Intel Shows 'World's Fastest' Thumbdrive Using Thunderbolt
Small and fast drive was on show at Computex.
Chances are, if you've read the word 'Thunderbolt' this week, it was related to Intel's new Thunderbolt 2 technology. However, Thunderbolt 2 wasn't the only iteration of Thunderbolt on show at Computex. Intel has also been flaunting a thumbdrive that uses Thunderbolt tech to deliver super fast speeds.
PCWorld reports that the drive is 128 GB in capacity and is a prototype device. In fact, it's one of the first thumb drives demonstrated using Thunderbolt connectivity. It's based on Sandisk SSD storage and requires no cables for data transfer. Though Intel's Oren Huber says there has been some interest in building products based on the design, Intel didn't mention any plans to bring the thumbdrive it had on hand to market.
Intel announced the next generation of Thunderbolt in April of this year. The controller, originally codenamed "Falcon Ridge," runs at 20Gbs, doubling the bandwidth over the original Thunderbolt. Thunderbolt 2 enables 4K video file transfer and display simultaneously by combining two previously independent 10Gbs channels into one 20Gbs bi-directional channel that supports data and/or display. Intel says we can hope to see Thunderbolt 2 products before the year is out.
USB speeds are rated in burst speeds, just like it's always been, while firewire and thunderbolt operate on a constant data rate.
2 different things, two different uses. And coincidentally, thunderbolt doesn't have anything to do with apple, unlike firewire. It's simply a third party interface that they've integrated into their hardware.
USB speeds are rated in burst speeds, just like it's always been, while firewire and thunderbolt operate on a constant data rate.
There is no such "rating in burst speed", USB can do sustained transfers at the exact same rate it can do 'bursts' at. USB1/2's problem is half-duplex and host-based polling to emulate interrupts which makes it a lot less efficient - due to lack of full-duplex (or double-simplex for nitpickers) the USB host needs to periodically waste bandwidth polling all devices that may have interrupts to see whether or not there actually is one.
Ironically, USB3 addresses a few of USB1/2's core weaknesses but at the same time, USB3 introduces more complex cables than the FireWire cables it was originally intended to avoid.
Did you even read the article? It's based on Sandisk's SSD
Did you even read the article? It's based on Sandisk's SSD
On top of the fact that Intel is doing it just because they can. They don't necessarily want to bring it to market because they don't believe there will be enough interest in it.
Intel and Apple developed Thunderbolt. USB didn't take off until Apple made it ubiquitous via the iMac and peripheral device manufactures. USB devices always worked/work on a Mac. I quite often had to struggle to get the same device to work under Windows. You really are dumb if you think USB, FireWire and Thunderbolt are remotely similar in application.
A Thunderbolt drive does not need to use SATA3 or USB3; it can also be a native PCIe storage device that can use the full 20Gbps with PCIe's lower latency from eliminating the SATA/USB layer..
Intel Shows 'World's Hottest' Thumbdrive Using Thunderbolt
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why not being that back but with thunderbolt so that you can use an SSD as a flash drive that will offer full SSD performance.
It would really streamline the process of saving txt files and spreadsheets.
Lol... if my memory serves me properly, I think I read that AMD's Lightning Bolt alternative is faster than Intel's Thunderbolt (which fell short on its promises), and cheaper. Thunderbolt 2 seems to be on par with what Thunderbolt 1 should have been, and AMD already beat Intel at that. Interesting. I also don't like how Intel permeates the market in all facets while AMD solutions are implemented in poorly designed products. Granted, Intel is better (for the moment) than AMD in CPU processing power, but AMD also offers a viable alternative for many people who do not want to (or cannot) spend large portions of money on Intel products. Intel is not playing nice.
If it uses full SATA gen 3 bandwidth then it should push something like 500MB/s Read/write sequential which is quite a bit faster than what most USB 3 thumb drives do. The SuperTalent RC8 is about 250MB/s.
Also it would not be limited to just SATA gen 3 speeds as they can make a controller just for it later.