New thunderbolt interface

[John_Toolbox]

Looks like Motu has made a thunderbolt version of the 828:

http://www.motu.com/products/motuaudio/828x

So far, this is the cheapest thunderbolt interface I'm aware of. Other than the thunderbolt connection, it appears to be identical to the 5+ year old 828mk3, so it probably doesn't sound as good as the other thunderbolt interfaces currently available, but it's still a lot of bang for the buck when you consider how many IO it has. I'm curious to see if it has improved latency when compared to it's predecessor (could not find specs on the site).

As Thunderbolt becomes more widely adopted, Hi-speed USB 2.0 provides across-the-board compatibility with virtually all laptops and desktops on both Mac and Windows.

Hmm... OK

Since USB 2.0 devices are compatible with USB 3.0-equipped hosts, your 828x interface is a future-proof investment in your studio.

Hahaha - good joke!

So what’s Intel to do? Offer a Thunderbolt PCIe expansion card in order to speed up adoption.
Intel’s plan for Thunderbolt PCIe cards has not been finalized, and the slides seen by VR-Zone showed a lot was left to be determined. What the slides did reveal was a structured outline to bring Thunderbolt to a larger PC audience, with help from ODMs, via PCIe.

http://vr-zone.com/articles/thunderb...ope/50677.html

[dr_daw]

Useless unless your machine has two T-bolt ports. What would possess a company to NOT put a second T-bolt port for daisy chaining? If you want to run another monitor, or T-bolt drives you'd be hooped.

[Barry Johns]

Originally Posted by dr_daw

Useless unless your machine has two T-bolt ports. What would possess a company to NOT put a second T-bolt port for daisy chaining? If you want to run another monitor, or T-bolt drives you'd be hooped.

Because it's not true thunderbolt. All it is, is a built in thunderbolt to FW cable inside the box. It's still FireWire regardless of cable used.

[Emcha_audio]

Meh lol PCI-SIG is already working on releasing a new small factor PCI format that will offer 32Gb/s through 4 pcie lanes and it is also optical and copper.

PCIe OCuLink

Since thunderbolt is so slow to adopt and that PCIe is far from being dead as some predicted, I'm sure we're going to see a far greater adoption of the PCie OCulink.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by Barry Johns

Because it's not true thunderbolt. All it is, is a built in thunderbolt to FW cable inside the box. It's still FireWire regardless of cable used.

Yes, but they could still do a Thunderbolt passthrough if they had really wanted to. It would costs whoever is making this a few $ or so to use a higher end Thunderbolt chip to enable that. Now it's possible that Motu buys the whole adapter gizmo off somebody else so has to take it in this configuration.

---

The single Thunderbolt port on the Avid HD Navive box was an even more frustrating decision. Bad mistake Avid.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by Emcha_audio

Meh lol PCI-SIG is already working on releasing a new small factor PCI format that will offer 32Gb/s through 4 pcie lanes and it is also optical and copper.

PCIe OCuLink

Since thunderbolt is so slow to adopt and that PCIe is far from being dead as some predicted, I'm sure we're going to see a far greater adoption of the PCie OCulink.

I'm not sure who is supposed to have predicted the death of PCIe.

The real increase in PCIe usage happening now is likely with PCIe direct attache flash storage, and that is likely to continue in further with adoption of things like NVMe SSDs. One of the issues I have with the new Mac Pro, is with all the PCie bandwidth wasted on GPUs and Thunderbolt you can't get at the PCIe 3.0 lanes directly to use them on things like NVMe.

[Emcha_audio]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

I'm not sure who is supposed to have predicted the death of PCIe.

The real increase in PCIe usage happening now is likely with PCIe direct attache flash storage, and that is likely to continue in further with adoption of things like NVMe SSDs. One of the issues I have with the new Mac Pro, is with all the PCie bandwidth wasted on GPUs and Thunderbolt you can't get at the PCIe 3.0 lanes directly to use them on things like NVMe.

Oh there were more than a few lightbulb fan boys that were predicting the death of PCie on many forums for the near future. I think I even saw an article last year about it.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by Emcha_audio

Oh there were more than a few lightbulb fan boys that were predicting the death of PCie on many forums for the near future. I think I even saw an article last year about it.

I must have filtered out their nonsense in real time

[Emcha_audio]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

I must have filtered out their nonsense in real time

Hehe