Thunderbolt

News from NAB, CES, IBC... Announcements from manufacturers for new products to come.
Post Reply
Chevypower
Posts: 10
Joined: 24 May 2010 21:55
Location: Idaho Falls

Thunderbolt

Post by Chevypower »

Just wondering if anyone else thinks we should expect a Thunderbolt interface on any upcoming cameras to be announced at CES 2011. It would obviously speed up the workflow immensely.
steve
Posts: 74
Joined: 28 May 2010 10:04
Location: UK

Re: Thunderbolt

Post by steve »

I doubt if there will be much take-up for a while. Apple is the only promoter at the moment and they represent a minority of computer systems. As far as data interfaces are concerned, USB and whatever the removable media interface is, seems to provide a route for compressed data. HDMI and (HD)SDI create uncompressed signal paths for consumer and professional equipment respectively.
As on-board media capacity expands, we may see USB3 or USB2/3 hybrid ports incorporated, but I can't see any workflow benefits of an arcane interface like Thunderbolt, just like Firewire 800 never appeared outside Apple's offerings.

Steve
User avatar
Stephan
Site Admin
Posts: 592
Joined: 20 Mar 2010 18:51
Location: Paris, France

Re: Thunderbolt

Post by Stephan »

And the Flash memory chips themselves can only go so far in delivering data at those speeds. 10 Gbits/s each way for Thunderbolt? That's about 4 times USB 3.0 alright. But remember why you have various classes of memory cards? Sooner or later, the memory becomes the bottleneck and raw interface speed may not matter so much at that point.
User avatar
Frank
Posts: 36
Joined: 23 May 2010 21:30
Location: New York, NY
Contact:

Re: Thunderbolt

Post by Frank »

Chevypower wrote:Just wondering if anyone else thinks we should expect a Thunderbolt interface on any upcoming cameras to be announced at CES 2011. It would obviously speed up the workflow immensely.
I'm sure that you meant "NAB 2011" (in April) and not "CES 2011" (which was held back in January), right?

With regard to NAB, Panasonic has already pre-announced some new P2 gear with USB 3.0 interfaces, the AG-HPD24 Deck and the AJ-PCD30 Drive.

Panasonic Europe pre-NAB 2011 news announcements round-up (six new products)
http://www.panasonic-broadcast.com/en/NAB2011.php

It's my understanding that Panasonic was quite surprised at Apple's recent announcement of new products incorporating Intel's Light Peak technology (called Thunderbolt by Apple) rather than USB 3.0.

As to Light Peak/Thunderbolt, I'll be more impressed by the forthcoming optical fiber version than the existing copper wire based version.

Frank, Independent Consultant, New York, NY
Read Frank's thoughts on HDV
[ also covers AVCHD (including AVCCAM & NXCAM) and XDCAM EX ].
Chevypower
Posts: 10
Joined: 24 May 2010 21:55
Location: Idaho Falls

Re: Thunderbolt

Post by Chevypower »

Yeah I meant NAB, not CES. Lacie has adopted Thunderbolt also for their solid state hard drives. Rumors are the Canon and Nikon will use Thunderbolt for their high-end DSLRs. Frank, how fast will the fiber optic version be? I thought the current version was fiber optic.
User avatar
Frank
Posts: 36
Joined: 23 May 2010 21:30
Location: New York, NY
Contact:

Re: Thunderbolt

Post by Frank »

Chevypower wrote:Yeah I meant NAB, not CES.
Thought so.
Chevypower wrote:Lacie has adopted Thunderbolt also for their solid state hard drives.
Yes, everyone will soon, if only as a marketing point.
Chevypower wrote:Rumors are the Canon and Nikon will use Thunderbolt for their high-end DSLRs.
Yes, I've heard that Canon will for certain.
Chevypower wrote:Frank, how fast will the fiber optic version be?
Currently, the same nominal 10 Gbps as the copper version. The copper version has a much more severe cable length restriction than the fiber version: about 1 meter for the copper version versus up to about 100 meters for the fiber version. Of course, the fiber version can't carry power whereas the copper version will carry up to about 10 watts, which can be useful for powering various types of devices. And, of course, the optical version, being optical and not electrical, will neither generate RF nor be affected by RFI.
Chevypower wrote:I thought the current version was fiber optic.
No, copper only initially. My gut feeling is that Apple pushed Intel to release the copper version when they did - not to mention the change in name. :)

Maybe I'm jaded, but I'm also not particularly impressed with the speed. I mean, 10 Gbps Ethernet (10 GigE) is now quite common in many environments and some folks are running 40 GigE and even 100 GigE networks, although it could be argued that it's not entirely fair to compare a networking transport with a device connection interface.

Ultimately, the fiber version of Light Peak/Thunderbolt may well go at rates up to 100 Gbps.

Regards,

Frank, Independent Consultant, New York, NY
Read Frank's thoughts on HDV
[ also covers AVCHD (including AVCCAM & NXCAM) and XDCAM EX ].
Post Reply