We are all worms, but I do believe I am a glow-worm - Winston Churchill
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Apple's Thunderbolt cable price is justified, Ifixit says
HARDWARE TEARDOWN OUTFIT Ifixit has taken apart Apple's Thunderbolt cable to see if the $50 price tag is worth it for the lightning fast speeds of 10Gbits/s.
Ifixit said, "The cable may actually have chips containing firmware in it, making it more expensive to produce than your garden-variety HDMI cable - thus justifying the hefty price tag."
So the guys over at Ifixit got their scalpel out and sliced open the cable to see what was under the glossy white casing. The plastic sleeve is suspiciously long, so it seemed there must have been something more than just wires hidden underneath.
After some cutting and unsoldering some hardware was revealed, including chips. Two 'Gennum GN2033' low power transceiver chips were found, one on each side.
Furthermore, two smaller chips were found next to each of the larger ones. Two on one side labeled 'S6A 1JG', whilst on the opposite side one is labelled '1102F SS8370' and the other '131 3S'.
Ifixit said, "Of course, there were tons of little resistors (providing impedance as needed) all around the larger chips."
Sony has come up with its own version, or rather Intel's original version apparently, codenamed 'Light Peak', which Sony features on its recently announced Vaio Z laptop.
The connector at the other end of the cable is identical, so all in all there are 12 chips and lots of smaller components in the Thunderbolt cable. So it's not a complete rip-off, but the price tag is still pretty high, in our opinion. µ
Tags: Hardware
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Although I think Thunderbolt/LightPeak got is uses etc. using it for Screens/Monitors it's a liitle redundant since there is a new Tech out since last year that blows it and all the other Screen/Monitor connection standards like HDMI, DisplayPort etc. out of the water!
It uses cheap CAT5e/6e cable and runs for 100m @ 10.2gb/s, provides 100w power over the same cable + networking.
HDBaseT
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDBaseT
Surely if those chips are needed in each and every cabel they should be included in the specification for the ports themselves and fitted to the computers? It seems very odd to make chips for each and every cable sold...
Unless of course you want to be synical and say 'KERCHING!'
unless its free its too expensive
A bargain compared to Sony's Light Peak cable, which costs twice as much.
Wonder what the difference is, other than price?
Cost too much - wrong design.
The most you should pay is the price of a toslink cable.
3m toslink cable about 14Euro.
We have time to wait for PCIe external USB3.0 can make the bridge for now.
http://www.pcisig.com/specifications/pciexpress/pcie_cabling1.0/
Never saw that coming.