Correction: Ivy Bridge and Thunderbolt - Featured, not Integrated
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 1, 2011 4:48 PM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
- CPUs
- Intel
- Thunderbolt
- Ivy Bridge
Intel just emailed me to clarify a point from its Ivy Bridge presentation on Tuesday. While USB 3.0 will finally be integrated into the chipset, Thunderbolt will not. Intel clarified that the interface will be featured on some 2012 platforms but it wouldn't be on all and it won't be integrated into the chipset.
Thanks to the readers who questioned our original interpretation of the slide and my apologies for the confusion.
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MobiusStrip - Friday, June 3, 2011 - link
That should be: THEY'RE simply not going to put it out.epobirs - Saturday, June 4, 2011 - link
Perhaps you've forgotten but FireWire WAS some Apple thing. There is a reason why it's known as 1394 most places. And it wasn't Intel that made FireWire an also ran outside of niche applications. You can look to Steve Jobs, another Apple thing, for that. He demanded absurd royalties per port for FireWire implementations that guaranteed nobody was going to put it in their chip sets except Apple. Job eventually relented on the price but by then work was well underway on USB 2.0.The fact is, the bulk of PC buyers don't know yet what to do with Thunderbolt. Building up interest and applications with it as a PCI-e card or motherboard subsystem is a perfectly fine way to get the standard into the market. Until there is real market demand it would just serve to drive up the price of chip sets for little benefit to most.
Think about it. If you had Thunderbolt in your system tomorrow, what would you do with it that you cannot achieve by other existing means? It improves things and opens up some new possibilities but the world needs time to react. Intel doesn't want a repeat of the 90s when millions of machines went out with USB 1.0 ports that never saw any use.
AmdInside - Wednesday, June 1, 2011 - link
I don't mind. I wasn't going to go out of my way to get a motherboard with Thunderbolt. USB 3.0 yes. Thunderbolt meh.MobiusStrip - Friday, June 3, 2011 - link
and up with underperforming, processor-burdening USB.Wwhat - Saturday, June 4, 2011 - link
You might want to read up on what USB3 brings new in its specs, they were aware of the issues with USB2 and that it was not a matter of just raising the numbers/frequencies and they added modes to it.jb510 - Thursday, June 2, 2011 - link
I was wondering how this could be possible based on how big the thunderbolt chip in the MBPs is, seems like a lot of extra silicon to include... maybe I'm naive though and this isn't really an issue.OneArmedScissorB - Friday, June 3, 2011 - link
That was my first thought, as well, but if it's currently 65nm, they could easily cut it in half, along with the current 65nm southbridges, and merge them together for a fairly normal size chip.If they really wanted, they could even build just the southbridges with Thunderbolt at 32nm and charge more for them, while the rest stay a node or two back.
It's entirely possible, but they just don't seem to care to make anything of the silicon they are saving as of late.
jb510 - Friday, June 10, 2011 - link
Nice to know I wasn't completely alone in that thought :)Thanks for the extra info too.
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