Even if not economically viable, would Apple licensing really be required to sell a thunderbolt device that only officially worked on Windows? Because if so, I can see that no normal pc vendor would ever get behind needing apple approval for accessories for their devices.
Considering 99% of devices with Thunderbolt right now are Apple laptops and PCs, so if you decide you don't need to work with Apple, there goes your market. (Okay, I made up the 99% number, but you get the idea -- I don't think I have a single Thunderbolt motherboard/laptop in my home for example.)
It's more of a chicken and egg problem. If I saw that this external thunderbolt GPU was slated to be out on the market soon, I know that I would be sure that my next laptop has thunderbolt ports available.
Until Thunderbolt 3 hits PCIExpress 3 speeds; I don't see a huge market for an external GPU using Thunderbolt.
Now with PCI Express 4 devices and Sata Express set to release on consumer-level devices between the end of this year and Q2 2015, including the bandwidth capabilities of Display Port 1.3, Thunderbolt 3 HAS to reach at least PCIe3 speeds for it to be worthwhile connecting an external GPU. .
"Now with PCI Express 4 devices ... Thunderbolt 3 HAS to reach at least PCIe3 speeds for it to be worthwhile connecting an external GPU."
Thunderbolt 2 offers 2 GB/s host => GPU.
PCI Express 1.0 16x is 2 GB/s host => GPU. PCI Express 2.0 16x is 4 GB/s host => GPU. PCI Express 3.0 16x is 8 GB/s host => GPU.
IIRC PCIE 1 => 2 (16x both) offered little performance benefit with contemporary GPUs, and PCIE 2 => 3 (16x both) offered little performance benefit with contemporary GPUs.
There may be a small impact with higher-end GPUs, but either way there's a huge performance gain over graphics that can fit in a moderately-sized laptop's thermal capacity.
You're off by a factor of 2 on PCIe bandwidth, for 16x slots it's 4/8/16 GB/s, so you're looking at 4x 2.0 slot equivalent; which happens to be what the TB controller has to connect to upstream.
Im seeing max about 20% penalty using a gtx 680 in an external thunderbolt chassis. However its like being cpu limited in a game. You just turn up the quality settings until you are gpu limited again.
Thunderbolt 2 offers the same performance as a 2x 3.0 slote like what Ryan tested last year with the 7970; most games he tested didn't mind much but DiRT3 took a 28% hit to average FPS and a 39% hit to minimum FPS. When Toms Hardware used to run similar tests MS Flight Simulator was a second title that got hammered. Thunderbolt 3 and another speed doubling will be a nice boost for title consistency; but TB2 is good enough to make the product's performance feasible for most gamers.
While there will be some performance penalty, something to note is that that test you linked specifically lowered the resolution to a ridiculous level for a 7970 (in order to boost the frame rates) which exacerbates the PCIe bandwidth limitation. I'd like to see it run at 1080P at a minimum and see how it does.
Exactly, in practice im always gpu limited in games using my external thunderbolt gtx 680 so bandwidth limitations barely register. Hardcore gamers will care but for someone semi serious bandwidth isnt a major issue. The major issue is the price of external thunderbolt gpu box.
Especially for an Apple audience, such an expensive product would be aimed more at graphics pros and data pros that need GPU acceleration in their work. Gamers would find another box cheaper most likely.
There's nothing wrong with Thunderbolt, it's just that we've advanced to the point that any uses for it are going to be niche.
I could imagine the GPU integrated into a display rather than a true standalone, after all a desktop doesn't need external graphics and if you're plugging it into a laptop, it's not going anywhere, might as well have a big screen. Apple loves proprietary stuff and NVIDIA and Intel have had recent ideas about advanced features in monitors, so I can see something really happening with Apple's first 4k.
Apple had a role in developing it, and used to own the trademark (they since transferred it to Intel).
At this point, it's probably simply that the overwhelming majority of Thunderbolt-capable computers people have today are Apple machines, so skipping Apple's licensing would severely restrict your potential market.
Intel is the sole owner of the Thunderbolt spec. Building Thunderbolt devices requires a license to use the spec but no royalties need to be paid to Intel. Intel is also the only supplier of Thunderbolt controllers. Without Intel's permission, no other company can make a Thunderbolt controller.
That was crazy enough as it was, and that Intel has apparently refused to relinquish their iron grip has been really bad for the standard. But this is the first I've heard that Apple is required too, which would be even worse.
I'm not entirely convinced that this is true. I'd need to see more evidence or clarification that Apple is anything other than their biggest Thunderbolt customer.
If you don't get Apple's "thumbs up", getting drivers and everything else to work properly with OS X becomes more difficult. Basically, if Apple doesn't like your device on OS X, they can make your life very difficult. I'm not saying Apple is doing that here, just pointing out that if you don't pass the Apple equivalent of WHQL, you'd have some serious difficulties.
Oh, that's different (and also a little hysterical). I do Mac development and Apple does not "make your life very difficult," unless by that you mean "not becoming some of the select who actually get support for their stuff integrated directly into the OS" which isn't that common anyway. As long as you're handling is all yourself you can do whatever.
At any rate, that's not a special Thunderbolt thing, it'd apply the same way if you wanted to make any special driver for OS X. As far as TB adoption in general goes the ball is still clearly entirely in Intel's court, and their court alone.
This will never see the light of day. It seems like every year these enclosures show up at CES with the sole purpose of generating buzz and coverage.
Intel is completely against thunderbolt being leveraged for eGPU purposes. The only reasonably priced adapter to actually hit the market (which had a PWRGD delay switch) was the BHPlus TH05. It quickly suffered the wrath of Intel and they had their license revoked in a matter of weeks.
This is exactly the type of use that would differentiate Thunderbolt from USB3 and drive adoption and Intel doesn't seem to care.
USB 3.1 is going to be as fast as TB so we just have to wait for a universal type C connector and they can make a GPU case with it. One you can even plug into your phone (man would that be awesome).
USB3 may be able to rival the througput of a TB1 slot; but the USB overhead would kill it for gaming. To keep good FPS your GPU needs very consistent low latency IO; USB is neither of these things because to keep costs down its controllers are stupid and need the host CPU to do all the hard work. TB gives a direct PCIe connection to external devices, so you get something that has the performance of a card plugged directly into an equivalently wide slot on the mobo.
Couldn't you fix that with a driver? You just send a PCIe signal to the USB port connected to the external GPU. You might not be using the USB 3.1 specification as is, but it shlould at least work.
Yeah it's a real shame the TH05 was pulled. It was the only device to really make plugging in a GPU over thunderbolt economically practical. When you throw in the unnecessary large casing and the lackluster PSU even though you already had your own to use, the price just gets too high to choose an adapter over either a high end laptop, or a desktop and a laptop.
Drivers and UEFI-issues, as well as how the operating system handles graphics is the problem here. Technology is there to make it happen, on like a single product but OS's don't really like the idea of a hotplug video-card, but with integrated graphics it should work reasonably well if they work for it. On OS X then at least Nvidia or AMD needs to be up for it. But graphics drivers outside of Apples software updates are unusual there but has been seen. That really holds true on Windows too though. On GNU/Linux there is no reasonable open drivers for Nvidia to begin with so.
That ML07 case sure looks like the Alienware X51 case. Actually looks almost dead on to my case after I modded it to allow for better heat removal around the gpu.
I wish you would have gone into a little more detail on the NUC cases. My biggest question was whether any of the Haswell-supporting NUC cases are fanless, but after checking the original image, I see that none of them are. That's rather disappointing as the only retailer that I can find that's selling fanless Haswell NUC cases (Tranquil PC in the UK) only has units that don't support 2.5" drives and the costs become ludicrous after shipping + currency conversion ($200!).
I love that riser cards are becoming a thing now for the consumer. That enables some cool new form factors that were tough to do on your own previously.
From the description, it looks like the SD380 would be perfect for a build I am planning in the next few months, but I am not able to find any more information on it.
"the difficulty with Thunderbolt is that you have to get approval from both Apple and Intel before you can actually sell a device"
I do not believe you need to get any approval from Apple. Intel created TB. The connector may be an Apple design, but they already pretty much surrendered mini-Displayport to general use.
We’ve updated our terms. By continuing to use the site and/or by logging into your account, you agree to the Site’s updated Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
33 Comments
Back to Article
invinciblegod - Wednesday, January 15, 2014 - link
Even if not economically viable, would Apple licensing really be required to sell a thunderbolt device that only officially worked on Windows? Because if so, I can see that no normal pc vendor would ever get behind needing apple approval for accessories for their devices.JarredWalton - Wednesday, January 15, 2014 - link
Considering 99% of devices with Thunderbolt right now are Apple laptops and PCs, so if you decide you don't need to work with Apple, there goes your market. (Okay, I made up the 99% number, but you get the idea -- I don't think I have a single Thunderbolt motherboard/laptop in my home for example.)REALfreaky - Wednesday, January 15, 2014 - link
It's more of a chicken and egg problem. If I saw that this external thunderbolt GPU was slated to be out on the market soon, I know that I would be sure that my next laptop has thunderbolt ports available.lilkwarrior - Wednesday, January 15, 2014 - link
Until Thunderbolt 3 hits PCIExpress 3 speeds; I don't see a huge market for an external GPU using Thunderbolt.Now with PCI Express 4 devices and Sata Express set to release on consumer-level devices between the end of this year and Q2 2015, including the bandwidth capabilities of Display Port 1.3, Thunderbolt 3 HAS to reach at least PCIe3 speeds for it to be worthwhile connecting an external GPU. .
protomech - Wednesday, January 15, 2014 - link
"Now with PCI Express 4 devices ... Thunderbolt 3 HAS to reach at least PCIe3 speeds for it to be worthwhile connecting an external GPU."Thunderbolt 2 offers 2 GB/s host => GPU.
PCI Express 1.0 16x is 2 GB/s host => GPU.
PCI Express 2.0 16x is 4 GB/s host => GPU.
PCI Express 3.0 16x is 8 GB/s host => GPU.
IIRC PCIE 1 => 2 (16x both) offered little performance benefit with contemporary GPUs, and PCIE 2 => 3 (16x both) offered little performance benefit with contemporary GPUs.
There may be a small impact with higher-end GPUs, but either way there's a huge performance gain over graphics that can fit in a moderately-sized laptop's thermal capacity.
DanNeely - Wednesday, January 15, 2014 - link
You're off by a factor of 2 on PCIe bandwidth, for 16x slots it's 4/8/16 GB/s, so you're looking at 4x 2.0 slot equivalent; which happens to be what the TB controller has to connect to upstream.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Thunderbolt_Tec...
MojaMonkey - Thursday, January 16, 2014 - link
Im seeing max about 20% penalty using a gtx 680 in an external thunderbolt chassis. However its like being cpu limited in a game. You just turn up the quality settings until you are gpu limited again.DanNeely - Wednesday, January 15, 2014 - link
Thunderbolt 2 offers the same performance as a 2x 3.0 slote like what Ryan tested last year with the 7970; most games he tested didn't mind much but DiRT3 took a 28% hit to average FPS and a 39% hit to minimum FPS. When Toms Hardware used to run similar tests MS Flight Simulator was a second title that got hammered. Thunderbolt 3 and another speed doubling will be a nice boost for title consistency; but TB2 is good enough to make the product's performance feasible for most gamers.http://www.anandtech.com/show/5458/the-radeon-hd-7...
winterspan - Wednesday, January 15, 2014 - link
While there will be some performance penalty, something to note is that that test you linked specifically lowered the resolution to a ridiculous level for a 7970 (in order to boost the frame rates) which exacerbates the PCIe bandwidth limitation. I'd like to see it run at 1080P at a minimum and see how it does.MojaMonkey - Thursday, January 16, 2014 - link
Exactly, in practice im always gpu limited in games using my external thunderbolt gtx 680 so bandwidth limitations barely register. Hardcore gamers will care but for someone semi serious bandwidth isnt a major issue. The major issue is the price of external thunderbolt gpu box.nico_mach - Friday, January 17, 2014 - link
Especially for an Apple audience, such an expensive product would be aimed more at graphics pros and data pros that need GPU acceleration in their work. Gamers would find another box cheaper most likely.There's nothing wrong with Thunderbolt, it's just that we've advanced to the point that any uses for it are going to be niche.
I could imagine the GPU integrated into a display rather than a true standalone, after all a desktop doesn't need external graphics and if you're plugging it into a laptop, it's not going anywhere, might as well have a big screen. Apple loves proprietary stuff and NVIDIA and Intel have had recent ideas about advanced features in monitors, so I can see something really happening with Apple's first 4k.
Brizzelsprout - Wednesday, January 15, 2014 - link
Why would you pay Apple for using thunderbolt? It's an Intel product.Guspaz - Wednesday, January 15, 2014 - link
Apple had a role in developing it, and used to own the trademark (they since transferred it to Intel).At this point, it's probably simply that the overwhelming majority of Thunderbolt-capable computers people have today are Apple machines, so skipping Apple's licensing would severely restrict your potential market.
pewterrock - Wednesday, January 15, 2014 - link
You wouldn't have to because Intel holds the full copyright to Thunderbolt.Gigaplex - Thursday, January 16, 2014 - link
Trademark is not copyright.Dandu - Wednesday, January 15, 2014 - link
You can use an external GPU with Mac OS X, just with a little modification on the driver : http://www.journaldulapin.com/2013/08/24/a-thunder...zanon - Wednesday, January 15, 2014 - link
Wait, what? Back last year, Anand and Wasson wrote (http://www.anandtech.com/show/5425/why-thunderbolt... that:
That was crazy enough as it was, and that Intel has apparently refused to relinquish their iron grip has been really bad for the standard. But this is the first I've heard that Apple is required too, which would be even worse.
Sm0kes - Wednesday, January 15, 2014 - link
I'm not entirely convinced that this is true. I'd need to see more evidence or clarification that Apple is anything other than their biggest Thunderbolt customer.SleepyFE - Wednesday, January 15, 2014 - link
Apple made the miniDispayPort connector but there is no licensing fee (source Wikipedia).JarredWalton - Thursday, January 16, 2014 - link
If you don't get Apple's "thumbs up", getting drivers and everything else to work properly with OS X becomes more difficult. Basically, if Apple doesn't like your device on OS X, they can make your life very difficult. I'm not saying Apple is doing that here, just pointing out that if you don't pass the Apple equivalent of WHQL, you'd have some serious difficulties.JDG1980 - Thursday, January 16, 2014 - link
This is assuming you care about compatibility with OS X.zanon - Thursday, January 16, 2014 - link
Oh, that's different (and also a little hysterical). I do Mac development and Apple does not "make your life very difficult," unless by that you mean "not becoming some of the select who actually get support for their stuff integrated directly into the OS" which isn't that common anyway. As long as you're handling is all yourself you can do whatever.At any rate, that's not a special Thunderbolt thing, it'd apply the same way if you wanted to make any special driver for OS X. As far as TB adoption in general goes the ball is still clearly entirely in Intel's court, and their court alone.
Sm0kes - Wednesday, January 15, 2014 - link
This will never see the light of day. It seems like every year these enclosures show up at CES with the sole purpose of generating buzz and coverage.Intel is completely against thunderbolt being leveraged for eGPU purposes. The only reasonably priced adapter to actually hit the market (which had a PWRGD delay switch) was the BHPlus TH05. It quickly suffered the wrath of Intel and they had their license revoked in a matter of weeks.
This is exactly the type of use that would differentiate Thunderbolt from USB3 and drive adoption and Intel doesn't seem to care.
SleepyFE - Wednesday, January 15, 2014 - link
USB 3.1 is going to be as fast as TB so we just have to wait for a universal type C connector and they can make a GPU case with it. One you can even plug into your phone (man would that be awesome).DanNeely - Wednesday, January 15, 2014 - link
USB3 may be able to rival the througput of a TB1 slot; but the USB overhead would kill it for gaming. To keep good FPS your GPU needs very consistent low latency IO; USB is neither of these things because to keep costs down its controllers are stupid and need the host CPU to do all the hard work. TB gives a direct PCIe connection to external devices, so you get something that has the performance of a card plugged directly into an equivalently wide slot on the mobo.SleepyFE - Thursday, January 16, 2014 - link
Couldn't you fix that with a driver? You just send a PCIe signal to the USB port connected to the external GPU. You might not be using the USB 3.1 specification as is, but it shlould at least work.Khenglish - Wednesday, January 15, 2014 - link
Yeah it's a real shame the TH05 was pulled. It was the only device to really make plugging in a GPU over thunderbolt economically practical. When you throw in the unnecessary large casing and the lackluster PSU even though you already had your own to use, the price just gets too high to choose an adapter over either a high end laptop, or a desktop and a laptop.Penti - Wednesday, January 15, 2014 - link
Drivers and UEFI-issues, as well as how the operating system handles graphics is the problem here. Technology is there to make it happen, on like a single product but OS's don't really like the idea of a hotplug video-card, but with integrated graphics it should work reasonably well if they work for it. On OS X then at least Nvidia or AMD needs to be up for it. But graphics drivers outside of Apples software updates are unusual there but has been seen. That really holds true on Windows too though. On GNU/Linux there is no reasonable open drivers for Nvidia to begin with so.Seraphimcaduto - Wednesday, January 15, 2014 - link
That ML07 case sure looks like the Alienware X51 case. Actually looks almost dead on to my case after I modded it to allow for better heat removal around the gpu.Aikouka - Thursday, January 16, 2014 - link
I wish you would have gone into a little more detail on the NUC cases. My biggest question was whether any of the Haswell-supporting NUC cases are fanless, but after checking the original image, I see that none of them are. That's rather disappointing as the only retailer that I can find that's selling fanless Haswell NUC cases (Tranquil PC in the UK) only has units that don't support 2.5" drives and the costs become ludicrous after shipping + currency conversion ($200!).Death666Angel - Thursday, January 16, 2014 - link
I love that riser cards are becoming a thing now for the consumer. That enables some cool new form factors that were tough to do on your own previously.eBob - Friday, January 17, 2014 - link
From the description, it looks like the SD380 would be perfect for a build I am planning in the next few months, but I am not able to find any more information on it.CalaverasGrande - Sunday, January 19, 2014 - link
"the difficulty with Thunderbolt is that you have to get approval from both Apple and Intel before you can actually sell a device"I do not believe you need to get any approval from Apple.
Intel created TB. The connector may be an Apple design, but they already pretty much surrendered mini-Displayport to general use.