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Macbook Air has a half-speed Thunderbolt port
EXPENSIVE TOY MAKER Apple put a Thunderbolt port into the latest model of its Macbook Air range, but it will only be capable of half the speed of Thunderbolt ports on other Apple devices.
The Light Ridge Thunderbolt chip used on this year's Imac, Macbook Pro and Mac Mini has four Thunderbolt channels, capable of up to 80Gbits/s of total bandwidth, along with two Displayports.
The Eagle Ridge Thunderbolt chip, on the other hand, has only half the channels and a single Displayport. This will be used by the Macbook Air, according to Anandtech, making for somewhat disappointing performance.
The problem for Apple is that it was a bit of a necessity in terms of price and space. The Eagle Ridge chip is much cheaper than Light Ridge, and it's also significantly smaller, coming in normal and small form factor versions. This made using it instead of the Light Ridge chip in the smaller and cheaper Macbook Air almost mandatory.
In terms of performance, 40Gbits/s bandwidth over two channels is still pretty decent. It will also support a single Thunderbolt display, rather than the two that a Light Ridge machine can handle, but it's unlikely that Macbook Air users are going to want to use two displays anyway, particularly when they come with such hefty price tags as Apple's Thunderbolt displays.
Thunderbolt is Apple's answer to next-generation connections. It boasts double the speed of USB 3.0 5Gbits/s bandwidth, along with two channels, effectively providing 20Gbits/s of bidirectional bandwidth.
At the moment not many devices support Thunderbolt. There's the Thunderbolt display, three storage devices, two video capture devices, and three adaptors. This limited range of peripherals is one of the problems that plague some other high-speed ports, including USB 3.0, and until it's addressed it will make one of the features of Apple's Macbook laptop range just that little bit less advanced. µ
Tags: Apple
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Wonder what took Apple so long to hop on Intel's d**k!
Two b@ast@ardly monopolist companies ripping consumer off with their name/brand.
F'em
Thunderbolt is external PCIe plus DisplayPort, so a pretty curious beast. I'd say. I think it could survive pretty well as a high end thing, but my guess is USB 3.0 will became good enough for most needs unless TB-whatever bridge chips become cheap enough (a TB-based RAID box would simply mean that the RAID controller is in the box instead of in a PCIe card)
Apple's amswer? It's intel's answer surely.
As for Spazturtle's remark, 'only the cables' sounds like you could improve things in seconds, but actually the very expensive thunderbolt cables have electronics in them, and the copper will limit it no matter what, for the real speed you'd need optical fiber, which intel reportedly says is too unwieldy (bend radius/breakability) and expensive (very pure silicone glass).
Also note that USB3 is also designed to get speed boosts as time goes on, the current top limit is only for now (and it's also developed by intel)
Not that I mind the thunderbolt standard, but that thing with the expensive cables is such a downer, and USB3 allows for use of USB2 devices so it has a nice duality, 'old' stuff can be plugged in too. (watch out for cheap USB3 hubs though, they switch everything to USB2 speed is any device connected is USB2)
The MacBook Pro and iMac have 4 bidirectional channels, so thats 4 200Gbps channels (It is only the cables that are limiting the speed at the moment).
The MacBook Air has 2 bidirectional channels, so thats 2 200Gbps channels.
Both have the same speed.
People have to be clearer about things. The latest chips have half the usable channels, which means half the total bandwidth. This only affects those people who need more than 2 channels. But those 2 channels do run at full speed.
This article is wrong. The Thunderbolt ports on the Macbook Air are not "half-speed" the ports on the Macbook Pro/iMac/Mac mini - they are exactly the same speed, providing 20 Gbps per channel. What is halved is the number of channels available; the Eagle Ridge used in Macbook Air supports 2 channels while Light Ridge used in other Macs supports 4 channels. But the channels on the MBA run at the same speed and deliver the same performance as those in other Macs. Would the Inquirer run an article claiming that a computer with 2 USB ports is running at "half-speed" a computer with 4 USB ports? Seriously, this article is the result of a basic failure in reading comprehension. Here is Anandtech's description:
"Light Ridge supports four bidirectional 10Gbps channels (20Gbps total per channel) channels and two DisplayPort inputs/outputs. On the iMac it's used to drive two ports on the back of the system.
Eagle Ridge is half of Light Ridge. You get two bidirectional 10Gbps channels (20Gbps total per channel) and one DisplayPort input/output."
My opinion is that Thunderbolt is Firewire redux: a good idea that the industry never really bought into because "good enough" USB was available for cheaper.