ThunderboltMac

Unlike other SSD offered in a housing Thunderbolt does not use a bridge SATA3/Thunderbolt but is natively PCI-Express 2.0 4x (that lets the Thunderbolt). This allows him to promise very high performance with speeds up to 750 MB / s which is well above the maximum allowed by a SATA 3 SSD even installed internally in a Mac-compatible.
The price is not known but it will definitely salty. But eventually and with the active complicity of all Intel SSD in a few years should be offered with a native PCI-Express capable of blowing the gouler presented by SATA. Continue reading →

Apple has updated today it’s macbook Air line introducing the ThunderBolt Port!

Meanwhile, new Mac minis with Thunderbolt, Firewire 800 and USB are out.

Oh well, there’s also Lion – we will see how this new operating system will handle those devices. Prepare to fly!

Going back to the MacBook Air with Thunderbolt, I think it is a huge upgrade as it really removes great part of the limits ultra-light laptops use to have:

lack of connectivity.

An example. Used in combination with the ThunderBolt Apple display, you do not need to connect USB when docking your Macbook anymore, as USB data will go through the Thunderbolt cable basically. Really neat. Thank you Apple for innovating again!

I have only one wish, Steve (Jobs!): fix target disk mode so when used with Thunderbolt we can actually use the real port’s speed….

In the almost always similar timeframe, a brand new iMac has been released today. The biggest introduction, as expected, is the Thunderbolt port.

The 21.5″ iMac has one Thunderbolt port, while the 27″ iMac has TWO Thunderbolt ports – great news for pro users.

With this addition, the iMac is a perfect workhorse able to replace your average Mac Pro, enabling  great future expansion. Provided that some more Thunderbolt peripherals will be soon released

All configurations now feature a four core processor. Performance-wise, this may or may not make a big difference  – anyway, as a typical user is concerned, I strongly recommned adding a SSD more than a top spec processor.

Unfortunately the SSD option is still quite expensive especially in the european market: on the apple store the 256 gB ssd option is 500 € – quite a lot.

You can always buy a standard iMac,  and today is the right day to do it if you want, and fit later on a good SSD like this, when prices will be a bit cheaper.

The Thunderbolt port, standard in all new MacBook  Pros, seems to keep the promises and allow a real-life data throughput of 750-800 Megabytes per Second. Huge!
Watch the Cnet video (please allow some seconds for loading). It is really impressive – today’s technologies like eSata and FireWire 800 now seem primitive interfaces, let alone USB.

Booting from a Thunderbolt drive?

No idea if that is possible – will update as soon as possible when reliable data is available.

The Thunderbolt port supports daisy-chaining of up to 7 devices. Just like FireWire, you can connect one device to another via a simple Thunderbolt cable, up to three meters long. This information applies to the MacBook Pro Thunderbolt port – and it’s copper implementation of Thunderbolt (Yes, an optical version was already prototyped but the copper one hit the streets.)

Will Thuderbolt devices be slower when daisy-chained?

The devices will share the 10 Gigabit per Second full duplex bandwidth available.
This means approximately 750 Mb/second of the Thunderbolt Mac port / 7 devices – this would leave more than 100 Megabytes per second of average bandwidth per device. In a very bad case – using all of them together. This is a very inappropriate figure but just to give an idea – and full duplex (which was also in Firewire 800) means input and output data streams to the Mac do not share the same channel on the Thunderbolt interface, improving performance when using mixed type devices on the chain.

Thunderbolt allows a real-life data throughput of 750 Mb/second that can hugely benefit storage solutions, allowing a great enhancement in system performance, especially for high end video and audio production, where space and reliability are mandatory.

Western digital Thunderbolt products?

A declaration on Intel’s Thunderbolt page, says it all:

Western Digital believes Thunderbolt technology will bring both new performance levels and simpler connectivity for consumers to access and enjoy their digital media in new and innovative ways.”
– Dale Pistilli, VP Marketing, Branded Products, Western Digital Corporation

Lacie Thunderbolt hard drives soon available?

Continue reading →

Thunderbolt audio interfaces / soundcards will soon be available. High end products will come first. I doubt low end audio products will implement this standard – they will stick with USB IMHO.

On Intel’s Thunderbolt page, there are some good promises:

“Thunderbolt technology is connectivity without compromise and will enable the full promise of Symphony I/O, Apogee’s professional digital audio recording platform.”
– Betty Bennett, CEO, Apogee

“Technology like this only happens about once a decade. We are thrilled about the performance and simplicity Thunderbolt technology will bring to our award-winning UAD Powered Plug-Ins platform.”
– Bill Putnam, CEO, Universal Audio

Two high end companies like Apogee and  Universal Audio are willing to commit to this standard, this is a very interesting signal.

Thunderbolt’s bandtwidth may enable incredibly low latencies, high performance multichannel external soundcards, enabling mobile music production on a laptop even when working on very complex music projects.

The Thunderbolt port can supply 10 Watts of power. This power is sufficient for 3.5″ hard drive units, enabling a freedom USB and Firewire couldn’t give us. A very interesting fact! I think  interesting Thunderbolt Mac devices will soon be available…