Computex 2013: Thunderbolt Graphics from SilverStone
by Ian Cutress on June 6, 2013 9:34 PM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
- SilverStone
- Thunderbolt
- Computex 2013
Visiting the SilverStone booth was rather interesting. In a similar ilk to MSI’s GUS which used Thunderbolt to transmit data over PCIe, Silverstone are developing their own at-home device capable of dual-width GPUs up to 450W.
This is still in the development cycle – the main issue with MSI’s device (and I’d assume Silverstone as well) is how to deal with hot-plugging during the middle of intense GPU workloads. Aside from frame buffer management, at the point in time when the device is detatched there is no longer access to any data on the card – the PC or laptop then has to transfer what it knows to the frame buffer on the IGP and recalculate. Sounds easy-ish, but not a trivial task by any means.
Silverstone told me there is no release date as such as they are still in the alpha phase of development, but they are aiming for the $200-250 price point without a GPU.
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Death666Angel - Friday, June 7, 2013 - link
And by 10th grade physics you realize that with the force fans typically produce, natural convections plays a minuscule role.DanNeely - Friday, June 7, 2013 - link
You're trying to flip it a different way than I'm suggesting. Spin it around the vertical axis so the cards fan is up against an exterior vent, not facing the internal volume of the enclosure.hypopraxia - Friday, June 7, 2013 - link
I have wanted and waited for exactly this product. External GPU connected via Thunderbolt that feeds its frame buffer back to the internal display. -:excited:- :) Dedicated GPU at home, integrated GPU on the go. It's so... elegant.twistedgamez - Friday, June 7, 2013 - link
the frame buffer is not sent back to the original display in current solutions, i am quite sure that you need to plug an external display into the graphics card, i believe the thunderbolt 1 cable essentially acts as a 4x pcie extension cablelook at the linked MSI page and the Sonnet thunderbolt echo express and the videos on youtube of them in action
thunderbolt currently runs pcie 4x v2 - hopefully thunderbolt 2 can is 8x v2 or 4x v3...
jstapels - Friday, June 7, 2013 - link
Unfortunately, but hopefully we will eventually get to the stage where these are designed more as "framebuffer" accelerators.Death666Angel - Friday, June 7, 2013 - link
Already exists in some fashion. Many people have hacked their expresscard slots in the laptop to take advantage of the x1 or x4 PCIe interface for external GPUs.But the problem of what to do when hot-plugging remains, I believe.
winterspan - Saturday, June 8, 2013 - link
its not a hack... you can buy expresscard->PCIe shells for this very purpose. However, expresscard (1x PCIe) didn't have enough bandwidth for high-end GPUS.. I believe the one I saw had an ATI 3770 back when the 4870 was kingRyan Smith - Friday, June 7, 2013 - link
A GTX 480? Now these guys are just showing off. Haha.Khenglish - Friday, June 7, 2013 - link
With current thunderbolt graphics cards run on a restricted x4 pci-e 2.0 link. The bandwidth is only around 20% higher than x2 2.0. optimus will allow you to use your internal LCD screen just like if you had a dedicated gpu inside the laptop, but there will be a significant performance hit due to needing to send the frame buffer back over the small x2 2.0 link.nvidia has this pci-e compression that pops up when running x1 links. Would be nice if they expanded this to x2 and x4 links.
As for the cost it'd be nice if the price went down to that of the old bplus adapter, but $250 is far more reasonable than what sonnet wanted. They should offer a PSUless option for people who already have a desktop psu lying around to cut costs.
http://forum.techinferno.com/diy-e-gpu-projects/21...
jtd871 - Friday, June 7, 2013 - link
Sorry, Ian (and everybody else at AT). I really hate to link to an external review site, but there's already this bad beast:http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/turbobox-na255...
Shouldn't be too hard to substitute a Thunderbolt interface. Yes, it'll still have hot plug issues.