thunderbolt ???

[xwrench3]

i am looking for some education about this. i know that is is faster than a lot of other connectors and cables. but that is as much as i know. so what is so special about this type of connection? and why has it not yet been adopted as standard connection if it is so good? what would its application be for consumers?  thanks!

[Swealteek]

15 minutes ago, xwrench3 said:

i am looking for some education about this. i know that is is faster than a lot of other connectors and cables. but that is as much as i know. so what is so special about this type of connection? and why has it not yet been adopted as standard connection if it is so good? what would its application be for consumers?  thanks!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbolt_(interface)

 

Takes 5 secends m8

thunderbolt-technology-brief.pdf

[Sniperfox47]

44 minutes ago, xwrench3 said:

i am looking for some education about this. i know that is is faster than a lot of other connectors and cables. but that is as much as i know. so what is so special about this type of connection? and why has it not yet been adopted as standard connection if it is so good? what would its application be for consumers?  thanks!

Thunderbolt is a technology based on PCIe that was originally meant to have a fibre-optic based transfer media, as opposed to the copper cables used for USB, PCIe, etc. It was originally called Lightpeak, but that name was dropped before hitting it's first consumer products, and thunderbolt was adopted.

 

Thunderbolt and Thunderbolt 2 were picked up by Apple for use on MacBooks and largely ignored by everyone else because it used Apple's proprietary miniDP connector (later standardized) and had *INSANE* licensing costs.

 

Thunderbolt 3 was developed as a USB-C alt-mode to allow a more universal connector, while Intel also dropped their license fees dramatically and baked support into their CPUs, allowing it to be implemented with one extra chip on the board rather than two.

 

The big pros of the format are that it has substantially higher bandwidth and lower latency, allowing higher performance devices like external GPUs to be implemented.

 

The big cons are the price -Intel licensing is still quite pricey-, the fact that it's only available on hosts with an Intel CPU, super short cable lengths on copper -fibre cables exist for Thunderbolt 2, but not yet for 3-, and the requirements for PCI lanes dedicated to your thunderbolt device.

 

Intel has announced plans to open the spec for Thunderbolt 3 next year so I'm a few years we should see more devices supporting it.

 

Also note that most of the Thunderbolt 3 accessory chips and host chips also support USB, allowing devices implementing it to work with other devices that don't. The only real exclusion for this backwards compatibility is devices that need the PCIe connection such as GPUs.

[Drak3]

It carries USB, PCIe 3.0 x4, and displayport sognalling. It's expensive becuase it requires an additional chipset and routing. It isn't that wide spread because the needs of most users don't really benefit from it. eGFX/eGPU is changing that, but a straight PCIe dock, as MSI's gamjng dock or Alienware's graphic amp, sees better results.