Lightning Bolt: The Thunderbolt AMD

Introduction

Although expensive due to the controllers and cables, the Thunderbolt is slowly growing in popularity, despite the advancement of USB 3.0. Apparently, he must take a similar niche to that occupied by Firewire in the past, serving as a quicker option to USB 3.0 for professional users. Most likely he'll never get to the point of equipping all PCs and laptops reaching the market, but it tends to become more common, at least in high-end models.

This solution is similar to other external GPUs that appeared in the past, but offers higher performance than the previous one because the bandwidth offered by Thunderbolt to be little more than one PCIe x4 slot, which is still little, but it's much better a x1 slot as we have the Express Card. In practice, it is sufficient to use a mid-range GPU with a performance loss of less than 10%, which is satisfactory in most cases, considering that the performance is already well above that offered by any mobile GPU and probably a lower cost. The drawer is capable of feeding cards up to 150 watts (using an external source).

The growth of the Thunderbolt led AMD to develop a competitor for use in notebooks and netbooks based on the Fusion platform, Lightning Bolt, a solution that uses the USB 3.0 to offer a solution to slower but also cheaper.

The design is based on using a muxer, which should be included in the notebooks. It is internally connected to the bus USB 3.0 and DisplayPort output and connects with an external dock that offers different outputs. The standard includes support for up to two external monitors at 1080p (or three monitors using lower resolutions) and multiple USB ports for connecting various peripherals.

The dock Lightning Bolt is a relatively simple device, which in the world imagined by AMD might cost only a little more than a USB 3.0 hub. This can really happen if the standard will become popular and docks now being manufactured in quantity by several manufacturers, such as USB hubs, but at first it will bring a complicated situation, since the manufacturers tend to charge high prices raised by the docks, which can make them niche products affecting the adoption of the standard. Remember that even though technically superior, the Thunderbolt is finding it difficult to become popular precisely because of the cost drivers and cables. If the Lightning Bolt fall into the same problem, he will have no chance.

A second problem is the simple lack of real utility, since the DisplayPort 1.2 already supports the use of more than one monitor per port in daisy-chain (not to mention the very Eyefinity AMD, which can also be used in laptops) and not There is no difficulty in getting more USB ports simply connecting a USB hub. Even in terms of performance, the Lightning Bolt faces problems with AMD is rushing to announce that the data interface does not offer the full 5 gigabits USB 3.0, since the controller will need to reserve bandwidth for the use of monitors, limiting transfers of data. In practice, it works more like a USB 2.5.

In summary, the Lightning Bolt is a concept that has many flaws, and seems to have been further developed in order to offer some sort of alternative to Thunderbolt for AMD systems, geared to attract more investors than users. It may be that some manufacturers to launch products including reach the door, but the chance to make success the standard is very small due to the lack of real use to him. Even the Thunderbolt is finding it very difficult to gain traction, since the users are largely satisfied with the combination of HDMI ports, mini-SD and USB 3.0 devices found in today.

The positive side is that the Lightning Bolt would add little to the cost of devices, as well as some additional tracks on the motherboard and an additional connector, the only necessary component is the chip for the muxer, which would cost about U.S. $ 1 if produced in quantity. In other words, is not so useful, at least not the Lightning Bolt becomes uneconomic devices. AMD's expectation is that the standard is finalized during the first half and reach the market by the end of the year.

Meanwhile, in Santa Clara, Intel is preparing the launch of Cactus Ridge, a controller Thunderbolt cheaper, thanks to a more advanced process integration, which plans to become the most popular standard. Currently, there are two options for controlling the market, the Ridge Light (high-end chipset offers two doors, costs about $ 30) and Eagle Ridge (the simplified version, which offers only one door and costs about U.S. $ 20). This photo shows one of iFixit Eagle Ridge:

These prices explain why the Thunderbolt be facing much resistance because $ 30 is more than one manufacturer of tablets paid for a Tegra 3. The Cactus Ridge should reduce the prices by about 33%, making a standard Thunderbolt a little less expensive than it is today.