elysion
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Post by elysion on Jul 12, 2012 23:46:20 GMT
Thunderbolt will get competition: The PCI-SIG has announced PCIe OCuLink and PCIe 4.0. PCIe OCuLink is a specification for an external PCIe interface over copper or optical media. Some variants will be much faster than a Thunderbolt interface, but it's not a combined interface like Thunderbolt which combines PCIe and DisplayPort signalling on one cable. The connectors of OCuLink are more complex and can't be made so tiny as the Mini-DP interface of Thunderbolt. Thunderbolt was a kind of joint-venture between intel and Apple. That's probably the main reason why Thunderbolt got a combined interface: Apple has needed the Mini-DP anyway and combining it with the PCIe signalling made it possible for Apple to implement Thunderbolt with their small computers (Notebooks, iMacs, MacMini etc.). They can also save one interface which saves quite a lot of room. Mini-DP/Thunderbolt on a notebook is still big joke. If you have a presentation with a beamer somewhere, the chance is still very big that you'll find a beamer there which has still VGA input. If you find a newer, better beamer, you'll have to go with HDMI. But DP/Mini-DP? FORGET IT! Almost no beamer has such an interface and you have to carry always a couple of adapters with you, which are easily competing with your MacBook regarding used space and add up greatly to the overall weight you have to carry. Most Lenovo ThinkPads (my personal favourites for non-Apple notebooks) have both a HDMI and a VGA interface. I'm not a fan of VGA (it's really obsolete), but in practice it's still very common. www.xbitlabs.com/news/mobile/display/20120711230244_PCI_SIG_Develops_OCuLink_External_Interconnection_Link_with_32Gb_s_Bandwidth.htmlnews.softpedia.com/news/PCI-Celebrates-20th-Anniversary-OCuLink-In-Development-280978.shtmlwww.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/PCI-Industrievereinigung-attackiert-zum-Jubilaeum-Thunderbolt-1637546.html
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XTRProf
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Post by XTRProf on Jul 13, 2012 0:04:19 GMT
Actually, it's a good idea to have signal and display in one port like HDMI. Thunderbolt have that and PCIe doesn't. It's somewhat a step in the backward direction like the older DVI where audio and video are on 2 separate connectors. Anyway, who wants still faster interface when already reached 10Gbs? Even the coming tougher 4K std will need the most 200Mbs. Do we need resolution more than 4K in a home enironment? Btw, all these specs don't tell us anything in REALITY. 10Gbs and Wifi N 450 Mbs now? Sure we can in actual reach that when in use? Half of that in ACTUAL, I will be more than happy. The engineers should think more of how to get the spec results than going all out for even higher specs.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jul 13, 2012 9:54:45 GMT
For sending video signals at distances over 15m VGA fares much better than digital, in most projector setups audio and video follow different paths so no prob not having audio signal in VGA. Having separate channels for R,G, and B plus sync (H and V) means huge bandwidth that can accomodate very high resolutions/refresh rates with great PQ. Also VGA cables are much, much cheaper while being robust and reliable and can even be DIYed.
PC monitors or TV sets are a different story though, short length HDMI is far more convenient and has great PQ/SQ too.
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XTRProf
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Post by XTRProf on Jul 13, 2012 13:04:36 GMT
You got a point there, Javier. However, most people will have the HDMI connected to an AV receiver or controller before splitting the video to projector or TV as this gives control to which TV or projector the signal can go to from say a Bluray player. Anyway, those "highend" player like Oppo 95 have 2 HDMI, one for audio and one for video to reduce crossover interference of each signal form.
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elysion
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Post by elysion on Jul 14, 2012 23:40:22 GMT
Thunderbolt is targeted for a different purpose than OCuLink is. OCuLink is FASTER than the Thunderbolt interface. It's also not always a good idea to combine everything with just one interface. Thunderbolt very likely originated from a wish of Apple to intel. It's makes most sense with computers that are built like those from Apple. The Mini-DP connector is an invention of Apple.
All these interfaces are NOT specifically targeted for audio. They are much faster than is needed for audio alone.
There's also a third interface around which uses PCIe technique combined with USB3. This one was developed by AMD. I've seen no ready product so far though.
The main improvement of all these interfaces is the available bandwidth of the interface. The added gimmicks like DP or USB are only for convenience. It's about the kind of PCIe bus that is available for external use now.
The strange thing about all these interfaces is the fact that there are only a few products out there which make use of them. So far only Thunderbolt sees some real use in practice and the products which are released so far aren't groundbreaking.
Especially the Thunderbolt hype is somewhat annoying since the practical avantage is still small beside a few specialised applications. That's also the reason why the adoption of Thunderbolt is still slow in the computer industry (beside Apple). Simply because there's no real need to adopt it faster. Most operating systems aren't ready for it too.
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Post by eugenius on Jul 17, 2012 17:13:37 GMT
Actually thunderbolt is really useful or for audio so far, for soundcards with decreased latency and improved stability, IF they are out yet - I haven't checked. For that it's much better than firewire which is unstable and usb which has too much latency.
All the other uses are money thrown out the window so far.
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elysion
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Post by elysion on Jul 17, 2012 17:53:39 GMT
Actually thunderbolt is really useful or for audio so far, for soundcards with decreased latency and improved stability, IF they are out yet - I haven't checked. For that it's much better than firewire which is unstable and usb which has too much latency. All the other uses are money thrown out the window so far. Thunderbolt isn't specifically intended for audio. It's possible to use the PCIe part of Thunderbolt for audio though and the DP part can also transfer audio to some extend (comparable to the audio transfer with HDMI). The speed of even the most basic PCe x1 V1.0 slot is much faster than is needed for audio. Many audio chip aren't even available for PCIe. The C-Media CMI 8788 Oxygen audio chip on my ASUS Xonar Essence STX PCIe cards was only designed for PCI and is attached with a PCI-to-PCIe bridge which resides on the PCB of the Xonar card. An even faster connection makes absolutely NO sense. The chip itself can't handle faster transfer. Audio itself doesn't need a lot of bandwidth. Even 24bit/384KHz uncompressed isn't using an extreme bandwidth. There are already audio interfaces out which use Thunderbolt. Most audio of them are for music production and not only for music listening. For this purpose (music production), an interface with PCIe speed CAN be useful, but mainly because those interfaces are using several channels in parallel. The main benefit of Thunderbolt is here the ability to have such an interface EXTERNAL, maybe connected to a notebook computer. That's the biggest advantage IMO. Professional audio interfaces with are attached to the (internal) PCIe bus of a desktop computer have been around for a long time. www.uaudio.com/interfaces/apollo.htmlThe quotes in the link below are a bit too much praising Thunderbolt. Even faster PCIe interfaces (for example PCIe x4, x8 or x16) have been available long enough. Always remember that theses guys want to sell their new hardware. Even if the old hardware would still do the job. The Apollo interface mentioned in the link above has both FireWire and Thunderbolt. It's a save guess that the additional speed of Thunderbolt was not needed really. Otherwise, FireWire wouldn't be still sufficient and an option to connect the audio interface. www.thunderboltmac.net/thunderbolt-audio-interface/It would be interesting to see what audio chips are used in the "new" Thunderbolt audio interfaces. Personally, I wouldn't be suprised to see some chips which are designed for the PCI bus and are attached to Thunderbolt and FireWire with the help of bridge chips. In this case, the main benefit would be that you can attach the interface also to the Thunderbolt port and really nothing more. As a general reminder (not related to the quoted post above): Thunderbolt is a combined interface which provides DP and PCIe signalling on just one tiny connector which is in fact a Mini-DP connector. It's not that big innovation that Apple is telling us. It's an advantage for some tasks, but's not exactly ground-breaking. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DisplayPorten.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbolt_(interface)Related to the post of eugenius: Are you using FireWire with Windows? FireWire usually runs very stable, at least on Macs. But I wouldn't be surprised to see more troubles with Windows. Another point (even on the Mac) is the driver software which is provided (mostly) by the manufacturer of an audio interface. To be honest, I've seen absolute CRAP from some manufacturers. The best audio interface is useless without good device drivers.
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elysion
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Post by elysion on Jul 18, 2012 14:43:27 GMT
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XTRProf
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Post by XTRProf on Jul 19, 2012 11:50:55 GMT
Er, those glitch problems doesn't happen to 2011 MacBook Thunderbolt but only the 2012 models. Huh, talk about the newest being the best. So it's not a Thunderbolt problem but some Thunderbolt driver problem. That programer odd to be shot as no prisoner will be taken especially when working for well known Apple.
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elysion
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Post by elysion on Jul 19, 2012 16:54:12 GMT
If it doesn't use the same driver, it's not the same chip. If it is not the same chip, then the problem could be hardware related. It could be also a problem with the OS version, but 2011 models did also use OSX Lion. 10.7.4 was released with the 2012 models, perhaps the problem is related to 10.7.4.
I still don't see much reason to use Thunderbolt as audio interface. Of course, it's (also) possible, but it's definitely not ground-breaking.
I'm very curious to see the innards of a Thunderbolt audio interface. As mentioned above, I wouldn't be suprised to see audio chips made for PCI which are connected with additional bridge chips to Thunderbolt and FireWire.
There are Thunderbolt audio interfaces around already. But AFAIK there is NO new audio chip out that connects directly to Thunderbolt. In the best case, it's an audio chip designed for PCIe.
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Post by eugenius on Jul 24, 2012 19:00:15 GMT
I expected thunderbolt to be what it is, external pci express with low latency and good driver stability (at least better than firewire). It doesn't matter what kind of audio processing chips it uses, I expect that using pci express chips will help with better drivers, even if they're not yet ready. Anyway, thunderbolt is mac only so far. Apogee and MetricHalo should update their interfaces soon, they now have to use external firewire adapters for their interfaces.
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elysion
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Post by elysion on Jul 25, 2012 2:04:56 GMT
I expected thunderbolt to be what it is, external pci express with low latency and good driver stability (at least better than firewire). It doesn't matter what kind of audio processing chips it uses, I expect that using pci express chips will help with better drivers, even if they're not yet ready. Anyway, thunderbolt is mac only so far. Apogee and MetricHalo should update their interfaces soon, they now have to use external firewire adapters for their interfaces. Thunderbolt isn't Mac-only anymore. There are already a few motherboards with Thunderbolt available. Support on the software side isn't up to par though. To clarify one thing: Your driver problems have NO RELATION to whatever interfaces. Both interfaces (FireWire and Thunderbolt) can work very stable if the drivers are written proberly. In short: It's your problem if you buy products with flawed drivers... Since I know a whole bunch of guys who are using FireWire for music production, I know that stability isn't a general issue. Otherwise, these guys wouldn't have used FireWire at all. This sentence is total bullshit IMVHO.
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elysion
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Post by elysion on Jul 29, 2012 19:52:08 GMT
For all those optimists who believe that Thunderbolt is a great breakthrough: It really is. But mainly for hackers. There's already a demonstration around which was presented at the BlackHat security conference. It's possible to place malicious code in the EFI firmware of a Mac with the help of a prepared USB stick or Thunderbolt device. The demonstration was with a modified Thunderbolt Ethernet adapter. Malicious code in EFI will survive reboots and will stay resident in the EFI firmware. It's also possible then to log the password for FileVault and other security techniques. www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/EFI-Rootkit-fuer-Macs-demonstriert-1654997.htmlwww.blackhat.com/ho.ax/De_Mysteriis_Dom_Jobsivs_Black_Hat_Paper.pdfApple was informed by the hacker months ago, so they had enough time to search for an solution. The problem is that Apple wasn't able to find a solution. Thunderbolt is maily a external access possibility to the PCI-E bus of the computer. You'll have a lot of possibilites if you have access to the PCI-E bus. It's almost impossible to fix this hole completely.
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pagan
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Post by pagan on Jul 30, 2012 3:25:24 GMT
So this may mean..... That Thunderbolt may not be an advantage after all.. Well it is mainly for an Apple, because Apple lead the technology future. OOOOoooops Hack attacks on an apple...... never ;D ;D
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Post by eugenius on Jul 30, 2012 15:04:47 GMT
LOL @ the bullshit emitter ... Let me say it again maybe you get it this time, pci express audio chips already have drivers and it's damn easier to interface pci express to another bus than to write a new driver from the ground up.
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