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Many AMD enthusiast motherboards ship with Thunderbolt. It's a straightforward technology to implement and I believe it is now royalty free. The only implement

Many AMD enthusiast motherboards ship with Thunderbolt. It's a straightforward technology to implement and I believe it is now royalty free. The only implementations are Intel's though and I'm sure they're expensive. Expansion is a complicated business model. Apple doesn't even ship headphone ports. The AirPods are smash hit, not least because when you sell a $1,100 device a $100 accessory suddenly seems really well priced. PCs are similarly pretty high ticket items, that market supports a situation where spending $100 on custom internal PSU cabling is not that bad. The Raspberry Pi is tough. Accessories cost more than 2x the device. It's a model that doesn't really make sense. You could say that people are buying these accessories, but really its greatest limiting factor is that it's too cheap, it's hard to psychologically deliver on the big ticket item + accessories shopping cart for it.

rektide 6y ago
Intel has Thunderbolt integrated onto their CPU, which seems natural & like what I would want in the future from everyone. Current Intel host-adapters seem to be ~$10 for the dual-port chip itself[1] (JHL8540). Not sure how much else it adds to the bill-of-material beyond a regular USB port! Adding it direct to the CPU would be a wonderful way to save space, & significantly reduce how hard it is to implement, since one would no longer need to route USB and PCIe and power to this extra chip. I wouldn't expect Thunderbolt support on the low end for a long time. But I really do think it's really time that cpu makers begin offering it onboard. They already need to start moving towards USB4. Adding PCIe as well would be a courtesy, & a big enabler, for their customers. Hopefully we see these great awesome futures begin arriving in a more well-distributed manner. [1] https://www.mouser.com/new/intel/intel-8000-thunderbolt-4-controllers/ https://www.mouser.com/new/intel/intel-8000-thunderbolt-4-co...
akiselev 6y ago
Intel's reference designs for thunderbolt are behind NDAs so it's a pain in the ass to implement on a PCB and I don't think the controllers themselves (or their datasheets) are easily sourceable either. The Pi foundation has probably got the pull to do it but it would take quite a bit of effort since it would make the Pi an easily available competing reference design, possibly running into internal politics at Intel.

rektide 6y ago

Intel has Thunderbolt integrated onto their CPU, which seems natural & like what I would want in the future from everyone. Current Intel host-adapters seem to be ~$10 for the dual-port chip itself[1] (JHL8540). Not sure how much else it adds to the bill-of-material beyond a regular USB port! Adding it direct to the CPU would be a wonderful way to save space, & significantly reduce how hard it is to implement, since one would no longer need to route USB and PCIe and power to this extra chip. I wouldn't expect Thunderbolt support on the low end for a long time. But I really do think it's really time that cpu makers begin offering it onboard. They already need to start moving towards USB4. Adding PCIe as well would be a courtesy, & a big enabler, for their customers. Hopefully we see these great awesome futures begin arriving in a more well-distributed manner. [1] https://www.mouser.com/new/intel/intel-8000-thunderbolt-4-controllers/ https://www.mouser.com/new/intel/intel-8000-thunderbolt-4-co...

akiselev 6y ago

Intel's reference designs for thunderbolt are behind NDAs so it's a pain in the ass to implement on a PCB and I don't think the controllers themselves (or their datasheets) are easily sourceable either. The Pi foundation has probably got the pull to do it but it would take quite a bit of effort since it would make the Pi an easily available competing reference design, possibly running into internal politics at Intel.