On Jan 16, 2012, at 12:21 AM, Teddy Gage wrote:
Migrating to windows? never left. Won't start down that dark path of discussion though, I've said my peace. Let's just say I won't be buying any $300 thunderbolt USB hubs anytime soon.
However, one sincere question: does thunderbolt have any advantages over USB 3.0?
--
Animator & Editor
www.teddygage.com
Brooklyn
As far as the Windows thing, I think it's safe to say I'm addressing the folks in the business who, like me, are forecasting their next round of investment in gear. Folks who have been traditionally Mac. Personally, I've had a cross-platform shop for a decade, but the last several years has been much more mac-centric.
Thunderbolt vs. USB 3:
Well, TB's primary advantage is greater speed 10Gbps vs. 5Gbps. Also, it can do full 10Gbps in each direction simultaneously while USB 3 can't.
Cons: Expensive, currently obscure/minimum penetration.
Thunderbolt, in it's current incarnation (distant future will take it to 100Gbps (40 lanes)-or so they say) is fast enough for most everything, including video capture/output and storage but not enough to fulfill the full-bandwidth speeds for GPUs. Actual real-world benchmarks of the performance impact of running GPU-dependent apps in Thunderbolt chassis do not yet exist, at least that I can find...so all we can talk about right now is the large discrepancy in available bandwidth between 4 and 16 lanes.
USB 3 is cheap and highly available now, and a pretty good choice for certain things. As Thunderbolt has shown, the list of things a bus can't handle keep getting smaller as the bandwidth increases.
Carey
