Intel’s Ivy Bridge mobile CPU lineup revealed, coming April/May

[Walter Soyka]

[Craig Seeman] “I thought the general consensus on the forum (with a few exceptions) is that Apple’s objective was to piss off professionals.”

I’d say that Apple is designing products that professionals can use, but they are no longer designing products specifically for professional use.

Like you’ve said, the objective is broader reach. Upsetting people in the niches Apple used to cater to is just a side effect.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Chris Harlan]

[Craig Seeman] “I’m not sure if they ever marketed MacPro or MBPs in their end of year tax write off emails. They’re looking for broadest reach sales.
“

For business? For write-offs? I just went back and looked a bit. This is the first year in the last five without a featured MBP, and the second without FCP.

[Lemur Hayop]

I wonder how many devices Thunderbolt can really hold.

thunderbolt display
1. 3 usb ports
2. firewire 800 port
3. ethernet

4. thunderbolt port
a. magma ExpressBox 3T
I. 3 pci cards
II. “Daisy chain up to 6 Thunderbolt devices” (Magma’s claim)

thunderbolt overload? this is where apple wants to put pro systems? on an imac or laptop? from one port?

[Craig Seeman]

Top iMac has two ports and I strongly believe whatever replaces the MacPro will have at least 3. Each supposedly can sustain 6 TB devices without speed issues. If you put a “slow” device on the chain it must be last though but it shouldn’t have impact from what I’ve read if last.

Thunderbolt is 2 bidirectional channels of 10Gbps.
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-technology/thunderbolt/thunderbolt-technology-brief.html
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbolt_(interface)

[Andrew Richards]

[Craig Seeman] “Top iMac has two ports…”

But only one controller:

“A single Thunderbolt port is capable of 20Gbps of bandwidth (10Gbps in each direction), so that works out well (if you don’t use any of the other PCIe devices in the system at the same time). While the 21.5-inch iMac has a single Thunderbolt port, the 27-inch model has two. That’s a total of up to 40Gbps of bandwidth to Thunderbolt devices, but only 20Gbps to the controller itself. Don’t be fooled by the presence of two Thunderbolt ports on the 27-inch iMac, you don’t get any more bandwidth than you would on the 21.5-inch model – you can just hook up more displays.“

Best,
Andy

[Craig Seeman]

Ugh! Time for Apple to do a re design which would up the price so something closer to a MacPro.
I guess the lack of peripherals has meant that there hasn’t been a large number of complaint as a result of lots of things hanging off of each port.

I wonder what typical config might bottleneck this. RAID, Video i/o, Thunderbolt display . . . what else would someone throw on there? PCIe extender box by Magma or Sonnet with three cards in it, but would you be using them at the same time? Basically at what point would a config result in a problem?

[Craig Seeman]

MacWorld article relevant to the impact of Thunderbolt Daisy-chaining.
https://www.macworld.com/article/163773/2011/12/thunderbolt_how_devices_affect_each_other_on_a_daisy_chain.html

They did a test on iMac with two Thunderbolt ports and putting monitors on the separate ports improved throughput compared to both on a single port.

we attached the second Thunderbolt Display to the iMac’s second Thunderbolt port and found performance to come back to the level of a setup with just one Thunderbolt Display attached.