Thunderbolt To Be Offered As A Royalty-Free Industry Specification

[starshipeleven]

Good, integrate them in the CPU and kill off any other shitty port controller for Zod's sake. Get the OEMs to behave as they should and drop Thunderbolt ports EVERY-FUCKING-WHERE.

I'm sick of seeing laptops with like 3 usb 2.0 ports and ONE usb 3.0 in 2017.

[starshipeleven]

They are way overkill for most common peripherals like mice and keyboards, and computer manufacturers don't want to need too many incompatible ports, so they are going to go with the one with the broadest appeal.

Hoepfully, this new "port with broadest appeal" will be Thunderbolt, as if the controller is integrated in the CPU they won't have to go through the major PITA that is now making a host thunderbolt port in a PC with bridges to a relatively expensive thunderbolt chip and all that.

[TheBlackCat]

Hoepfully, this new "port with broadest appeal" will be Thunderbolt, as if the controller is integrated in the CPU they won't have to go through the major PITA that is now making a host thunderbolt port in a PC with bridges to a relatively expensive thunderbolt chip and all that.

Which won't help in the slightest where it really matters: with peripherals. It doesn't matter how great your port is if nobody makes anything that connects to it. And they aren't going to do that if it isn't cost-effective.

That doesn't really matter much for modern thunderbolt, though, since it uses the same connectors as USB Type-C. But that doesn't mean thunderbolt itself will be popular, just that supporting it on the computer side doesn't take any additional work. The peripheral side, however, is another matter entirely. I would be surprised if we see it in any common consumer-level products. Even for video is it competing with the much cheaper and easier HDMI and DisplayPort over USB Type-C. And thunderbolt cables themselves are still going to be more expensive than USB cables.

[starshipeleven]

Which won't help in the slightest where it really matters: with peripherals. It doesn't matter how great your port is if nobody makes anything that connects to it. And they aren't going to do that if it isn't cost-effective.

I was under the impression that you could just plug usb-c cables in a thunderbolt port and it would work as a usb-c port, being Thunderbolt an alternate mode of USB-C (same as HDMI/DP over USB-C). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB-C#...specifications

The peripheral would just need to signal what kind of connection it needs, and then its own controller only needs to be usb or whatever, not full-blown thunderbolt.

Same for cables, you would need the expensive active cables only if you wanted true thunderbolt with pcie and things, passive cables are good enough for low end thunderbolt and USB.

[commodore256]

Hopefully this means AMD will start using it in 2018.

[wizard69]

Oh yeah, Apple's about to ditch Intel processors and replace them with iPads even though iPad sales are dropping through the floor and Mac sales are growing even though Apple literally refuses to improve on 6 year old designs.

Didn't you claim to be Steve Job's fluffer in the 90's or something? What do you old farts say about dropping the brown acid?

A rational person would realize that Apples relationship with intel has been strained. They don't have to replace Macs with iPads, they simply can go to And and use the Ryzen series of processors for those machines that need to be i86 compatible. Long term I really see them having no choice but to go with ARM based Macs.

By the way that Ryzen based Mac could very well be a custom chip. AMD is far more willing to do custom work than intel at this level.

[wizard69]

I was under the impression that you could just plug usb-c cables in a thunderbolt port and it would work as a usb-c port, being Thunderbolt an alternate mode of USB-C (same as HDMI/DP over USB-C). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB-C#...specifications

A lot of people still don't understand this. A TB3 compliant port is also a USB-C port, they are physically one in the same. The cable/device tells the port what protocol to use.

The peripheral would just need to signal what kind of connection it needs, and then its own controller only needs to be usb or whatever, not full-blown thunderbolt.

Same for cables, you would need the expensive active cables only if you wanted true thunderbolt with pcie and things, passive cables are good enough for low end thunderbolt and USB.

I'm not really sure where the complaints about cable cost come from. You only need high end cables for high end performance. Apparently there is much misinformation out there with respect to TB3 / USB-C and what the performance differences really mean. For the uses that TB3 was imagined for the cost of the cable is trivial.

[TheLexMachine]

AMD's Ryzen is a good match for Apple, who already uses AMD GPUs in their products. Also, their upcoming Raven Ridge APUs would be perfect for iMac and Mac-mini refreshes that need extra power for 4K displays and high-resolution pictures and video. AMD's pro-grade APU with HBM would be a perfect fit for the high-end Mac-mini that would carry a 4K or 5K display with it. Intel simply has nothing in their GPU offerings that could work well enough in next-gen Apple products and their CPU offerings are just as impotent, when compared to what AMD has to offer.

[audi.rs4]

How will this move affect AMD? I see this as a move, now that AMD is competitive again. Or is this a way for Intel to keep the price of their CPUs high? Or only put them in the premier CPUs? Thoughts?

[TheBlackCat]

I was under the impression that you could just plug usb-c cables in a thunderbolt port and it would work as a usb-c port, being Thunderbolt an alternate mode of USB-C (same as HDMI/DP over USB-C). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB-C#...specifications

Yes, that is what I said in the next sentence after the part you quoted.