Way back in July of 2012 Tim Verry wrote a news story on PC Perspective discussing the upcoming Falcon Ridge and Cactus Ridge Thunderbolt controllers, due out in 2014 and 2013 respectively. It appears this is coming to fruition at the NAB Show 2013 this week in Las Vegas, with two new variants of Thunderbolt on display by Intel.
Cactus Ridge, now known as the DSL4510 and 4410 controllers will add support for DisplayPort 1.2 when connected to native DisplayPort displays while also improving power management and lowering the implementation costs for hardware designers.
Maybe more exciting is the prototype of next-generation silicon for Thunderbolt, code named Falcon Ridge, that runs at 20 Gbps, double that of current Thunderbolt implementations. Intel promises that this will enable 4K video file transfer and display simultaneously. As expected, production will start in late 2013 with ramping in 2014.
Thunderbolt's integration into the consumer market has been slower than expected but professionals are seeing more and more uses for this kind of extreme bandwidth as the video production pipeline prepares for large scale 4K distribution. We are using Thunderbolt internally at PC Perspective for our Frame Rating capture based graphics testing running at nearly 800 MB/s we have been happy with the results.
I have zero uses for
I have zero uses for thunderbolt, and while it’s an interesting idea, until it becomes less expensive and has more market integration, USB 3.0 and DVI are just fine.
Thunderbolt will be of use
Thunderbolt will be of use once there is a few years production of external GPU enclosures, and non Apple laptops come with two of these faster thundercolt channels! I doubt Apple will ever allow external GPU enclosures for their Macbook pros!
It says its for 4K resolution
It says its for 4K resolution as well as data. I intent to buy a 4K TV or an 8K Tv depending on how much money I have at the end of 2014.
An 8k TV would make an
An 8k TV would make an interesting computer display but I’m doubtful of any 8k media being available at the end of 2014. There is very little 4k media available now.
So that would be PCIe 8x
So that would be PCIe 8x speed on one Falcon Ridge 20 Gbps
port, and if the controler had two ports what level video card would it take saturate the bandwidth?
Someone should make some
Someone should make some thunderbolt external floppy drives, rs-232 adapters, PS/2 adapters, IRDA adapters, and parallel port adapters.