Light Peak / Thunderbolt

http://www.9to5mac.com/53459/a-good-demonstration-of-light-peakthunderbolt

Discuss.

Let me start this off...

DAMN!

I'm definitely going to be waiting a little while before picking up a new NAS box, that's for sure.

Pretty excited about the upcoming announcment. My 5 year old MBP is a little creaky these days so I've been waiting for this refresh before plonking my money down on a replacement. The Light Peak stuff is pretty cool, I'm looking on this laptop to be my main desktop machine too, so I was looking at USB3 ExpressCard adaptors. Although from reading the stuff on MacRumors, it appears the ExpressCard is no more.

My only concern is the combined nature of the LightPeak/DisplayPort connector.

EDIT: I stand corrected, the ExpressCard slot is intact.

EDIT 2: It appears you can daisy chain lightpeak devices and DP devices at the same time.

Er, without watching the video. What actually is it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_Peak
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbolt_(Intel)
http://www.apple.com/thunderbolt/

Basically, it's an attempt by Apple to make their notebooks even more difficult to connect things to, by requiring even more external conversion dongles to make up for the lack of real, compatible interfaces built-in.

The page Intel posted is much more informative on the tech details:
http://www.intel.com/technology/io/thunderbolt/index.htm

Thunderbolt is DisplayPort and PCI Express over a single cable. Devices that attach via Thunderbolt will use the already standard PCI Express specs, and have an external Thunderbolt connector and signaling chip instead of an internal PCIe connector. And as long as the host OS has PCIe support, it can then talk to Thunderbolt devices using the same drivers that would talk to an internal PCIe card.

Pretty impressed myself. This opens up a lot of possibilities for notebook expansion, without requiring either proprietary laptop docking stations, or by requiring single expansion slots like ExpressCard. One cable to plug in and one port can now add a high end sound interface, multiple gigabit network ports, fast SATA storage And more to any notebook with the port. This will allow for a thin and light future MacBook Air to be just as expandable as the big 17 inch systems.

Ah. Now that is nice.

Well, let me know when you come up with that magical space bending tech that allows VGA, DVI, HDMI, and 6 ExpressCard slots (for PCIe expansion) to be packed into a 13 inch laptop. This was the best way Apple and Intel could figure out how to do it. Now to see if others adopt it, or if this turns into another Firewire, relegated to the high end of the market only.

Clever how they manage to run DisplayPort and PCIe at the same time on the same cable. Apple also somehow manages to overload the same connector with VGA and DVI. Also, I expect this will push Apple's Mini DisplayPort toward becoming a true industry standard.

Because they've got PCIe on the same cable, I'll bet we start seeing monitors with a lot more logic inside them, so you can connect all your USB/Firewire/eSATA devices and whatever else to the monitor, then you click your laptop in and *foomp*, it's all there. The only thing missing from Thunderbolt is power. Otherwise it would be a single-connector docking solution.

Not high current power for running your notebook and charging your large batteries, but at least it seems to have enough power for bus-powered devices:

Do companies have to license the display port connector in order to implement Light Peak? That may limit adoption.

I don't really like "Thunderbolt" as a name. It sounds a little cheesy, but at least it'll be easier for the average consumer to say than "USB," which my clients continue to mangle despite a decade on the market.

Except it's not an Apple invention, it's an Intel invention. Apple is just the early adopter. It sounds like Fiber Channel for the masses.

Thunderbolt ports have 10 watts of power available (up from the 8 that Firewire 800 carries). I can't find a spec that shows what voltage it runs at though. Firewire was 12 volt, USB 5v.

As for the VGA and DVI compatibility, that can work two ways. The more widespread method is via a passive adaptor and a dual mode DisplayPort. This requires a TMDS generator to remain on the video card side for the backwards compatibility. Future DisplayPort connectors may be pure DisplayPort without the TMDS, and would require a more expensive active adaptor.

Mini Displayport is part of the DisplayPort 1.2 spec, and that was published in December 2009. AMD already uses it in a few video cards, including their "Eyefinity" 6 display out cards. The board only has enough TMDS and clock chips to support a few ports running DVI, so it requires either a handful of active adaptors, or DisplayPort monitors. We had one of the cards at Vigil, but never did cobble together the setup to run all 6 displays.

The DisplayPort protocol and port is a royalty/license fee free arrangement. This was one of the main advantages touted over HDMI. Licensing fees only come into the picture if you also want to add DRM, like HDCP.

Interesting, thanks. In that case I assume this would get pretty popular. I know I'd prefer simplicity when it comes to interconnects.

Apple had much more involvement with this tech besides being an early adopter. You can bet it was Apple that pushed integrating it with mini display port once it was clear the first iteration would be over copper. In fact, Intel states there was Apple technical collaboration on their own page.

This sounds really promising for the possibility of a new MBP in my home sometime next year. I'd really love to see two Thunderbolt connectors able to drive two external displays (one each is fine), when docked I can actually use two identical screens.

It's just too bad the whole home won't be wired for Thunderbolt. With every system sporting a base SSD, this would make for some truly amazing NAS devices.

The lack of support for dual monitors is still a stumbling block for me, I want to use my laptop as my main machine (and I don't want one of those dual screens to be the laptops own). I kind of hoped that ThunderBolt would bring with it dual monitor support

Dual monitor support is already possible via a single DisplayPort 1.2 connector, but I haven't seen anyone actually implement that part of the spec.

I'm curious to see when the first Thunderbolt GPU will be released. Would be really interesting to see an external GPU attached and driving the internal LCD on a laptop, along with external monitors. Would have really liked that setup back about 13 years ago. I used to have a Gateway Solo 9300 and a single PCI docking station. Inside sat a Voodoo 3, and it would connect to an external monitor. I had one system that I could use at home for gaming, or take it on the road easily, assuming a friend had a spare CRT around.

If you want multiple monitors out of a Mac laptop today, Matrox does offer a dual and triple solution for DisplayPort systems.

Presumably double external monitors requires a GPU which can support triple head monitors? (2 external + the internal display).

I know you could probably get away with a standard dual head GPU, but then you'd need extra parts inside the laptop to handle switching the driving signals between the shared external and internal displays.

Does the clam shell mode on the mac automatically stay awake if there is an external display connected, or do you still have to use the external keyboard/mouse to wake it after it goes into clamshell mode?

From what I can see with the Matrox box the Mac sees one single large display, which doesn't really make much sense for what I want to use it for.

You can do that today with Displaylink USB video gear. It has to cheat a little bit (reducing the quality) if the external displays get full-screen updates every frame (gaming, video) but for productivity applications (and for coding) it works really well.

(USB graphics adaptors are also available from other manufacturers. But AFAIK none of those other manufacturers employs any former Empeg developers.)

Peter

You can wake a closed Apple notebook with pretty much any USB device on a plug or unplug. I have no idea if the dispalyport connector does something similar.

Are you saying we need an "empeg involved" logo for these wannabe spin-off companies? (like Displaylink and Apple) :P

The signaling protocol for DisplayPort makes it much easier to support multiple monitors due to the micropacket design. VGA, DVI and HDMI require timing signals to be sent alongside the RGB data on their own pins. DisplayPort bundles that information into the packets, so it all goes over the same pins. A multi monitor setup with the 1.2 spec would have one cable going out of the computer into monitor 1. Then a second cable would exit monitor 1 and connect into monitor 2. No extra hardware would need to be in the laptop to drive two external displays, and switching the internal over would be trivial as well, since it's hooked in via DisplayPort instead of the classic LVDS most laptops used.

Clamshell mode still needs a keyboard or mouse around to wake the system, at least with my 2010 MacBook Air. It will wake with either a wired or bluetooth device.

Oh yeah, forgot about these. I used the eVGA adaptor at my old job to have a second 1280x1024 monitor hooked into a Mac Mini with just one display out. I specifically picked a Displaylink model over the others due to the proper Mac driver support.

And interesting, looks like Displaylink devices are a popular addition to support Windows Multipoint Server. Didn't even know that existed till now. Someone here was looking for this exact solution...

I'm curious, what would you need?

I'll probably pick up one those Matrox things to do dual monitor when I buy my new MBP.

Macrumors says:

Would that do what you want?

I want* to do iOS development in XCode/IB. I don't really want, for example, my dock spread across two monitors, I want to use one monitor as my main display with the second off to the side for documentation and running the simulator.

No doubt with the thoroughly broken OSX window management the maximise buttons in one or more apps would maximise to some random width that is wider than a single monitor when presented with what appears to the OS to be a double width monitor.

* actually, I'm not sure "want" is the right word, but that is another story

That would be great if it is true. However I suspect they are talking about what ThunderBolt generically is capable off and probably not what the new Mac Books can do. There is certainly no hint on the Apple spec sheets that the new Mac Books can drive two external displays.

I can't get the macrumors site to load at the moment to see exactly what they are saying.

Are you needing a laptop for iOS development? If not, a Mini would work fine, and offers both Mini DisplayPort and HDMI for connecting two monitors. In the box is an HDMI to DVI converter.

I already have a Mini that I use for iOS development, testing HTML etc

I want to replace my main development machine, which I spend most of my time on. My current main machine is a Dell laptop with docking station that runs with two monitors.

My main development is done in VS.NET under Windows 7. I'd like my main machine to remain a laptop, as it is far easier to pick it up and take it to a client, rather than digging out a separate laptop and making sure it is upto date with everything before heading off to a client.

I'd also like to have a mobile iOS development environment that isn't a hacked copy of OSX running in Virtual Box

I was hoping to get a reasonably powerful laptop and so was looking at the HP Envy 14 and 17. I have also considered the Mac Books (even though it would end up running Win7 90% of the time).

The lack of builtin support for multiple monitors puts me off a bit. I'd like to see these USB adapters in action to see how well they work. The idea that Apple could easily break them with any update to OSX worries me (or indeed MSFT and a Win7 update)...

I'd probably be better off just getting another* £500 Dell and a Mac Book Air.


* or at least I would if Dell hadn't changed the docking station interface and so I need a new £200+ docking station

There are two graphics cores in the MBP, each capable of driving two displays... I'm wondering if anything can be done via sofware to get them both to output a single "head" via the Thunderstrike Thunderstruck Thundercloud Thunderclap interface. Oh sorry, I mean Thunderbolt.

Argh, annoying and totally forgettable name. That's probably also why HTC/Verizon chose it for a handset.

Someone on another forum commented that it should really be lightning bolt, given that thunder is just the noise.

Exactly. But I'm not surprised Intel stayed clear of any use of the word "light" given the first iteration doesn't have the fibre transport they were first showing off.

They could have called it "Strikeforce"

Peter could speak more authoritatively about this, but from what I remember, the DisplayLink adaptors did just use normal drivers as far as the OS was concerned. The only risk of breakage on a Mac would come with major updates to say 10.7, but minor updates should be fine. I was using one of the adaptors back when 10.5 was out, and no system update ever broke it. I had retired the system before 10.6 came out, but would have expected it to still work since 10.6 remained mostly the same as 10.5 as far as display drivers are concerned.

I really wish Apple would get its head out of its ass and develop a laptop with docking station.

And, yes, Tom, I know that Thunderball "solves" this problem, but, you know, it doesn't. For one thing, it would be nice for Andy to be able to have a docking station with an additional video card in it, so he can do exactly what he's asking for.

I dunno, maybe there's enough bandwidth in Goldfinger to make an external docking station feasible: something where I could have a box that contains an additional video card, an extension video output for the built-in video, a USB hub, etc., all connected via one cable. Even so, I doubt that Moonraker will have the ability to power the laptop, which means at least two cables. Assuming that they hang onto the MagSafe connector, though, at least that's easy to plug in, even if it's also easy to slip behind the desk. And the Octopussy connector will want to slide behind the desk, too.

Would any of these cable clips reduce that problem?

Nope.

:-P

I do still think this solves it. Because Thunderbolt is just PCIe, it's technically feasible for someone to build a true, universal "docking station" that works with just the one plug, and has a PCIe slot or two inside. PCIe v1 1x bandwidth is 2gbit, so the Thunderbolt connection is equivalent to an 5x slot (if such a thing existed). Video cards can run just fine on a 4x v1 bus, though there might be some slight slowdown in some very specific gaming benchmarks that do a ton of main memory to GPU memory transfers. Once Thunderbolt makes a jump to 100gbit, then it will exceed the bandwidth of even a 16x 2.0 PCIe slot, and be close to the 128gbit rate of a PCIe 3.0 16x slot. And as I theorized earlier, with the DisplayPort signal also there, it would be possible for that external card to also drive the internal laptop LCD, something not possible with older docking station setups. The iMacs already have DisplayPort in and out via the one connector, even before Thunderbolt.

Does it solve the power issue? No. So I suppose it doesn't quite meet your exact demands of being as lazy as possible when getting into work every day But it does resolve the cost issue of not needing a new docking station every time the vendor decides to change the highly proprietary docking connector.

It is possible Apple will solve this to your satisfaction though, as they have a recent patent filing for your idea of a combo MagSafe and optical interface.

The downside to this method is that it stops being any vendor with Thunderbolt notebook universal, and will only work with Apple notebooks. But I suppose this isn't different then the current situation people are in with docking stations. I'm just really surprised it took this long to have a good standard for external PCI busses, since laptop docks have had their proprietary ways of doing this for well over a decade now. Expresscard and the older CardBus never worked for this purpose for some reason.

(sadly couldn't come up with any clever Bond jokes for my reply, but nice job on the references in your post. Thunderbolt has me thinking about the Thundercats theme for some reason. )

Personally, I'd like to see someone come up with a 'jacket' that could clip on the bottom of a MacBook, connected to the power and Thunderwotsit and then have a magsafe style shallow connector on the bottom that would sit on a dock. The dock part could be universal and the other bit is device specific. Yes, it would add to the thickness of the laptop, but not by much, few mm maybe?

ROFL

There's no worse risk of that than with any other bit of hardware. The Windows and MacOS drivers are indeed closed-source, so if Microsoft or Apple were to radically change the driver model and break all old drivers, you'd be dependent on Displaylink producing an update, just as you'd be dependent on the makers of every other peripheral you own. But such radical changes would only come with a completely new version of Windows (and I expect MacOS is the same), never with incremental updates.

The Linux drivers (udlfb) are open-source and are thus yours in perpetuity.

Peter

The difference is though that the other addon hardware that I need to get my work done, mouse and keyboard basically, can be used with generic drivers.

But I take your point, I am being overly paranoid. My real complaint here is against Apple for not providing multiple monitor support in the first place. I wonder what Steve has got against it (beyond him wanting us all to own an iPhone, iPad, Mac Book and Mac Pro with multiple Cinema displays).

Would you be happy if/when somebody comes out with a Thunderbolt "docking station" which has an internal graphics card, supporting multiple monitors, USB drives, and so forth? Since Thunderbolt is just PCIe, it would seem that this sort of thing will be arriving either "soon" or "very soon" in stores near you.

Out of curiosity, how often do PC laptops support multiple display output? I know some have multiple video connectors, but my experience with these types of systems years ago still only allowed one to be active at any one time. Some offered the ability to completely disable the internal LCD allowing for two externals, but it didn't seem to be a standard feature.

Very few at the low end ( but then they cost a third the price of the Mac Books ).

At the high end some do, the HP Envy 14 does 2 and the 17 does 3. There aren't many others.

However there are plenty of mid/high end corporate laptops that drive two external displays via the dedicated docking stations.

Yes I'd be happy with a ThunderBolt docking station, it sounds like a good idea.

I am entirely undecided on which route to take at the moment, hoping my Dell and it's overheating nvidia will hang in on there for a bit longer.

My high millage Dell D630 with a Quadro 135m when docked drives two Dell 2009 LCD @ 1680*1050, one via VGA and one via DVI. Occasionally the second monitor, on DVI in my case, comes up at 1024*1280 - which is easily resolved, but annoying. Without the dock there is just a VGA out.
I do like the workspace all this provides, and usually keep the second monitor in portrait mode for document reading / writing.

PS Don't try to play Colonization 4 on a D630, it will run, but...

My "low end" Dell Inspiron 9400 has a 1920x1200 17" LCD, plus a DVI-x output, and a VGA output.

I can connect screens to both outputs, and have a 3-headed display under Linux.

Cheers

I run my Dell Inspiron 9400 with dual 1920x1200 external displays. One via the VGA connector, one from the DVI port.

I never want to go back to a single display at my desk.

For my next 'desktop replacement' laptop I will want at least dual external displays, either directly or through something like the Matrox dual and triple head adapters.

Our Macbook Pro 17 also has an external monitor to extend the display space. I haven't checked whether the MBP Displayport would work with the Matrox gear.

Ah, the Inspirons are a bit of and odd bunch. Sometimes they are cheap crap and sometimes they have the exact same components and specs as one of the Latitudes for half the price.

When I bought my D610 I was very surprised a month later to see a friends Inspiron. It was basically the same machine with a different shell. Even the batteries were interchangeable and it also had a D series docking port.

The Inspiron cost £500, my Latitude cost £1,100. The shell on the Inspiron was flimsy, but not £600 flimsy

By the time I saw that Inspiron, when I checked the website the model no longer existed. They were back to the normal crap.

The Dell E6500 (and related systems) support dual DVI output on their docking stations. I believe some of the newer Lenovo laptops do as well.

In any machine released today, I don't really want anything less than dual high-bandwidth (dual-link DVI class for example) output, so I really hope to see that in a forthcoming MBP.

If one of your displays is a high density 27" the other one may as well be too.

I do suppose it would be acceptable having the second GPU outboard on a cable or built into a display, but that would make it decidedly less portable.

Interesting. The HP Envy 17 is using the Eyefinity tech to do 3 monitors. The downside seems to be the hodgepodge of connectors needed. You have to have 3 monitors, with one hooked in via VGA, one via HDMI (or adapted to DVI) and one via Mini DisplayPort. If you don't have a DisplayPort monitor, that mDP port will need an active adaptor to convert to VGA or DVI.

Looks like this has advanced a lot in the past few years, likely due to the rise of notebooks as desktop replacements. I exited the PC space completely around the time this started happening. My "Desktop Replacement" had real desktop parts in it, including a hot running P4 (not the mobile kind) and a video card derived from the desktop Radeon x800. It was one of the only Dell consumer laptops that would drive two monitors.


The current place I work at hands out dual 30 inch displays standard. Some people end up asking for smaller monitors. I personally have one iMac 27 and one Dell 30, and if I sit directly in front of the iMac, there is a dead space on the far end of the 30 where I can't put anything text, as it becomes annoying to read. Never thought I'd say I have too much desktop space.

How far from your eyes to the screens?

I keep my dual 24" displays about 48 inches away from my eyes when I am seated. Ergotron stand holds them up off the desk (screen centerlines are a few inches below eye level) and together side by side.

Ergotron makes great stuff!

I'm not sure how that makes it less portable.

External displays are decidedly non-portable. Why carry unused GPU hardware around when the display to be driven is back on the desk. This sort of presumes that displays at your destination, will also have their own GPU. But look at TV's, they have started embedding compute power already, enough to handle internet streams.

With Thunderbolt, there is a potential that computers will become very modular in a way not seen before.

Your desktop might be a brick containing a psu, cpu, memory, and a pair of t-bolt connectors. Everything else moves onto "the wire". Motherboards get very small.

Expansion or, need a Beowulf cluster, just daisy chain on a few more bricks.

...and the peripherals get larger. And significantly more expensive for the PCIe, optics, and royalties.

Still, it looks like a good addition to the fold.
Let's see how much Intel tries to wring out of the industry for usage privileges, and whether or not they're willing to share with AMD.

We *need* AMD, don't forget.

My guess is that computer monitors stay on the "dumb" side, at least for a while, since a graphics card and memory would probably add $100 to the price. "Docking stations", however, seem like a logical place to put that stuff. I don't think we'll ever see a return to some of the fancy docking stations of yore (e.g., the Mac PowerBook Duo Dock), but it's easy to see somebody like IOmega taking one of their external hard drives like the MiniMax (same size/shape as a Mac Mini), which already has a Firewire and USB hub within, and adding Thunderbolt plus a video card.

via anandtech:

Apple learned its lesson after FireWire licensing slowed adoption - the Thunderbolt port and controller specification are entirely Intel’s. Similarly, there’s no per-port licensing fee or royalty for peripheral manufacturers to use the port or the Thunderbolt controller.

That price is being paid now, inserting t-bolt moves some items from one box to another. Adding t-bolt is the big cost.

Eventually cost factors will drive the creation of specialized t-bolt mashups that handle all the functions needed for a type of peripheral.

T-bolt is still copper for now, I suspect that fibers and optics will benefit greatly from cost reductions if they wind up as mass (100 millions) produced components.

Ugh! I just had a really ugly thought.

If all your gear is built for copper, what happens when the standard does migrate to optics?

You buy all new gear? A modem?

Suspect it depends on your need for speed.

I really wanted to use references to the old Charlton superhero lineup (these days probably best known for being the basis for the characters in Watchmen), but that would have been a little too obscure, methinks.

Just move your copper devices to the end of the chain I expect.

The plan is to build the optics into the cable. So each device will still keep the existing copper based connectors, and when someone needs a longer cable run, they buy a more expensive cable that contains 2 copper to optical converters. One port out of the system could have the long optical cable run out to the first device, then copper cables between the rest.

This style of cabling has been out in the storage and networking world. You end up with a copper cable with two GBIC connectors directly attached.

My eyes are about 28-30 inches away, and thats about the best I can do with the current desks we have. The two screens are already pushed against the cubicle walls, and the desks don't offer keyboard trays. I did have my desk lowered to ensure better ergonomics for typing, and have the monitors on stands.

We are moving into a new buildout with mo space, so I should be able to arrange the desk better to take advantage of the full space of both monitors without having to turn my head so much. At home I usually sit around 40 inches away from the 27 inch display.

New idea / new worry (dinner conversation with other computer security geeks can be dangerous):

PCIe is the protocol used by hardware devices to speak to the rest of the computer, and includes direct access to RAM (DMA). It's previously well known that the Firewire ports on most computers can do the same thing and can form the basis of an interesting physical-access attack to a computer. (It's also used for remote kernel debugging.)

Thing is, when your monitor port now allows the remote peripheral to DMA with your computer's main memory, you've got a new threat... the hostile monitor/projector threat. You're traveling. You connect your computer to the hotel's digital TV or to the conference's projector. What if that projector is evil? Now it gets to interrogate your computer's memory or talk to other peripherals like your disk.

There's just no end of risk here. The only saving grace, I think, is that Xilinx FPGAs aren't fast enough to keep up with the raw data rate on the port, which means you'd have to have an appropriate driver chip. I'm sure Patrick could probably ballpark the cost and components of a suitable daughter board to shove into the back of a TV that would be able to make DMA queries and save the results to a memory card. I'm guessing it's not that hard to do.

What I'm less sure of is what you might do, in your computer, to deal with such threats. Can you imagine your computer popping up some kind of dialog box? "Hey, there's a new device out there. Allow it to connect?" I'm sure those would be popular with users.

Nothing to add here, I just wanted to thank you, Dan. My day has started off well with my favorite sentence I've heard all month:

"What if that projector is evil?"

That sounds like the least scary Stephen King novel.

<Gratuitous>In America, you connect to projector. In Soviet Russia, projector connects to you.</Gratuitous>

Some kind of public key trust relationship that coincidentally implements HDCP?

The crypto would be straightforward, but I'm less confident we could deal with the security policy problems. Could users properly deal with a dialog like this?

"The device `Sony XBR46KBR9200Q' requires access to your system memory. <Allow> <Forbid>"

You could try to "pre-answer" these questions by having a trusted third party that "certifies" hardware to speak the PCIe protocol. That gets you into a world not unlike Apple's app store, where apps must be submitted and centrally approved by Apple. If you did this "properly" and got it to really work, then it would be effectively impossible for tinkerers to build Thunderbolt devices. Needless to say, that's not entirely desirable.

Yeah. I was being at least a bit facetious. Unfortunately, I can see the MPAA and RIAA lapping it up.

Bought one of these Winstar USB graphics adapters:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0037...ASIN=B0037ZCEFO

It is much smaller than I expected. The hardware, packaging, manual etc are totally generic (but oddly high quality). There isn't a single mention of Winstar or indeed any other company on it. The back of the manual shows images of a 8 other DisplayLink products that are supposedly produced by a series of different companies. I suspect in actuality that they are all made for/by DisplayLink themselves.

It ships with a DVI-VGA adapter and a funky DVI-HDMI adapter with a joint in it that rotates 180 degrees (which would be handy if you were trying to cram it in behind a TV somewhere).

I didn't bother using the driver CD supplied, Windows 7 downloaded some drivers for me.

It works well. I had expected it to use up noticable CPU time, but it doesn't seem to.

Windows are probably a tiny bit laggy when dragging them around, but that could easily just be my imagination.

It copes happily with typical in browser video on Vimeo and Youtube. It copes happily with 360p video in VLC either windowed or full screen.

I copes ok with 720p torrents in VLC at 1:1. It starts to struggle with 720p zoomed to full screen, but then do does my laptop video when it is running on the internal GPU.

I think when it is playing 720p it starts dropping frames, but does so very smoothly (that might well also be my imagination as well).

All this was on my Core 2 Duo 2.2GHz laptop with 6GB of RAM running Windows 7. Will try it on OSX later.

All in all, very pleased with it. If I didn't know it, I wouldn't realise I wasn't still running off the docking station video card.

I'd be very interested to see how you get on under OSX, I'd love to have another usable screen on my mini.

I've done a very quick test under OSX on my Mac Mini.

It generally behaves very similarly to under Windows 7, however it uses a bit more CPU and can't really cope with 720p at 1:1 (fine zoomed to 1:2).

The comparison is slightly skewed, as my Mac Mini is 2.0GHz compared to 2.2GHz on my Win7 laptop. But they normally feel about the same speed.

Apart from heavyweight video and slightly laggy window dragging you'd never notice it wasn't a native display. The adapter I've picked was the highest speced of the DisplayLink hardware, not sure if that makes any difference to the speed when running at 1920x1080 as I am.

It is also very plug and play, i.e. to unplug from Mac, plug into Windows7 only took 10 seconds or so. Makes for a handy poor mans DVI KVM

Sony Vaio Z series, now with a Thunderbolt powered external dock containing a GPU, Blu-Ray drive, and some more ports. Sadly Sony found a way to screw it up though, as they are using some proprietary port, and one USB 3 port to run the dock, instead of the standard Thunderbolt port. Still, it's a start.

Sonnet also announced some Thunderbolt to PCIe devices at NAB.

Some interesting GPU testing from HardOCP on needed PCIe bandwidth for gaming.

This is looking pretty promising for my next gaming capable system to be a laptop again, without sacrificing too much in the gaming performance space.

Hmm. Interesting. I was actually looking at the new Z series as I need a new laptop anyway. I didn't look too closely at how the special dock attached but its good that its Light Peak/Thunderbolt despite a typical Sony custom connector.

Well it was good for a while.

Unfortunately OSX 10.8 broke* the DisplayLink driver. DisplayLink have know this for months, but rather than releasing a fixed version of the driver, they are pushing forward with a new re-architected driver (which they need to support USB 3 for their new chipset on OSX).

They say they "hope" to deliver this new driver in Q1 2013 and they expect it to fix the problem. I'm quite sure it isn't likely to bring any new bugs along with it...

In the meantime my monitor remains blank

DON'T BUY DISPLAYLINK IF YOU WANT TO USE IT WITH OSX.

* two things are broken, the login window is blank and it crashes Finder and Skype repeatedly. The login window I can cope with by tabbing around blindly, the Finder and Skype crashes are a showstopper

I don't know of a single app that doesn't crash semi-regularly in Mac OS X 10.8.x

That includes every App Apple ships, which in my experience, crash far more often than 3rd party.

10.8 also seems to have shit-loads of USB issues, some of which I've been informed of by customers with third-party hardware. Related to my own hardware, I have to do some checking this weekend whether 10.8 supports USB low-power for my devices at 100mA. I think it might be turning them OFF completely when sleeping.

I don't see the situation getting any better with Apple having moved to a 1-year release cycle and fucking with so many low-level parts of the OS willy-nilly.

Apart from this specific issue with the DisplayLink driver 10.8 is no less stable for me than 10.6 which is what I have recently upgraded from.

I can still kill it using VirtualBox if I do the right/wrong thing, but that applied equally to Snow Leopard.

The only Apple app that I really remember crashing since the upgrade is Xcode and that has always been reasonably crashy for me (at about the same level VisualStudio was until a couple of years ago, another area where Xcode lags VS). All in all I am perfectly happy with ML, apart from this DisplayLink driver problem (though the new file handling behaviour still seems arse-about-face to me, "delete" just seems like the wrong text for the button for a start).

Safari crashes multiple times per week even now that Flash is completely uninstalled. Same goes for Mail (though the crashing is the least bothersome of its issues).

I don't use Keynote except once in a blue moon, but when playing around with it earlier this week it was crashing multiple times per hour just sending it AppleScript that according to its help documents it supports.

iTunes craps out every now and then but nowhere near as often as Mail or Safari.

It was a challenge for the groups at Apple, and third parties to keep up to date with slower OS update schedules. What happens next year when 6 months after updating their driver, DisplayLink is looking at another brand new OS?

Right now another PITA is Transmit (FTP) being used with TextWrangler as the default document handler. I can't open multiple documents at a time into TextWrangler from Transmit - neither local nor remote. I can open multiple docs into other programs and I can open multiple docs into TextWrangler without Transmit. If I keep repeating the document open Transmit will eventually just get stuck. I can only think of reporting the issue to both developers.

I don't use Safari, Mail or Keynote

(well ok I occasionally use safari to test websites)

I really have no idea what you do to have so many issues with so many things.

I use safari pretty much all day every day and I really cannot remember the last time I saw it crash.

Same for mail, its constantly there in the background ready for action.

My machine is hardly ever shutdown and is just put to sleep by closing the lid.

The only thing that irks me with mountain lion is the god awful built in versioning on files - its modus operandi is confusing and random.

Not that this helps in any way.

Here are potential problems for crash-related bugs:

1. My machine is a 2009 NVIDIA-based MacBook Pro 17"

I don't think Apple is testing older machines with the kind of effort they used to. We used to test sleep-wake cycles into the thousands and even one failure was not acceptable. This machine very often will not come out of sleep properly. Closer to 1 in 10 than 1 in 5000.

2. I use the machine in clamshell mode a lot.

3. I have replaced the default HD with an SSD. And replaced the optical drive with the original HD.

4. I mount and try to keep a few AFP shares accessible all the time. Mountain Lion randomly drops them while the machine is asleep (or when it wakes - this can cause all kinds of momentary process freezing (which can last for a few minutes).

I see Mountain Lion issues reported by customers all the time, so I also have perspective from others. The many Mail bugs I have documented don't have anything to do with hardware - maybe I'll post them again.

I've got a 2011 MBP, I also use it in clamshell mode with my thunderbolt display all the time. After upgrading to 10.8, the thunderbolt display refuses to wake up from sleep. I've been trying to work with Apple for 3 months now without any progress. They've swapped monitors, had me format, clear every bit of ram, and still... pretty much 95% of the time waking from sleep the thunderbolt display is a $1000 paperweight.

I've got the 27" display right from right before they switched to thunderbolt. Same issue. The machine will wake but the display doesn't come on. Then it will go back to sleep.

I'm using BT Apple keyboard and trackpad with it. What I do in this situation is plug and unplug a USB device to try and force the machine to wake. It works most of the time after 1 or 2 plug/unplugs.

But sometimes it happens just with the built-in display. For instance, I'll sleep the machine and then unplug it from its Henge dock which removes all external devices at one time. For my typical setup that's the display, the display's USB cable and a USB audio device (which isn't being used) plugged into the display. When I then open the system up I'll be greeted with a black screen. Every once in a while I can close it and put it to sleep again, then open it and have it work. Most of the time when this happens I have to force-restart it to get the display back.

When I worked for ATI, always on Apple contracts, if this happened 1 time in 3000 attempts, it was a block ship. Period. We'd be there working 12-16 hour days through the weekend until it was found and fixed.

I have a 27" display from the other end of the price spectrum, and once in a while the firmware in it gets confused about power states and just stays off.

Unplugging/replugging the AC cord brings it back to life.

The monitor I had before this one, totally different brand/model, did the same.
Weird. Like everyone is copying everyone else's bugs.

Hmm.. I'm going to try cutting the power to the display next time this happens. Don't know why I didn't think of it before. Normally I would unplug and replug the display but since the cord is attached to the stand/dock I can't do that.

Still waiting for a working driver for the DisplayLink adapter. I've now given up and bought a 27 inch monitor instead.

Not good DisplayLink, not good (after a lot of badgering we did at least get them to put a note on the driver download page saying there are 10.8 problems).

Don't buy a DisplayLink adapter if you need to use Mountain Lion or value on going driver support in the future.

Now, where are all those Thunderbolt display adapters we were promised

Yes, that's all very embarrassing. From talking to ex-colleagues in the pub, they are actively working on it, but it all got stirred-in with MacOS support for the more recent USB3 Displaylink chip. Which is no excuse really -- everyone knows that most Mac people (unlike, say, Windows people) update their OS as soon as the new one comes out.

Peter

Yeah, according to whoever it is speaking officially on their forum they are getting on with rearchitecting their whole driver stack to support the USB3 devices. And they are doing that to the exclusion of work on the existing drivers. I get the impression that they are hoping, but don't know for certain, that it will also fix the other problems with the USB2 devices (though their spokesperson seemed to admit they don't know the cause of all the problems).

I feel for them, they clearly aren't being allowed to fix things properly due to someone further up the chain.