Thunderbolt in current and future laptops(marco.org)
marco.org
Thunderbolt in current and future laptops
http://www.marco.org/2011/05/08/thunderbolt
6 comments
In addition to being able to reduce the size of laptops, I hope Thunderbolt will enable the next generation Cinema display to feature gigabit ethernet and firewire connectors, making it possible to connect a single cable (two, if you count the MagSafe) to seamlessly transform a laptop into an iMac.
Thunderbolt (and Displayport, in v1.2) also supports a daisy chain topology, so even if it didn't, you could plug such a device between the display and the laptop..
When Intel was demonstrating Light Peak and citing Apple as a collaborator, I was hoping that they could go with optical fiber embedded in the MagSafe power cord.
Maybe it will be in the next generation of Thunderbolt.
Maybe it will be in the next generation of Thunderbolt.
I was actually hoping that they would build a small, low-power GPU into the Cinema Display so that I can daisy chain five off them off a Macbook Air and have each provide its own "graphics card" over Thunderbolt.
There's an interesting idea... though I have no idea how well it would work. The bandwidth is still massively below what graphics cards typically need. With some OS changes and essentially half-remote-desktopping to a dumb terminal display, it could work, though...
You have given me thoughts. Thanks :D
You have given me thoughts. Thanks :D
I'm excited to see what devices are created for Thunderbolt. It seems to me to be like the LED was: a solution in search of a problem and history seems to indicate that exciting things come from solutions in search of problems. For example, imagine being able to connect to FIOS directly through Thunderbolt for 10GB/s bidirectional speeds. You could livestream 4K video with bandwidth to spare. Welcome to the future, gentleman.
From a security perspective Thunderbolt is one of the worst things that can happen.
Imagine being a speaker at a conference where you use your own laptop for a presentation and where (at some point in the future) the projector only has a Thunderbolt interface. Are you going to connect your laptop? If you do the projector has basically full access to your laptops memory - and therefore full control over your laptop. Even if you use disk encryption this does not help, as the key is still stored somewhere in memory.
I think that if there's one thing that we've learned in the past two decades it's that physical interfaces should try to provide a little bit of security. With Thunderbolt, all security is traded for a little bit of additional performance.
Imagine being a speaker at a conference where you use your own laptop for a presentation and where (at some point in the future) the projector only has a Thunderbolt interface. Are you going to connect your laptop? If you do the projector has basically full access to your laptops memory - and therefore full control over your laptop. Even if you use disk encryption this does not help, as the key is still stored somewhere in memory.
I think that if there's one thing that we've learned in the past two decades it's that physical interfaces should try to provide a little bit of security. With Thunderbolt, all security is traded for a little bit of additional performance.
The article mentions this issue explicitly. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbolt_(interface)#Securit..., Nehalem (and later) CPUs have an IOMMU that let the OS choose which parts of memory to map into the device's address space.
In other words, this issue has been dealt with: you don't expose all of your laptop's memory to Thunderbolt devices.
In other words, this issue has been dealt with: you don't expose all of your laptop's memory to Thunderbolt devices.
Don't USB and Firewire both have DMA as well? This sort of attack has been possible for a long time: http://replay.web.archive.org/20090402130220/http://storm.ne...
Yes, Firewire also uses DMA, but hardly anyone uses Firewire anymore :) And even the people who still use Firewire typically don't use it to connect to third-party devices (such as projectors).
With USB I must to admit that I'm not 100% sure. I've always assumed that USB does not use DMA, but after googling it it seems that there's some DMA support in USB. Would be interesting to know if there's some kind of fallback mode - e.g., in order to use a less efficient (but more secure) protocol if the computer does not support (or enable) DMA.
With USB I must to admit that I'm not 100% sure. I've always assumed that USB does not use DMA, but after googling it it seems that there's some DMA support in USB. Would be interesting to know if there's some kind of fallback mode - e.g., in order to use a less efficient (but more secure) protocol if the computer does not support (or enable) DMA.
Turning on the firmware password on a Mac blocks Firewire DMA access to main memory, if you're concerned about that.
DMA has historically been Firewire's one big advantage over USB, which even in the 3.0 revision doesn't do DMA.
IOMMU support is going to be universal long before DisplayPort support (let alone Thunderbolt support) is even common for projectors.
What makes you think the projector "has access to all your memory" any more than any random card has? That's simply not true, and completely depends on the driver. Maybe the projector can get your computer to hang or crash, but it seems to me that building security feature into this isn't very hard, even without sacrificing performance.
Because Thunderbolt is basically an extension of the PCI bus. This means that the protocol _is_designed_ to grant full memory access to external devices (in fact that's the way how the DMA data transfer in Thunderbolt works).
With other protocols such as USB or DisplayPort you don't have those issues. Of course, a faulty driver could be used to compromise the system, but the protocol itself is secure.
With other protocols such as USB or DisplayPort you don't have those issues. Of course, a faulty driver could be used to compromise the system, but the protocol itself is secure.
I hope somebody is planning an external graphics card.
Would be very slow, considering a thunderbolt channel is roughly similar to 1x PCI-E v3.
I would also expect greater latencies than on internal PCI-E.
While it would probably be nice for GPGPU cases where not (if mot all) the working set stays on-board, that's far from the general usage case for GPUs right now.
Even for multiple-screen it would not be that useful: DisplayPort 1.2 handles chaining, and where you have two Thunderbolt ports you have two DisplayPort ports.
I would also expect greater latencies than on internal PCI-E.
While it would probably be nice for GPGPU cases where not (if mot all) the working set stays on-board, that's far from the general usage case for GPUs right now.
Even for multiple-screen it would not be that useful: DisplayPort 1.2 handles chaining, and where you have two Thunderbolt ports you have two DisplayPort ports.
Oh god, how did I manager to submit a comment containing "where not (if mot all)"?
I, of course, meant "where most (if not all)". Sorry about that.
I, of course, meant "where most (if not all)". Sorry about that.
To be clear, is Thunderbolt the remains of LightPeak? Or is that still happening...
Thunderbolt is LightPeak.
sans Light, though
But when it moves from copper-->optical then it can become "lightning bolt"
When exactly are we expecting new line of MacBook Pro's?
http://guides.macrumors.com/Mac_Pro_Buyer%27s_Guide is a reasonable resource (not sure if you're already aware of it?)
Time since last update aside, I reckon a June release timed to coincide with that of the new version of Final Cut Pro ( http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/04/12/apple_unveils_... ) would make a lot of sense.
Time since last update aside, I reckon a June release timed to coincide with that of the new version of Final Cut Pro ( http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/04/12/apple_unveils_... ) would make a lot of sense.
Seems reasonable for the Mac Pros. But for MacBook Pros, they just updated the line, so the next revision is probably going to be a 2012 thing.