Intel making Thunderbolt 3 royalty-free for manufacturers in 2018 [u]
Thunderbolt has never seen a great deal of market penetration, but that may be about to change with Intel natively integrating Thunderbolt 3 into future CPU models and making the protocol royalty-free to chipmakers in 2018.
"We think the first thing is going to drive broader adoption and deployment of Thunderbolt 3 in PCs," said Intel's lead for Thunderbolt development Jason Ziller in an interview with Wired . "The second will drive also broader adoption in the ecosystem, with a lot of different peripherals and other devices."
Ziller noted that cost of peripherals, with six-foot, active, full-speed cables topping $60, has been a problem for adoption. The moves by Intel for wider adoption should drive down costs both from a reduction in licensing costs needed to build the devices in the first place, as well as from a mass-production "economy of scale" standpoint.
"Cost is always a consideration, I think the integration into future CPUs will help reduce the overall solution cost on the computer," said Ziller. "And, we're continually working with the industry to lower the cost of the cables and the devices."
"There always have been and probably will continue to be some wired ports on even the thinnest and lightest computers," added Ziller. "So having a single port that really do everything that you need is our vision for Thunderbolt 3."
The modern Thunderbolt connector was developed by a consortium of companies, including Apple and Intel, as "Light Peak." Thunderbolt is in many ways is more like Apple and Texas Instruments' legacy FireWire connector than USB.
Apple is on-board with the decision to make the protocol royalty free.
"Apple and Intel have collaborated on Thunderbolt from the beginning," said Apple's Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering Dan Riccio in a statement. "As the industry leader in its adoption, we applaud Intel's efforts to integrate Thunderbolt technology into its CPUs and open it up to the rest of the industry."
The latest incarnation, Thunderbolt 3 was included on Apple hardware for the first time on the 2016 MacBook Pro, and uses the USB-C physical connector and has two discrete speeds. Using "active" cables, or cables with transceiver chips embedded in them for negotiation, peak speeds can reach 40 gigabits per second when supplied with sufficient PCI-E channels. Thunderbolt 3 can also use "passive" cables without transceivers, cutting the downstream speed to one channel at 10 gigabits per second.
Thunderbolt 3 was originally supposed to have been integrated with the Kaby Lake processor family, but plans changed somewhere along the way. It is not yet clear which processor revision Intel will include support for Thunderbolt 3.
"We think the first thing is going to drive broader adoption and deployment of Thunderbolt 3 in PCs," said Intel's lead for Thunderbolt development Jason Ziller in an interview with Wired . "The second will drive also broader adoption in the ecosystem, with a lot of different peripherals and other devices."
Ziller noted that cost of peripherals, with six-foot, active, full-speed cables topping $60, has been a problem for adoption. The moves by Intel for wider adoption should drive down costs both from a reduction in licensing costs needed to build the devices in the first place, as well as from a mass-production "economy of scale" standpoint.
"Cost is always a consideration, I think the integration into future CPUs will help reduce the overall solution cost on the computer," said Ziller. "And, we're continually working with the industry to lower the cost of the cables and the devices."
"There always have been and probably will continue to be some wired ports on even the thinnest and lightest computers," added Ziller. "So having a single port that really do everything that you need is our vision for Thunderbolt 3."
The modern Thunderbolt connector was developed by a consortium of companies, including Apple and Intel, as "Light Peak." Thunderbolt is in many ways is more like Apple and Texas Instruments' legacy FireWire connector than USB.
Apple is on-board with the decision to make the protocol royalty free.
"Apple and Intel have collaborated on Thunderbolt from the beginning," said Apple's Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering Dan Riccio in a statement. "As the industry leader in its adoption, we applaud Intel's efforts to integrate Thunderbolt technology into its CPUs and open it up to the rest of the industry."
The latest incarnation, Thunderbolt 3 was included on Apple hardware for the first time on the 2016 MacBook Pro, and uses the USB-C physical connector and has two discrete speeds. Using "active" cables, or cables with transceiver chips embedded in them for negotiation, peak speeds can reach 40 gigabits per second when supplied with sufficient PCI-E channels. Thunderbolt 3 can also use "passive" cables without transceivers, cutting the downstream speed to one channel at 10 gigabits per second.
Thunderbolt 3 was originally supposed to have been integrated with the Kaby Lake processor family, but plans changed somewhere along the way. It is not yet clear which processor revision Intel will include support for Thunderbolt 3.
Comments
How much (more) does the actual hardware cost?
How much does licensing cost?
How much is pure profit for whoever makes and sells the product?
USB-3 (not USB-C) is cheap. Why is that? Is the hardware cost very low? Any licensing costs?
As far as Intel including it on the CPU chip, that only helps Intel sell CPUs. Does it really reduce the cost to peripheral vendors?
I'm not a fan of Apple completely removing all USB A ports from their laptops, but I like the Thunderbolt/USB C combination. Hopefully that will reduce the video dongle parade
It looks like Apple will standardize on USB Type C, though Lightning will only be deprecated when Apple no longer needs a wired connector for power on mobile devices.
Certainly, USB connectors are cheap!
Then you have the old TB ports which was developed by Apple as a mini version of the VESA DisplayPort port, which Apple licensed for free.
Finally, you have USB-A, which is also propritary, since it's owned by the USB-IF, yet that didn't make your list when you stated that proprietary ports are bad.
Licensing might now be free, but what's the cost of the other TB HW in devices? This might keep TB out of cheaper laptops, for example.
Here's an example. Maybe OWC can fill in the blanks and be transparent about their costs. (It's more difficult since they don't carry their RAID boxes without Thunderbolt anymore)
I presume your friend supplies peripherals and not computers? Can we interpret "pretty major" as dropping costs 10%? 20%? 30%? Way more? or not even a 10% savings to the customer?
I'll send some emails today. Maybe somebody will say something.
I have a feeling this move has a lot to do with keeping Apple with Intel. As opening up and making this free is very Un-Intel. They could have done this many years ago. Why now? Why mentioned TB3 was suppose to be included in Kaby Lake and didn't? Depending on Model that could save $25 - $50 of BOM cost on MBP.
I think and I hope this is Apple unhappy with Intel's roadmap and performance, from CPU to Baseband, and still failed to open up their Fab. ( We are pretty certain Apple will be with TSMC all the way to 5nm in 2020)
It tells me they've already lost the Apple exclusivity and Apple is going to offer AMD Ryzen CPUs/APUs moving forward. USB 3.1 gen 2 already in Ryzen CPUs. The release of Threadripper 16 Core/32 thread Ryzen 9 this July never mind the Epyc 32/64 for Dataservers [Apple will love these] makes it clear that the performance gains of the Infinity band interconnect and Perf/watt of AMDs new systems makes it a no brainer if you're Apple.
AMDs first Ryzen APU comes with Vega GPGPU. iGPU just can't compete. They are designed for low power 15W to 45W laptop systems.
Ryzen2 this Spring is 7nm fab on TSMC and GlobalFoundries. Same with their GPGPUs. The HBM2 memory is just another piece of the puzzle.
I do hope that there is some truth to this speculation. It is very likely Apple and other manufactures are unhappy with Intels focus on IoT and other technologies instead of CPUs. Switching to AMD, even for a few products should shake things up at Intel.
Thegood thing here is that Apple and Intel have clearly indicated thatTB was a partnership. How much we dont know but i wouldnt be surprised to find out that Apple retained the right to make their own TB chips.