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Having never tried to program a thunderbolt bus driver, but knowing that writing USB packet control code as being the biggest pain in the ass because the entire
by zanny 13y ago
Having never tried to program a thunderbolt bus driver, but knowing that writing USB packet control code as being the biggest pain in the ass because the entire standard is a hodge podge mess, I wonder if Thunderbolt is easy to implement connectors for.
Really though, the problem is like most licensed Intel tech they charge out the ass for licenses. They heavily jack up Intel CPUs and Thunderbolt to subsidize their huge R&D budget.
- Daniel_Newby 13y agoThunderbolt is just a long distance version of PCI Express, so existing PCIe device drivers should work just fine.
- zanny 13y agoThis sounds very interesting. I guess the only reason there has been no adoption of thunderbolt is just the silly license rent seeking Intel tries to pull on the interface, a lot like firewire.
- Daniel_Newby 13y agoLicensing fees have nothing to do with it. The reason is that Thunderbolt is expensive to manufacture, and mass-market computers have tiny profit margins. Adoption is starting. Newegg lists a variety of Thunderbolt gadgets. Mostly it seems to be storage products, where 10 Gbps Ethernet is needed but makes Thunderbolt look cheap.
- jevinskie 13y agoHow do you consider the USB standard a mess? I am quite impressed with it as a low-cost peripheral port that requires minimal hardware resources. I agree, it can be a pain to write for. My biggest difficulty was crafting HID descriptors! Yikes!
- ioquatix 13y agoHave you ever tried to push more than 6 keys on your keyboard? e.g. in local two-player games. Modern gaming motherboards come with a PS/2 port for a reason...
- dubyah 13y agoModern gaming keyboards come w/ full n-key rollover over USB. My Noppoo Choc Mini is capable of full NKRO whereas my Model M can't do the same over PS/2.
- Zr40 13y agoUSB doesn't impose a simultaneous key press limit that low, the keyboard does. The 'Report count' field of the 'Key codes' usage page of the keyboard's USB endpoint descriptor determines the maximum number of simultaneous key presses. This field is a byte, so it could be up to 255. The keyboard endpoint example in the USB HID spec does have 'Report count' set to 6.
- rogerbinns 13y agoGreg Kroah Hartman wrote about implementing Thunderbolt for Linux: http://www.kroah.com/log/linux/hardware.html http://www.kroah.com/log/linux/hardware.html (not a pretty story) I suspect Intel has realised that people who need Thunderbolt have no practical alternative. May as well charge what that market will bear for a while. AMD does have a low cost alternative - Lightening Bolt http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_Bolt_(interface) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_Bolt_(interface) - and I will admit that if it takes off and beats Intel/Thunderbolt I will smile a bit. It will be AMD64 all over again.
- zanny 13y agoI'm curious as to how the hell Intel can charge huge license fees on a pci express passthrough port. Though, it doesn't sound like Lightning Bolt is similar - the Displayport part, maybe, but USB is serial and has high latency compared to the pcie bridge.
- rogerbinns 13y ago> I'm curious as to how the hell Intel can charge huge license fees on a pci express passthrough port. They aren't - they charge the fees for Thunderbolt. You can't claim something supports Thunderbolt without paying licensing fees. > it doesn't sound like Lightning Bolt is similar You can draw a venn diagram and find that all three have an overlap. A desire for fewer cables, to be able to connect lots of stuff, and bang for the buck. Display, storage, peripherals etc. Outside of the venn diagram, Thunderbolt does have low latency, but most don't need or want to pay for it. If Thunderbolt support was as pervasive and cheap as USB, it would be a different conversation.