Because Thunderbolt 3 is compliant with the USB-C standard and USB 3.1 specification, the cabling will also simultaneously support DisplayPort 1.2, third-generation PCI Express, and power supply for recharging notebooks at up to 100 watts.
So this means the Thunderbolt port will support charging with an "active" Thunderbolt 3 cable or only over a "passive" USB 3.1 cable?
From what i understand they are major players on both USB and TB standards. Apple has always been heavily involved in the USB standard.
The timing hereis real interesting so close to WWDC. Makes me expect something will be announced there with this support. New iMac possibly, maybe a new Mini.
True, but the real news here (not mentioned in the article) is that TB3 adds support for DisplayPort 1.3 (32.4 Gbit/s, supporting up to 8k video @ 60Hz, or 4k 3D @ 60Hz) and HDMI 2.0 (4k @ 60Hz, HDR video, hi-rez audio).
I doubt it. This looks more like abandoning the old TB in favour of a new, USB-derived spec. Renaming it TB3 is more about marketing and differentiating from "vanilla" USB.
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiight. Use the USB-C connector for TB3, which gets you USB 3.1 speeds (10 Gb/s) on USB 3.1 devices, as well as TB3 speeds (40 Gb/s) with TB3 devices, and that's clearly "abandoning the old TB in favour of a new, USB-derived spec".
I doubt it. This looks more like abandoning the old TB in favour of a new, USB-derived spec. Renaming it TB3 is more about marketing and differentiating from "vanilla" USB.
I really doubt that! What TB does is so different from USB that the two can't be used interchangeable. I would imagine the intent here is to dynamically redefine what the pins do (both electrically and software protocols) to support the interface needed at the moment. So based on this idea, I would imagine that the cable would have a way of identifying itself to the port so that the correct protocol could be supported.
I doubt it. This looks more like abandoning the old TB in favour of a new, USB-derived spec. Renaming it TB3 is more about marketing and differentiating from "vanilla" USB.
That would be pretty upsetting to all those pros that bought the new Mac Pro and tons of TB peripherals. I'd bet there will be a simple adapter with the limitations of the slower protocol in circuit.
I really doubt that! What TB does is so different from USB that the two can't be used interchangeable. I would imagine the intent here is to dynamically redefine what the pins do (both electrically and software protocols) to support the interface needed at the moment. So based on this idea, I would imagine that the cable would have a way of identifying itself to the port so that the correct protocol could be supported.
It is physically different isn't it, thus an adapter would be required, or is it literally identical and therefore interchangeable?
People have been working on this for the Mac Mini, the main comments I've seen is that they needed more bandwidth to counter latency issues. Thunderbolt 3 was expected to finally make it possible, so stay tuned. I wouldn't expect any Apple release, but third parties may whip something up.
More bandwidth would certainly help but I really doubt that Intel or Apple will ever want to support this. The problem is that no mater how you look at it you are still interfacing over an extremely slow serial port so you will always loose performance relative to the state of the art GPU technology. We need to realize that DDR 4, HBM and other technologies are in the pipeline that will dramatically impact the performance of GPUs as we move forward into the future. Especially in the context of APU's that is integrated GPU's. We are already seeing significant advantages to compute tasks for the integrated GPUs as it saves on memory transfers.
In a nut shell it will hardly be worthwhile to use an external TB connected GPU in the overwhelming majority of the cases.
There’s no such thing as “active copper” so it’s a bit of a misleading name. The wire itself is still just standard copper, but in an active cable, the plugs contain super-high-speed transmit and receive integrated circuits that require power to function.
This the concept of an active cable. The integrated circuits work to match the electrical environments to the protocol requirements a passive cable would do nothing. The same terminology is often used with optical cabling.
One cable for everything. One connector for everything. Clever move by Thunderbolt. Puts the U back in USB, minus the performance limitations. I like it.
I was going to say the same thing. USB has never been a well-designed spec, but it caught on because it was cheaper than other connectors (and "good enough" for consumer devices).
I'm guessing that USB 3.1 is actually Thunderbolt 3 simplified since there's no reason to have 2 specs now that both standards can support consumer and pro devices (the main distinction between USB and Firewire/Thunderbolt in the past).
I haven't read any technical documentation yet but I really suspect that they are redefining the pins, much like ey do on the iPhine connector. It seems like they have removed the need for active cable at the lower TB speeds so they might have moved much of the electronics associated with that inside the users hardware.
The final word will take some research though because the USB C port already has differential drivers defined as a supplement to the old tradional two wore USB data interface. Those drivers are apparently capable already of being defined for a number of protocols. Hey maybe next winter I will have a free moment to read up on this stuff?????????????????????
What really busts my balls is the total lack of good sound computer publications these days that would deliver a well researched report on this new standard.
I haven't read any technical documentation yet but I really suspect that they are redefining the pins, much like ey do on the iPhine connector. It seems like they have removed the need for active cable at the lower TB speeds so they might have moved much of the electronics associated with that inside the users hardware.
Yeah. My guess is that much of the data swizzling to convert USB 3.1 to/from TB 3 is going to be done by the CPU to keep things cheap (at the expense of overall system performance). Again, my experience is more with Firewire when each device would have dedicated hardware which removed the need for bus management and data swizzling to be done by the CPU (but made devices more expensive). But it's likely the same story with TB.
And yeah, I agree that the lack of documentation is a bit frustrating (and leads to more speculation).
Macbook Pro 15" with 3-4 of these, I won't complain really.. maybe initially for a new Thunderbolt 3 Hub and other accessories but thats it...
My issue with the Macbook wasn't the adoption of USB-C, just that it didn't have at least 2 ports.. That seemed silly to me.. If it'd had 2 ports, one each side... I'd of thought it was awesome..
The only port I used over 90% of the time in my laptop is power port. Apple get this right with the MB.
If they tried a little harder and ran things at 80Gbps or higher instead.You could have 8K video running at 60fps over one Thunderbolt cable. I suppose that may be offered in the future with Thunderbolt 4 or a further refinement of the USB spec...in the mean time you could achieve the same thing with two TB3 channels working via two active copper cables to an 8K monitor.
If they tried a little harder and ran things at 80Gbps or higher instead.You could have 8K video running at 60fps over one Thunderbolt cable. I suppose that may be offered in the future with Thunderbolt 4 or a further refinement of the USB spec...in the mean time you could achieve the same thing with two TB3 channels working via two active copper cables to an 8K monitor.
And i guess the 5 people on earth who need 8K monitors will do that, then
Comments
Quote:
Because Thunderbolt 3 is compliant with the USB-C standard and USB 3.1 specification, the cabling will also simultaneously support DisplayPort 1.2, third-generation PCI Express, and power supply for recharging notebooks at up to 100 watts.
So this means the Thunderbolt port will support charging with an "active" Thunderbolt 3 cable or only over a "passive" USB 3.1 cable?
(Obviously power over optical is out...)
Ended this connector war has.
And now it is obvious why Steve cancelled hardware licensing back in 1997. He was faced with an army of Mac clones...
From what i understand they are major players on both USB and TB standards. Apple has always been heavily involved in the USB standard.
The timing hereis real interesting so close to WWDC. Makes me expect something will be announced there with this support. New iMac possibly, maybe a new Mini.
New Mac Pro Tower if anything.
New Mac Pro Tower if anything.
The controller (and Skylake) aren't done and released yet, so any new hardware won't benefit from this...
True, but the real news here (not mentioned in the article) is that TB3 adds support for DisplayPort 1.3 (32.4 Gbit/s, supporting up to 8k video @ 60Hz, or 4k 3D @ 60Hz) and HDMI 2.0 (4k @ 60Hz, HDR video, hi-rez audio).
60Hz or 60 fps?
I doubt it. This looks more like abandoning the old TB in favour of a new, USB-derived spec. Renaming it TB3 is more about marketing and differentiating from "vanilla" USB.
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiight. Use the USB-C connector for TB3, which gets you USB 3.1 speeds (10 Gb/s) on USB 3.1 devices, as well as TB3 speeds (40 Gb/s) with TB3 devices, and that's clearly "abandoning the old TB in favour of a new, USB-derived spec".
Think about it at least one more time.
60Hz or 60 fps?
Are those not the same thing?
I really doubt that! What TB does is so different from USB that the two can't be used interchangeable. I would imagine the intent here is to dynamically redefine what the pins do (both electrically and software protocols) to support the interface needed at the moment. So based on this idea, I would imagine that the cable would have a way of identifying itself to the port so that the correct protocol could be supported.
That would be pretty upsetting to all those pros that bought the new Mac Pro and tons of TB peripherals. I'd bet there will be a simple adapter with the limitations of the slower protocol in circuit.
It is physically different isn't it, thus an adapter would be required, or is it literally identical and therefore interchangeable?
More bandwidth would certainly help but I really doubt that Intel or Apple will ever want to support this. The problem is that no mater how you look at it you are still interfacing over an extremely slow serial port so you will always loose performance relative to the state of the art GPU technology. We need to realize that DDR 4, HBM and other technologies are in the pipeline that will dramatically impact the performance of GPUs as we move forward into the future. Especially in the context of APU's that is integrated GPU's. We are already seeing significant advantages to compute tasks for the integrated GPUs as it saves on memory transfers.
In a nut shell it will hardly be worthwhile to use an external TB connected GPU in the overwhelming majority of the cases.
This the concept of an active cable. The integrated circuits work to match the electrical environments to the protocol requirements a passive cable would do nothing. The same terminology is often used with optical cabling.
I haven't read any technical documentation yet but I really suspect that they are redefining the pins, much like ey do on the iPhine connector. It seems like they have removed the need for active cable at the lower TB speeds so they might have moved much of the electronics associated with that inside the users hardware.
The final word will take some research though because the USB C port already has differential drivers defined as a supplement to the old tradional two wore USB data interface. Those drivers are apparently capable already of being defined for a number of protocols. Hey maybe next winter I will have a free moment to read up on this stuff?????????????????????
What really busts my balls is the total lack of good sound computer publications these days that would deliver a well researched report on this new standard.
I haven't read any technical documentation yet but I really suspect that they are redefining the pins, much like ey do on the iPhine connector. It seems like they have removed the need for active cable at the lower TB speeds so they might have moved much of the electronics associated with that inside the users hardware.
Yeah. My guess is that much of the data swizzling to convert USB 3.1 to/from TB 3 is going to be done by the CPU to keep things cheap (at the expense of overall system performance). Again, my experience is more with Firewire when each device would have dedicated hardware which removed the need for bus management and data swizzling to be done by the CPU (but made devices more expensive). But it's likely the same story with TB.
And yeah, I agree that the lack of documentation is a bit frustrating (and leads to more speculation).
If they tried a little harder and ran things at 80Gbps or higher instead.You could have 8K video running at 60fps over one Thunderbolt cable. I suppose that may be offered in the future with Thunderbolt 4 or a further refinement of the USB spec...in the mean time you could achieve the same thing with two TB3 channels working via two active copper cables to an 8K monitor.
And i guess the 5 people on earth who need 8K monitors will do that, then