Is Thunderbolt the end of PCIe cards?

[IO Composer]

The specs are dumbfounding. There's no reason in the world why someone couldn't make an I/O box filled with DSP that crushes a HD10 system.. straight into the PCI bus.

[Bill Denton]

I posted something similar to this a couple of months ago, before I knew anything about Light Peak/Thunderbolt...

I was thinking in terms of something like a Native card, with a cable running to a 2 or 3 RU box. You need more DSP? Buy another card and slip it in the box. Maybe even make it so you could daisy chain the boxes.

I definitely think Thunderbolt is going to open some exciting doors...

[IO Composer]

Yeah. For me, this is just one more indication that Avid will almost assuredly be abandoning the PCI/TDM paradigm in the next rev.

[Matt82au]

Yeah. For me, this is just one more indication that Avid will almost assuredly be abandoning the PCI/TDM paradigm in the next rev.

Possibly... For me, it gives them so many ways of evolving it.

[drenkrom]

I for one am no longer looking forward to any upcoming announcements on new PCIe cards. I'd heard vague rumours on future developments that seemed insane at the time, but the Intel press release made them so much more plausible.

It's not the end of our pain, of course, as there will inevitably be revisions to the Thunderbolt protocol, which will at some point lose backwards-compatibility and it'll be the serial port all over again, but it's looking good for a while.

[DetroitT]

"...it gives them so many ways of evolving it."
+1

[woodsdenis]

Originally Posted by IO Composer

The specs are dumbfounding. There's no reason in the world why someone couldn't make an I/O box filled with DSP that crushes a HD10 system.. straight into the PCI bus.

Heres a question for techie. If I bought a new macpro today could a Thunderbolt i/o be fitted via a PCIe card ? If yes are there any issues involved.
Another thing to consider before upgrading a Mac

[Drew Mazurek]

I'm assuming that Light Peak (I refuse to use "Thunderbolt") has more bandwidth than PCI (haven't looked at specs) so PCI LightPeak cards wouldn't make sense and may not even be possible.

[D'Animation]

Originally Posted by woodsdenis

Heres a question for techie. If I bought a new macpro today could a Thunderbolt i/o be fitted via a PCIe card ? If yes are there any issues involved.
Another thing to consider before upgrading a Mac

Don't quote me but I thought max throughput from PCIe was 5gbps so probably not

[cdavis6406]

Yes light peak is the future but avid will take at least 10-12 years to catchup then it will be like usb 2 technology by then.

Count on it.