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I searched this thread for Thunderbolt and USB and nothing. The only way this can work if they implement USB 4. That's earlier than expected but not by much. U

by chx 6y ago

I searched this thread for Thunderbolt and USB and nothing. The only way this can work if they implement USB 4. That's earlier than expected but not by much. USB 4 came out last September and everyone was guesstimating 18 months before the first systems ship with it. AMD shipping it with the Ryzen 4xxx laptop chips would've been a really big win but apparently it was too early. And now, as with Thunderbolt, it seems Apple will be the first. As far as I understand these things, you can connect a TB3 device to a full featured USB 4 port (which Intel plans to market as TB4 just to increase confusion as if there isn't of that around USB C). Not necessarily the other way around: the USB 4 bus while compatible with the TB3 bus, can contain USB packets, TB3 only carried PCIe and DP packets. Areca has an amazing SAN-in-a-box product: it's a 24 bay 4U RAID box which allows as many as nine TB3 hosts to connect to it at the same time and it's immensely popular with various movie / TV show production. It's less than 10K USD which is an absolute bargain for the capabilities. Consider the 2K price of just one 40gbps Ethernet to TB3 adapter which you'd need for a traditional SAN. Devices like these make TB3 compatibility an absolute must for Macbooks.

slantyyz 6y ago
I have to wonder if Apple even needs to worry about TB on the Apple Silicon computers moving forward. Now that they're going down the path towards controlling everything in their computer hardware, I can see Apple creating a new proprietary high performance interface to replace TB and use USB for everything else that requires interoperability.
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  A lot of TB devices are reliant on PCIe over TB, so we will have to see if there is a way of exposing a PCI interface or equivalent.
pram 6y ago
You can have thunderbolt controllers without an Intel processor, there’s nothing that precludes it from working.
- chx 6y ago
  There is one (as in, one) certified AMD motherboard and I can't Intel rushing to help Apple out with TB3 when they are ditching their CPU. No, it will be USB 4.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - nudgeee 6y ago
    There are a bunch of 3rd party dock manufacturers (CalDigit, Belkin, Dell, HP, IBM, etc) that incorporate Intel TB controllers without issue.
    - chx 6y ago
      Yes. That's because they do not compete directly with Intel. It's certainly a thawing of matters that an extremely high end AMD motherboard that will sell about a thousand copies altogether got a cert. Good job Intel. I doubt, however, they will give Apple a helping hand in moving away from their CPUs. Of course I could be wrong. But why would even Apple bother with this when they can just throw a giant wad of cash at Asmedia to accelerate their USB4 development a tiny bit and then they are free of Intel, forever. To recap, Asmedia said in January they are working on an USB4 chip to ship this year.
ghshephard 6y ago
Apple is already running USB-C 3.1 Gen 2 with it's IPAD, so that's not a stretch. The DTK has two USB-C ports (10 Gbps) and two USB-A Ports (5 Gbps) - so, they definitely have a USB story.
- chx 6y ago
  3.1 Gen 2 is 10gbps USB + DisplayPort and DisplayPort doesn't mix -- out of the four high speed lanes it either gets two or four lanes. Now full USB 4 is a 40gbps bus with mixed PCI Express, DisplayPort and USB packets. It is not a small change.
billyhoffman 6y ago
You'll notice all the demos of macOS Big Sur were shown using a Pro XDR Display, connected to hardware that was later revealed to be the MacMini+A12Z/Developer Transition Hardware. And during the Maya demo, it was a Pro XDR Display explicitly connected to the Developer hardware. Which is interesting, because the Pro XDR Display can only be driven TB3 [1]. So Apple figured out the licensing for a TB3 controller chip to work in this design (which funny enough would be licensing that IP from Intel), or they are using USB4/TB4, or something else I'm not smart enough to think of. 1- https://www.apple.com/pro-display-xdr/specs/ https://www.apple.com/pro-display-xdr/specs/
- tomaskafka 6y ago
  Or they are bullshitting - even if the Dev kit wasn't ready to connect to XDR, they wouldn’t dare to show it. Which monitor would they even show it on? 10 year old Cinema? Glossy plastic Acer? :)

by chx 6y ago

slantyyz 6y ago

I have to wonder if Apple even needs to worry about TB on the Apple Silicon computers moving forward. Now that they're going down the path towards controlling everything in their computer hardware, I can see Apple creating a new proprietary high performance interface to replace TB and use USB for everything else that requires interoperability.

sudosysgen 6y ago
A lot of TB devices are reliant on PCIe over TB, so we will have to see if there is a way of exposing a PCI interface or equivalent.

pram 6y ago

You can have thunderbolt controllers without an Intel processor, there’s nothing that precludes it from working.

chx 6y ago
There is one (as in, one) certified AMD motherboard and I can't Intel rushing to help Apple out with TB3 when they are ditching their CPU. No, it will be USB 4.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- nudgeee 6y ago
  There are a bunch of 3rd party dock manufacturers (CalDigit, Belkin, Dell, HP, IBM, etc) that incorporate Intel TB controllers without issue.
  - chx 6y ago
    Yes. That's because they do not compete directly with Intel. It's certainly a thawing of matters that an extremely high end AMD motherboard that will sell about a thousand copies altogether got a cert. Good job Intel. I doubt, however, they will give Apple a helping hand in moving away from their CPUs. Of course I could be wrong. But why would even Apple bother with this when they can just throw a giant wad of cash at Asmedia to accelerate their USB4 development a tiny bit and then they are free of Intel, forever. To recap, Asmedia said in January they are working on an USB4 chip to ship this year.

ghshephard 6y ago

Apple is already running USB-C 3.1 Gen 2 with it's IPAD, so that's not a stretch. The DTK has two USB-C ports (10 Gbps) and two USB-A Ports (5 Gbps) - so, they definitely have a USB story.

chx 6y ago
3.1 Gen 2 is 10gbps USB + DisplayPort and DisplayPort doesn't mix -- out of the four high speed lanes it either gets two or four lanes. Now full USB 4 is a 40gbps bus with mixed PCI Express, DisplayPort and USB packets. It is not a small change.

billyhoffman 6y ago

You'll notice all the demos of macOS Big Sur were shown using a Pro XDR Display, connected to hardware that was later revealed to be the MacMini+A12Z/Developer Transition Hardware. And during the Maya demo, it was a Pro XDR Display explicitly connected to the Developer hardware. Which is interesting, because the Pro XDR Display can only be driven TB3 [1]. So Apple figured out the licensing for a TB3 controller chip to work in this design (which funny enough would be licensing that IP from Intel), or they are using USB4/TB4, or something else I'm not smart enough to think of. 1- https://www.apple.com/pro-display-xdr/specs/ https://www.apple.com/pro-display-xdr/specs/

tomaskafka 6y ago
Or they are bullshitting - even if the Dev kit wasn't ready to connect to XDR, they wouldn’t dare to show it. Which monitor would they even show it on? 10 year old Cinema? Glossy plastic Acer? :)