Will Intel Thunderbolt kill SuperSpeed USB?

[jiffylube1024]

It will not.

Why? Because USB 3.0 is backwards compatible with USB 2.0. This is a huge advantage in favor of USB 3.0.

I like to think of Thunderbolt as being similar to Firewire 800 back in the day. Was it faster than USB 2.0? Definitely. Was it nearly as widely adopted? No.

Agreed.
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Unlike many, I actually think Thunderbolt is a fantastic idea, and I would be very happy if it quickly becomes the de-facto standard for video (especially since it's DisplayPort compatible, which itself is backwards compatible with DVI, HDMI and VGA).

I see thunderbolt as a much more versatile FireWire 800. The fact that it supports video as well as peripherals means that if marketed correctly and aggressively, it could start by becoming the video standard and branch out from there.

However, Thunderbolt just replacing USB is not going to happen, nor should it. USB 3.0 is backwards compatible with the entire fleet of USB 1 and 2 devices (AFAIK), which is the overwhelming majority of consumer peripherals made in the last 10 years.

 

[Phynaz]

Yes we dont need 1 more... sadly I see thunderbolt just ending up as yet one more of those ports (and the others will still be there too).

That's the promise of Thunderbolt - just as USB was the port that could replace serial and parallel ports, it can replace everything else in use today.

And just as USB took a decade to replace the printer port, Thunderbolt's promise is a long ways off in my opinion.

 

[Mopetar]

Yeah, it'll be a while before Thunderbolt replaces USB if it does at all. However, if we end up with only USB and Thunderbolt ports on notebooks it's still a big step forward.

 

[Zorkorist]

It's so silly... this new interface, Display Port, appears; and we're told that it gets around HDMI royalties.

Then it turns out Thunderbolt/LightPeak are based on DisplayPort.

Nobody uses DisplayPort today, and nobody ever will.

-John

 

[dorfma05]

It seems pretty clear to me that sata/esata, firewire, hdmi, display port, etc are all going to be replaced by BOTH USB & Thunderbolt. The average person will wind up using thunderbolt only as a display connection. USB will be used for most consumer grade peripherals. Prosumer / pro gear will have Thunderbolt connections. The likely setup will be one thunderbolt connector from the computer to the monitor which will have a built in USB hub & thunderbolt connector for daisy chaining off the monitor.

 

[PoAT.PaN]

I agree, Thunderbolt will exist with USB. I could see Apple moving to Thunderbolt only down the line and having USB adapters for it, but I think for the next 3-5 years, Thunderbolt adn USB will complement each other, Thunderbolt for high performance and USB for compatibility. Getting rid of PS/2, Serial, Parallel, Coax digital audio, optical audio, audio, 1/8" audio,SATA, eSATA, HDMI, VGA, USB1, USB2 and DVI with just Thunderbolt and USB3 would be great (that's 12 ports down to 3 on the motherboard). This could potentially make video cards a little cheaper too since they might not have the output ports on them. Your case design would be much cleaner. Externally, just 2 Thunderbolt ports, 4-8 USB3 ports, and Ethernet. Internally, 2 Thunderbolt ports with short daisy chains to each hard disk. No more cable clutter. Now if only they could get the 24 pin PSU cable and connector under control, that thing is huge and unwieldy in every case.

 

[JimmiG]

USB is cheaper and backwards compatible. Those features are far more important to the general public than higher performance. USB 3.0 will be fast enough for a long time to come.. certainly for printers, phones, SD card readers and WiFi sticks, which seems to be what most people use it for. Even USB 2.0 drives are still immensely popular despite their incredibly poor performance.

The whole point of USB is the U, as in Universal. It's so much easier these days, when you can plug almost anything into a USB port. I wouldn't want the market to get fragmented again like in the old days with PS/2 / Serial / Parallel (several different types of each) etc.

 

[Obsoleet]

I bought a $30 USB 3.0 card for my PC. I figure if USB dies because of Lightpeak, I'll have some backwards compatible USB 3.0 devices to go along with my old USB everything.

I don't find USB2 itself to be too slow, 30MB/sec is fine for 90% of applications it's used for. I felt stupid bothering with a USB3.0 external drive (I use it for storage only, the extra speed I get is generally wasted).

My 5200RPM USB3.0 (self powered!) external is 70MB/sec give or take. I believe because it is a laptop drive, USB3 has more bandwidth than it even needs. Pretty cool.

 

[Peroxyde]

Why would compatibility an important criteria for USB3? There are 10+ USB ports currently per machine. New motherboard has USB3 and USB2 ports. Just do the same thing for ThunderBolt, leave a few USB2 ports and that's it.

What I don't understand is why the two new interfaces were designed parallely and released almost the same time. Knowing in advance they would collide head to head on the market.

Now that I heard Intel behind that TB stuff, may be that is the reason they were slow to release USB3 on time and are slow to put USB3 (if ever?) on their chipset.

 

[Dark Shroud]

Thunderbolt has a lot of uses starting with external devices, NAS enclosures, and of course SSDs.

SSDs already max out SATA 6gig here is a perfect use for Thunderbolt. I will be shocked if Intel's own SSDs don't have support for this.

I'm going to bet at Lucid's Virtu technology soon being able to output video through a Thunderbolt port. Displayport Hubs that have yet to hit the market should be able to work with these as well.

The Film & Music industry will eat Thunderbolt up as a new standard. Especially since Apple is backing it. If Intel SSDs make use of Thunderbolt you can bet that will make its way into Mac Pros.

 

[bryanW1995]

It will not.

Why? Because USB 3.0 is backwards compatible with USB 2.0. This is a huge advantage in favor of USB 3.0.

I like to think of Thunderbolt as being similar to Firewire 800 back in the day. Was it faster than USB 2.0? Definitely. Was it nearly as widely adopted? No.

even without the backwards compatibility I think that usb 3.0 will be more popular. with it, usb 3.0 will be a slam dunk. lightpeak/thunderbolt/whatever will start on the high end and filter down; usb 3.0 starts on the low end and ends up being included with everything. thunderbolt, even as it becomes more popular over time, won't completely wipe out usb 3.0. At best it will be there for high end apps that need enormous bandwidth, while usb 3.0 remains for monitors/cameras/ipads/iphones/external spindle hd's for mass storage, etc etc etc. the firewire 800 comparison is spot on imho.

Why would compatibility an important criteria for USB3? There are 10+ USB ports currently per machine. New motherboard has USB3 and USB2 ports. Just do the same thing for ThunderBolt, leave a few USB2 ports and that's it.

What I don't understand is why the two new interfaces were designed parallely and released almost the same time. Knowing in advance they would collide head to head on the market.

Now that I heard Intel behind that TB stuff, may be that is the reason they were slow to release USB3 on time and are slow to put USB3 (if ever?) on their chipset.

they don't go head to head at all, thunderbolt is much more expensive, has zero backwards compatibility, and is much much faster. all thunderbolt computers will certainly have plenty of usb 3.0 ports in fact.

 

[ViRGE]

Thunderbolt has a lot of uses starting with external devices, NAS enclosures, and of course SSDs.

SSDs already max out SATA 6gig here is a perfect use for Thunderbolt. I will be shocked if Intel's own SSDs don't have support for this.

Keep in mind that TB implements a PCIe bus and is meant to be used as the base for additional protocols. You still need a protocol specific controller in the device to use it. So what are external HDDs/SDDs going to implement? 6Gb SATA 3.

 

[Dark Shroud]

Keep in mind that TB implements a PCIe bus and is meant to be used as the base for additional protocols. You still need a protocol specific controller in the device to use it. So what are external HDDs/SDDs going to implement? 6Gb SATA 3.

It's not officially called SATA3 but besides that there are other protocols that would work just fine. Simple answer SCSI or specifically iSCSI.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

What boards hasn't it worked on? I have yet to see it not work on desktop boards, across the following:
P35, P45, G33, Q35(or is that one Q33?), G41, 760G, 785G, 870, and on-board Jmicron, with Windows Vista, Windows 7, or Linux 2.6.31+.

Note that AHCI must be enabled before installing the OS (not strictly true, but it makes things easier).

You can add the good 'ol P965 to the list. I do it on a weekly basis on my old fileserver.

 

[jiffylube1024]

I bought a $30 USB 3.0 card for my PC. I figure if USB dies because of Lightpeak, I'll have some backwards compatible USB 3.0 devices to go along with my old USB everything.

I don't find USB2 itself to be too slow, 30MB/sec is fine for 90% of applications it's used for. I felt stupid bothering with a USB3.0 external drive (I use it for storage only, the extra speed I get is generally wasted).

My 5200RPM USB3.0 (self powered!) external is 70MB/sec give or take. I believe because it is a laptop drive, USB3 has more bandwidth than it even needs. Pretty cool.

Regarding your bolded point:

If USB dies because of light peak? Even if Light Peak comes in and just takes over (which it won't), we're talking about a 3-5 year transition for USB to disappear, which it won't. We won't go from 8-10 USB ports in 2011 to zero in 2012 or 2013!!!!!

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The big reason why I went for a USB 3 adaptor on my laptop and USB 3 cards in my secondary PC is because USB 3 can power any hard drive on its own, so it eliminates having to run two cables for high powered hard drives.

Plus, as you said, writing at 70MB/s is a heck of a lot better than 20MB/s .

 

[Idontcare]

Even 5 yrs might be optimistic considering how freaking long it took for the floppy and PS/2 ports to finally disappear.

 

[Cerb]

Even 5 yrs might be optimistic considering how freaking long it took for the floppy and PS/2 ports to finally disappear.

PS/2 still hasn't disappeared.

 

[Phynaz]

Even 5 yrs might be optimistic considering how freaking long it took for the floppy and PS/2 ports to finally disappear.

PS/2 ports are alive and well. We even have some hardware that requires them.

 

[sxr7171]

As much as I would like Thunderbolt to succeed, my question is where's the "killer app"?

What exactly do we currently need the speed for today? For that matter what would we need it for in the future? Fast external SSDs maybe, Fast external RAID boxes perhaps, digital video cameras capable of recording and transmitting vast amounts of data, maybe? Nothing all too compelling there. My NAS is connected at Gig-E ethernet speed and it gets the job done.

This tech needs to get propped up to get anywhere and I guess Apple is first on the bandwagon. Nice tech though.

 

[deputc26]

If they make it royalty free it might have a chance to beat USB standards in the very long term, otherwise no chance or negligibly small chance.

 

[Arkadrel]

As much as I would like Thunderbolt to succeed, my question is where's the "killer app"?

External SSDs of the future? >_<'?

What exactly do we currently need the speed for today?

Nothing as far as Im aware, unless its to reduce the amount of ports a pc has, so we can use 1 port type for anything (I see no advantages to this but there might be).



*IF* this turns out to be cheaper than USB ports, and developers starts putting it on everything.... thats what will turn the tide, unless that happends this is bound to become lost in the sea of mis-attempted techs that fell short.

like the VHS tape, there where supperior techs back then, they failed because of price. ect history has a long line of techs like that, which didnt ever really get a huge following and just landed flat on their faces (even if they where supperior, USB gets the job done atm for more or less anything, for thunderbolt to take over, it ll need to be cheaper than USB).

 

[SolidSnake42]

If they start trying to put Thunderbolt on the newer Intel boards, expect prices to go up a tad... maybe.

 

[Zorkorist]

Even 5 yrs might be optimistic considering how freaking long it took for the floppy and PS/2 ports to finally disappear.

Intel's newest DH61WW boards have VGA, PS2, Parallel, Serial, and Floppy interfaces.
There are people out there that think PCI is much better than PCIe, because PCIe by 1, must suck.

It's truly sick.

-John

 

[Cerb]

Intel's newest DH61WW boards have VGA, PS2, Parallel, Serial, and Floppy interfaces.
There are people out there that think PCI is much better than PCIe, because PCIe by 1, must suck.

It's truly sick.

-John

More likely, they have devices that aren't broke, yet, which use those interfaces.

 

[wahdangun]

i think the biggest contender for light peak is not USB but DP if AMD can make it to transmit other data and not just video, it will be huge success because its have more bandwidth have more user base (basically all HD 5000 and HD 6000 user) more flexible and open standard