[Beowulf] Bolts of Thunder and Upgraded desktop interconnect silicon....

[Gerald Henriksen]

On Mon, 10 Jun 2013 18:57:29 -0400, you wrote:

>So a company based out of Cupertino mentioned using this silicon in a
>revamp of their MacPro line today...
>
>http://blogs.intel.com/technology/2013/06/video-creation-bolts-ahead-%E2%80%93-intel%E2%80%99s-thunderbolt%E2%84%A2-2-doubles-bandwidth-enabling-4k-video-transfer-display-2/
>
>we appear to have a second version of a 20GB/s consumer connection
>(latency unknown), and yet this search:
>
>https://www.google.com/search?q=linux+thunderbolt+interconnect
>
>does not really go anywhere cool like a github or kernel.org repo....
>
>Any qualified folks know where this thunderbolt stuff is all heading
>and are able to talk in public?

Thunderbolt so far is a very niche product that almost everybody
appears to be ignoring.

The cables are expensive - starting in the $40 range for a 1 m cable.

Actual devices are hard to come by, and tend towards the expensive -
raid boxes, and a couple of docks in the $300 range.

This might change later this year when the new Mac Pro is released as
the closed box nature of it will force/encourage any expansion to be
external.

But for now it looks like another Firewire in terms of market
acceptance.

Until Intel (with or without the help of Apple) can get the cable
prices down and some more common affordable peripherals available -
like a single drive enclosure - the market will likely continue to
ignore Thunderbolt.