http://www.9to5mac.com/53459/a-good-demonstration-of-light-peakthunderbolt

Discuss.

Let me start this off...

DAMN!

I'm definitely going to be waiting a little while before picking up a new NAS box, that's for sure.

Pretty excited about the upcoming announcment. My 5 year old MBP is a little creaky these days so I've been waiting for this refresh before plonking my money down on a replacement. The Light Peak stuff is pretty cool, I'm looking on this laptop to be my main desktop machine too, so I was looking at USB3 ExpressCard adaptors. Although from reading the stuff on MacRumors, it appears the ExpressCard is no more.

My only concern is the combined nature of the LightPeak/DisplayPort connector.

EDIT: I stand corrected, the ExpressCard slot is intact.

EDIT 2: It appears you can daisy chain lightpeak devices and DP devices at the same time.

Er, without watching the video. What actually is it?

Basically, it's an attempt by Apple to make their notebooks even more difficult to connect things to, by requiring even more external conversion dongles to make up for the lack of real, compatible interfaces built-in.

The page Intel posted is much more informative on the tech details:
http://www.intel.com/technology/io/thunderbolt/index.htm

Thunderbolt is DisplayPort and PCI Express over a single cable. Devices that attach via Thunderbolt will use the already standard PCI Express specs, and have an external Thunderbolt connector and signaling chip instead of an internal PCIe connector. And as long as the host OS has PCIe support, it can then talk to Thunderbolt devices using the same drivers that would talk to an internal PCIe card.

Pretty impressed myself. This opens up a lot of possibilities for notebook expansion, without requiring either proprietary laptop docking stations, or by requiring single expansion slots like ExpressCard. One cable to plug in and one port can now add a high end sound interface, multiple gigabit network ports, fast SATA storage And more to any notebook with the port. This will allow for a thin and light future MacBook Air to be just as expandable as the big 17 inch systems.

Ah. Now that is nice.

Well, let me know when you come up with that magical space bending tech that allows VGA, DVI, HDMI, and 6 ExpressCard slots (for PCIe expansion) to be packed into a 13 inch laptop. This was the best way Apple and Intel could figure out how to do it. Now to see if others adopt it, or if this turns into another Firewire, relegated to the high end of the market only.

Clever how they manage to run DisplayPort and PCIe at the same time on the same cable. Apple also somehow manages to overload the same connector with VGA and DVI. Also, I expect this will push Apple's Mini DisplayPort toward becoming a true industry standard.

Because they've got PCIe on the same cable, I'll bet we start seeing monitors with a lot more logic inside them, so you can connect all your USB/Firewire/eSATA devices and whatever else to the monitor, then you click your laptop in and *foomp*, it's all there. The only thing missing from Thunderbolt is power. Otherwise it would be a single-connector docking solution.

Not high current power for running your notebook and charging your large batteries, but at least it seems to have enough power for bus-powered devices:

Do companies have to license the display port connector in order to implement Light Peak? That may limit adoption.

I don't really like "Thunderbolt" as a name. It sounds a little cheesy, but at least it'll be easier for the average consumer to say than "USB," which my clients continue to mangle despite a decade on the market.

Except it's not an Apple invention, it's an Intel invention. Apple is just the early adopter. It sounds like Fiber Channel for the masses.

Thunderbolt ports have 10 watts of power available (up from the 8 that Firewire 800 carries). I can't find a spec that shows what voltage it runs at though. Firewire was 12 volt, USB 5v.

As for the VGA and DVI compatibility, that can work two ways. The more widespread method is via a passive adaptor and a dual mode DisplayPort. This requires a TMDS generator to remain on the video card side for the backwards compatibility. Future DisplayPort connectors may be pure DisplayPort without the TMDS, and would require a more expensive active adaptor.

Mini Displayport is part of the DisplayPort 1.2 spec, and that was published in December 2009. AMD already uses it in a few video cards, including their "Eyefinity" 6 display out cards. The board only has enough TMDS and clock chips to support a few ports running DVI, so it requires either a handful of active adaptors, or DisplayPort monitors. We had one of the cards at Vigil, but never did cobble together the setup to run all 6 displays.

The DisplayPort protocol and port is a royalty/license fee free arrangement. This was one of the main advantages touted over HDMI. Licensing fees only come into the picture if you also want to add DRM, like HDCP.

Interesting, thanks. In that case I assume this would get pretty popular. I know I'd prefer simplicity when it comes to interconnects.

Apple had much more involvement with this tech besides being an early adopter. You can bet it was Apple that pushed integrating it with mini display port once it was clear the first iteration would be over copper. In fact, Intel states there was Apple technical collaboration on their own page.

This sounds really promising for the possibility of a new MBP in my home sometime next year. I'd really love to see two Thunderbolt connectors able to drive two external displays (one each is fine), when docked I can actually use two identical screens.

It's just too bad the whole home won't be wired for Thunderbolt. With every system sporting a base SSD, this would make for some truly amazing NAS devices.

The lack of support for dual monitors is still a stumbling block for me, I want to use my laptop as my main machine (and I don't want one of those dual screens to be the laptops own). I kind of hoped that ThunderBolt would bring with it dual monitor support

Dual monitor support is already possible via a single DisplayPort 1.2 connector, but I haven't seen anyone actually implement that part of the spec.

I'm curious to see when the first Thunderbolt GPU will be released. Would be really interesting to see an external GPU attached and driving the internal LCD on a laptop, along with external monitors. Would have really liked that setup back about 13 years ago. I used to have a Gateway Solo 9300 and a single PCI docking station. Inside sat a Voodoo 3, and it would connect to an external monitor. I had one system that I could use at home for gaming, or take it on the road easily, assuming a friend had a spare CRT around.

If you want multiple monitors out of a Mac laptop today, Matrox does offer a dual and triple solution for DisplayPort systems.

Presumably double external monitors requires a GPU which can support triple head monitors? (2 external + the internal display).

I know you could probably get away with a standard dual head GPU, but then you'd need extra parts inside the laptop to handle switching the driving signals between the shared external and internal displays.

Does the clam shell mode on the mac automatically stay awake if there is an external display connected, or do you still have to use the external keyboard/mouse to wake it after it goes into clamshell mode?

From what I can see with the Matrox box the Mac sees one single large display, which doesn't really make much sense for what I want to use it for.

You can do that today with Displaylink USB video gear. It has to cheat a little bit (reducing the quality) if the external displays get full-screen updates every frame (gaming, video) but for productivity applications (and for coding) it works really well.

(USB graphics adaptors are also available from other manufacturers. But AFAIK none of those other manufacturers employs any former Empeg developers.)

Peter

You can wake a closed Apple notebook with pretty much any USB device on a plug or unplug. I have no idea if the dispalyport connector does something similar.

Are you saying we need an "empeg involved" logo for these wannabe spin-off companies? (like Displaylink and Apple) :P

The signaling protocol for DisplayPort makes it much easier to support multiple monitors due to the micropacket design. VGA, DVI and HDMI require timing signals to be sent alongside the RGB data on their own pins. DisplayPort bundles that information into the packets, so it all goes over the same pins. A multi monitor setup with the 1.2 spec would have one cable going out of the computer into monitor 1. Then a second cable would exit monitor 1 and connect into monitor 2. No extra hardware would need to be in the laptop to drive two external displays, and switching the internal over would be trivial as well, since it's hooked in via DisplayPort instead of the classic LVDS most laptops used.

Clamshell mode still needs a keyboard or mouse around to wake the system, at least with my 2010 MacBook Air. It will wake with either a wired or bluetooth device.

Oh yeah, forgot about these. I used the eVGA adaptor at my old job to have a second 1280x1024 monitor hooked into a Mac Mini with just one display out. I specifically picked a Displaylink model over the others due to the proper Mac driver support.

And interesting, looks like Displaylink devices are a popular addition to support Windows Multipoint Server. Didn't even know that existed till now. Someone here was looking for this exact solution...

I'm curious, what would you need?

I'll probably pick up one those Matrox things to do dual monitor when I buy my new MBP.

Macrumors says:

Would that do what you want?

I want* to do iOS development in XCode/IB. I don't really want, for example, my dock spread across two monitors, I want to use one monitor as my main display with the second off to the side for documentation and running the simulator.

No doubt with the thoroughly broken OSX window management the maximise buttons in one or more apps would maximise to some random width that is wider than a single monitor when presented with what appears to the OS to be a double width monitor.

* actually, I'm not sure "want" is the right word, but that is another story

That would be great if it is true. However I suspect they are talking about what ThunderBolt generically is capable off and probably not what the new Mac Books can do. There is certainly no hint on the Apple spec sheets that the new Mac Books can drive two external displays.

I can't get the macrumors site to load at the moment to see exactly what they are saying.

Are you needing a laptop for iOS development? If not, a Mini would work fine, and offers both Mini DisplayPort and HDMI for connecting two monitors. In the box is an HDMI to DVI converter.