04-03-2013, 09:53 AM
THUNDERBOLT TECHNOLOGY
[attachment=52482]
INTRODUCTION
The present era is the era of connectivity. Think of any sort of information, and it can be transferred to us within question of a little time; be it audio information, video information or any other form of data.
Now talking about transferring data between our computer and the other peripherals, the first and foremost standard comes to our mind is Universal Serial Bus (USB). It is a medium speed serial data addressable bus system which carry large amount of data to a relatively short distance (up to 5m).The present version USB 3.0 promises to provide theoretical speed of up to 5Gbps.
But Intel has unveiled a new interoperable standard called THUNDERBOLT(Light Peak) which can transfer data between computers and the peripherals at the speed of 10Gbps in both the directions with maximum range of 100m (much higher than USB or any other standard) and has potential to scale its speed high up to 100Gbps in near future.
Light Peak is the code name for thunderbolt technology, a new high-speed optical cable technology designed to connect electronic devices to each other.
It is basically an optical cable interface designed to connect devices in peripheral bus. It is being developed as a single universal replacement for the current buses such as SCSI, SATA, USB, FireWire, PCIExpress, and HDMI etc in an attempt to reduce the proliferation of ports on computers.
HISTORY
Intel introduced Thunder bolt at the 2009 Intel Developer Forum (IDF), using a prototype MacPro motherboard to run two 1080p video streams plus LAN and storage devices over a single 30-meter optical cable with modified USB ends. The system was driven by a prototype PCI Express card, with two optical buses powering four ports. At the show, Intel claimed that Thunder bolt-equipped systems would begin to appear in 2010.
On 4 May 2010, in Brussels, Intel demonstrated a laptop with a Thunder bolt connector, indicating that the technology had shrunk small enough to fit inside such a device, and had the laptop send two simultaneous HD video streams down the connection, indicating that at least some fraction of the software/firmware stacks and protocols were functional. At the same demonstration, Intel officials said they expected hardware manufacturing to begin around the end of 2010.
THUNDERBOLT TECHNOLOGY
Developed by Intel (under the code name Light Peak), and brought to market with technical collaboration from Apple. Thunderbolt technology is a new, high-speed, dual-protocol I/O technology designed for performance, simplicity, and flexibility. This high-speed data transfer technology features the following:
• Dual-channel 10 Gbps per port
• Bi-directional
• Dual-protocol (PCI Express* and Display port*)
• Compatible with existing Display Port devices
• Daisy-chained devices
• Electrical or optical cables
• Low latency with highly accurate time synchronization
• Uses native protocol software drivers
• Power over cable for bus-powered devices
POWERFULL TECHNOLOGY FROM A POWERFULL COLABORATION
Thunderbolt began at Intel Labs with a simple concept: create an incredibly fast input/output technology that just about anything can plug into. After close technical collaboration between Intel and Apple, Thunderbolt emerged from the lab to make its first appearance in MacBook Pro.
Intel co-invented USB and PCI Express, which have become widely adopted technologies for data transfer. Apple invented FireWire and was instrumental in popularizing USB. Their collective experience has made Thunderbolt the most powerful, most flexible I/O technology ever in a personal computer.
THUNDERBOLT TECHNOLOGY FEATURES
Optical networking technologies have been over the last two decades reshaping the entire telecom infrastructure networks around the world and as network bandwidth requirements increase, optical communication and networking technologies have been moving from their telecom origin into the enterprise and Thunderbolt is one of its successful outcome.
It is basically a new high-speed optical cable technology designed to connect electronic devices to each other. It also support multiple protocols simultaneously with the bidirectional speed of about 10Gbps (can scale up to about 100Gbps). In comparison to other bus standards like SATA and HDMI, it is much faster, smaller, longer ranged, and more flexible in terms of protocol support.
TODAYS CHALLENGES
In the coming future, people would be using more and more electrical devices such as HD devices, MIDs and many more and user experience would depend on the huge volume of data capturing, transfer, storage, and reconstruction. But existing electrical cable technology is approaching the practical limit for higher bandwidth and longer distance, due to the signal degradation caused by electro-magnetic interference (EMI) and signal integrity issues.
Higher bandwidth can be achieved by sending the signals down with more wires, but apparently this approach increases cost, power and difficulty of PCB layout, which explains why serial links such as SATA, SAS, and USB are becoming the mainstream.
However optical communications do not create EMI by using photonics rather than electrons, thus allowing higher bandwidth and longer distances. Besides, optical technology also allows for small form factors and longer, thinner cables.
Electrons v/s Photons
The physics has a kind of inevitability about it. Electrons travel through copper more slowly than light through fiber. The USB connectors on the smaller devices like mobile phones have to use mini-USB or micro-USB to save on the space taken up by the wiring and electricity through wire creates electric field interference, but light do not create EMI since it rely over photonics. Optical connecters can carry extremely narrow beams of light and fiber can be thinner because more streams can pass through glass or plastic passages. Each fiber is only 125 microns wide, the width of a human hair.
In the present scenario, the devices are getting smaller, thinner, and lighter but present connecting standards seems to hinder in their performance being to thicker and stiffer. So vendors turn over to new technologies providing much better performance and Thunderbolt seems to be a providing a good solution.
OPTICAL SUBASSEMBLY AND TRANSCEIVERS
To enable the reliable operation of laser diodes and photodiodes devices, an optical package is required. There are many discrete optical and electronic components, which are based on different technologies that must be optically aligned and integrated within the optical package. Optical packaging of laser diodes and photodiodes is the primary cost driver. These packages are called as Optical Sub-Assemblies (OSAs).
Tunable 10 Gbps lasers use a similar butterfly optical package. The butterfly package design uses a coaxial interface for passing broadband data into the package, which requires the use of a coaxial interface to the host Printed Circuit Board (PCB). To operate with high- performance, uncooled designs must be implemented with more advanced control systems that can adjust the laser and driver parameters over temperature.
CONCLUSION
Thunderbolt is a high-speed, multi-protocol interconnect for innovative and emerging client usage models, that complements other existing interconnects
Thunderbolt is the name for a new high-speed optical cable technology designed to connect electronic devices to each other. Thunderbolt delivers high bandwidth starting at 10Gb/s with the potential ability to scale to 100Gb/s over the next decade. At 10Gb/s, we can transfer a full-length Blu-Ray movie in less than 30 seconds. Thunderbolt allows for smaller connectors and longer, thinner, and more flexible cables than currently possible. Thunderbolt also has the ability to run multiple protocols simultaneously over a single cable, enabling the technology to connect devices such as peripherals, displays, disk drives, docking stations, and more.
Intel is working with the optical component manufacturers to make Thunderbolt components ready to ship in 2010, and will work with the industry to determine the best way to make this new technology a standard to accelerate its adoption on a plethora of devices including PCs, handheld devices, workstations, consumer electronic devices and more. Thunderbolt is complementary to existing I/O technologies, as it enables them to run together on a single cable at higher speeds.
[attachment=52482]
INTRODUCTION
The present era is the era of connectivity. Think of any sort of information, and it can be transferred to us within question of a little time; be it audio information, video information or any other form of data.
Now talking about transferring data between our computer and the other peripherals, the first and foremost standard comes to our mind is Universal Serial Bus (USB). It is a medium speed serial data addressable bus system which carry large amount of data to a relatively short distance (up to 5m).The present version USB 3.0 promises to provide theoretical speed of up to 5Gbps.
But Intel has unveiled a new interoperable standard called THUNDERBOLT(Light Peak) which can transfer data between computers and the peripherals at the speed of 10Gbps in both the directions with maximum range of 100m (much higher than USB or any other standard) and has potential to scale its speed high up to 100Gbps in near future.
Light Peak is the code name for thunderbolt technology, a new high-speed optical cable technology designed to connect electronic devices to each other.
It is basically an optical cable interface designed to connect devices in peripheral bus. It is being developed as a single universal replacement for the current buses such as SCSI, SATA, USB, FireWire, PCIExpress, and HDMI etc in an attempt to reduce the proliferation of ports on computers.
HISTORY
Intel introduced Thunder bolt at the 2009 Intel Developer Forum (IDF), using a prototype MacPro motherboard to run two 1080p video streams plus LAN and storage devices over a single 30-meter optical cable with modified USB ends. The system was driven by a prototype PCI Express card, with two optical buses powering four ports. At the show, Intel claimed that Thunder bolt-equipped systems would begin to appear in 2010.
On 4 May 2010, in Brussels, Intel demonstrated a laptop with a Thunder bolt connector, indicating that the technology had shrunk small enough to fit inside such a device, and had the laptop send two simultaneous HD video streams down the connection, indicating that at least some fraction of the software/firmware stacks and protocols were functional. At the same demonstration, Intel officials said they expected hardware manufacturing to begin around the end of 2010.
THUNDERBOLT TECHNOLOGY
Developed by Intel (under the code name Light Peak), and brought to market with technical collaboration from Apple. Thunderbolt technology is a new, high-speed, dual-protocol I/O technology designed for performance, simplicity, and flexibility. This high-speed data transfer technology features the following:
• Dual-channel 10 Gbps per port
• Bi-directional
• Dual-protocol (PCI Express* and Display port*)
• Compatible with existing Display Port devices
• Daisy-chained devices
• Electrical or optical cables
• Low latency with highly accurate time synchronization
• Uses native protocol software drivers
• Power over cable for bus-powered devices
POWERFULL TECHNOLOGY FROM A POWERFULL COLABORATION
Thunderbolt began at Intel Labs with a simple concept: create an incredibly fast input/output technology that just about anything can plug into. After close technical collaboration between Intel and Apple, Thunderbolt emerged from the lab to make its first appearance in MacBook Pro.
Intel co-invented USB and PCI Express, which have become widely adopted technologies for data transfer. Apple invented FireWire and was instrumental in popularizing USB. Their collective experience has made Thunderbolt the most powerful, most flexible I/O technology ever in a personal computer.
THUNDERBOLT TECHNOLOGY FEATURES
Optical networking technologies have been over the last two decades reshaping the entire telecom infrastructure networks around the world and as network bandwidth requirements increase, optical communication and networking technologies have been moving from their telecom origin into the enterprise and Thunderbolt is one of its successful outcome.
It is basically a new high-speed optical cable technology designed to connect electronic devices to each other. It also support multiple protocols simultaneously with the bidirectional speed of about 10Gbps (can scale up to about 100Gbps). In comparison to other bus standards like SATA and HDMI, it is much faster, smaller, longer ranged, and more flexible in terms of protocol support.
TODAYS CHALLENGES
In the coming future, people would be using more and more electrical devices such as HD devices, MIDs and many more and user experience would depend on the huge volume of data capturing, transfer, storage, and reconstruction. But existing electrical cable technology is approaching the practical limit for higher bandwidth and longer distance, due to the signal degradation caused by electro-magnetic interference (EMI) and signal integrity issues.
Higher bandwidth can be achieved by sending the signals down with more wires, but apparently this approach increases cost, power and difficulty of PCB layout, which explains why serial links such as SATA, SAS, and USB are becoming the mainstream.
However optical communications do not create EMI by using photonics rather than electrons, thus allowing higher bandwidth and longer distances. Besides, optical technology also allows for small form factors and longer, thinner cables.
Electrons v/s Photons
The physics has a kind of inevitability about it. Electrons travel through copper more slowly than light through fiber. The USB connectors on the smaller devices like mobile phones have to use mini-USB or micro-USB to save on the space taken up by the wiring and electricity through wire creates electric field interference, but light do not create EMI since it rely over photonics. Optical connecters can carry extremely narrow beams of light and fiber can be thinner because more streams can pass through glass or plastic passages. Each fiber is only 125 microns wide, the width of a human hair.
In the present scenario, the devices are getting smaller, thinner, and lighter but present connecting standards seems to hinder in their performance being to thicker and stiffer. So vendors turn over to new technologies providing much better performance and Thunderbolt seems to be a providing a good solution.
OPTICAL SUBASSEMBLY AND TRANSCEIVERS
To enable the reliable operation of laser diodes and photodiodes devices, an optical package is required. There are many discrete optical and electronic components, which are based on different technologies that must be optically aligned and integrated within the optical package. Optical packaging of laser diodes and photodiodes is the primary cost driver. These packages are called as Optical Sub-Assemblies (OSAs).
Tunable 10 Gbps lasers use a similar butterfly optical package. The butterfly package design uses a coaxial interface for passing broadband data into the package, which requires the use of a coaxial interface to the host Printed Circuit Board (PCB). To operate with high- performance, uncooled designs must be implemented with more advanced control systems that can adjust the laser and driver parameters over temperature.
CONCLUSION
Thunderbolt is a high-speed, multi-protocol interconnect for innovative and emerging client usage models, that complements other existing interconnects
Thunderbolt is the name for a new high-speed optical cable technology designed to connect electronic devices to each other. Thunderbolt delivers high bandwidth starting at 10Gb/s with the potential ability to scale to 100Gb/s over the next decade. At 10Gb/s, we can transfer a full-length Blu-Ray movie in less than 30 seconds. Thunderbolt allows for smaller connectors and longer, thinner, and more flexible cables than currently possible. Thunderbolt also has the ability to run multiple protocols simultaneously over a single cable, enabling the technology to connect devices such as peripherals, displays, disk drives, docking stations, and more.
Intel is working with the optical component manufacturers to make Thunderbolt components ready to ship in 2010, and will work with the industry to determine the best way to make this new technology a standard to accelerate its adoption on a plethora of devices including PCs, handheld devices, workstations, consumer electronic devices and more. Thunderbolt is complementary to existing I/O technologies, as it enables them to run together on a single cable at higher speeds.