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thunderbolt on mac pro?
I’m sure there is a better forum, but I’ve heard all about this new “thunderbolt” technology on the new MacBook pro, and was wondering why they didn’t release this technology with the new 12-core Mac Pro towers.
As I see it, to take full advantage of the speed, this port will require a RAID array…or if it were a single drive, it would have to be a faster RPM than what I would consider “standard” – 7200rpm drives. That being said, a RAID array or 10K rpm drive is going to require more than just bus power…so you will HAVE to be tethered to an outlet…so why introduce such a port on a laptop? Seems suited more for a desktop application…and since they just recently released the 12 core…seems like a missed opportunity.
Am I missing something? I haven’t heard of this connection before…so maybe I’m wrong.
-Jason
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7 Replies
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Hay Jason
It’s new tech mate, thats all she wrote … Intel have been working on it for the last couple years, Apple couldn’t just halt production until it was ready. At some point they have to decide its ready, and that point didn’t come in time for the last MacPro release but did make the new MacBookPro release. And besides, its good business. This is game changing tech with a real “must have” buzz, so when Apple is ready to release a new MacPro revision with Thunderbolt technology on the motherboard then folks will want to buy new ones despite having darn good older models already … thats good business for Apple. The business of post-production is constantly riding the wave of new tech … its cool, but every now and again we have to paddle back out if we want to ride along with every one else, thats just the nature of it.
Cheer
Andy -
I think the obvious answer to that is because Thunderbolt is just now being released as a commercial product, whereas the 12-core Mac Pro tower was released several months ago.
Intel already has a Thunderbolt PCI-X card in production, so I’m sure adding Thunderbolt to a Mac Pro will be as simple as popping the card into the x16 slot.
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[Mark Petereit] “Intel already has a Thunderbolt PCI-X card in production”
Got a link Mark? Every other direct quote from Intel that I recall seeing has said that Thunderbolt will not be something you can add, and that it needs to be on the motherboard.
Thanks, this will be great if true.
Andy -
Yes, the news is that you will need a computer with a motherboard compatible with Thunderbolt.
And the future for this connection is for flash drives – they can work at speeds far faster than the old school and will be the “portable” option. LaCie has announced their version already..
https://www.lacie.com/us/technologies/technology.htm?id=10039
Plus you get 2 ports for the price of one space being that it will work for both drives and monitors.
I would not be surprised if there are new towers out around NAB or whenever they decide to finally announce the rumored new FCP.
Liam Lawyer
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Ah, thanks for the correction. I know at least one of the Lightpeak demos had the tech built into a standard PCIe card. I guess the whores in Marketing jumped all over someone’s case there.
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I hope the new technology will bring down the cost of a Flash Raid System since it seems this is where one gets the most benefit.
Victor
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Well, theoretically, the price of an external RAID system would come down by the cost of the internal RAID card currently required – which for a solid card right now, currently runs about $700. But, an external hardware-based RAID also requires hardware on the external RAID itself, i.e. – the RAID controller card(s). If by “Flash RAID System” you’re referring to RAIDS utilizing SSD drives, then that cost is pretty much dependent on the cost of SSD drives themselves. Those are still pretty pricey if you’re looking into getting a good hardware based external RAID array that can be striped as RAID-5 for redundancy (4 drive minimum), especially if you need a reasonable amount of storage, say 8 TB (before formatting).
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