolt by Intel, period. --Flightsoffancy (talk) 16:50, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

  OK then. I agree it should be merged. However, it should be stated that it is not yet certain, whereas the early implementation on the MacBooks contains any optical connections, or if it is metalic-only. --User:Nolwendil

• Hmmm, I don't agree. Light Peak should have its own page :D —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.2.189.66 (talk) 16:22, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
• Disagree. Thunderbolt is Apple's marketing name for Intel's technology. It is very much in doubt if other PC manufacturers will use the name Thunderbolt. This is very much like the IEEE934 article and the terms Firewire (Apple), iLink (Sony) and Lynx (TI). At the most, Thunderbolt could possibly have a section within the Light Peak article if Apple's implementation differs from "the standard". — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mconwell (talk • contribs) 16:59, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

  The last post is wrong. Intel has named it Thunderbolt. http://www.intel.com/technology/io/thunderbolt/index.htm 97.75.161.222 (talk) 17:03, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

• Merge ʍαμ$ʏ5043 (talk) 17:21, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
• Merge. Ttemiel (talk) 18:04, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
• Agree. Thunderbolt is the official name, LightPeak is to Thunderbolt as Longhorn was to Vista. Let's change the article name already. Althepal (talk) 19:23, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
• Agree. This shouldn't even be a discussion. Intel say Thunderbolt is the official name, Apple are using it too. "Light Peak" was the codename, just mention this in the article. --Mwongozi (talk) 19:31, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
• Agree, but the 'Light Peak' page should be renamed and the information in the existing 'Thunderbolt' page be merged into it. --Spazturtle (talk) 20:57, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
• Agree. Merge. Intel says Thunderbolt's the official name now.PRRfan (talk) 21:19, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
• Agree, but the Light Peak page should be renamed to Thunderbolt and the current Thunderbolt page should be merged into the page. That way we preserve the history of the Light Peak page from the last year. –TheIguana (talk) 22:41, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
• Agree Merge away! There is no point in two articles since the tech is one and the same. Definitely keep the history though! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.62.247.145 (talk) 01:12, 25 February 2011 (UTC)
• Support merging. This will also require a page-history merge, I think.  --Lambiam 22:45, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Note: I would do the history merge myself, but I'm not using my admin account from this PC. I've submitted a request at WP:ANI#Merge needed at Thunderbolt (interface) to have another admin assist. --- Barek (talk) - 22:55, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

• Then can an admin merge it? I am the original writer of this debate, I am sorry that I am no longer registered on Wikipedia, the IP I am on is home, not like the one I was using earlier, anyways, it seems that everyone agrees that it should be merged. Can some one do that? The easiest seems to copy all the info from Light Peak over here and redirect that page to this one. --212.198.216.79 (talk) 00:13, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

I posted above, I've requested a history merge at WP:ANI, so that the change history from Light Peak can be moved over here (as that one is the more developed version of the article, and has the longer history log for attribution). --- Barek (talk) - 00:17, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

That's a blessing and a curse, because it's a verbose article full of incorrect speculation dating back years. Aeiuthhiet (talk) 00:35, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

• Agree. Light Peak was Thunderbolt's code name during development. Oaakroll (talk) 02:34, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Merged

Per the above snow consensus, I've histmerged. Light Peak is the live revision, original Thunderbolt (interface) is in this revision; please pull relevant content out and add it to the live page. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 04:14, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Include image of the present interface?

File:Lightpeak-cables-february-2011.jpg
is the image from the Thunderbolt promotional page linked in the "factual accuracy: out of date" notice.
Is this something that should be included in the article at this time?
Sire TRM (talk) 04:38, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Protocol independency

What about the original plans that Light Peak would be protocol independent, and SCSI etc. could be run over it? IIRC it was mentioned in the original Light Peak article last year. SyP (talk) 07:42, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Products that use Thunderbolt

Since Thunderbolt is so new, I think it would be good to have such a section (until the products become widely available). The only ones I'm aware of is the Macbook Pro (available) and the Lacie Little Big Disk (announced). Drrll (talk) 11:29, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Still written like an advertisement

As the new update of the MacBook pro nears its release, many more people are going to be drawn to this page to find out what Thunderbolt is. At this point, the article still lacks neutrality - most sections either describe details of the interface in a positive light or compare it negatively with USB 3.0 and firewire. The article mentions that you can daisy chain seven devices but does not compare that with the superior chaining capacity of USB 3.0 and firewire. What do you think? Dsi2104 (talk) 17:19, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Many changes were made today that have extensively improved both the quality and the neutrality of the article as well as providing missing citations. I am moving the NPOV tag. TimL (talk) 04:16, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Security

According to this source, Thunderbolt may be just as 'risky' as Firewire, since it may provide direct access to memory through the PCIe bus. http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Security-concerns-over-new-Thunderbolt-I-O-technology-1198476.html 84.106.26.31 (talk) 20:55, 25 February 2011 (UTC)