no Thunderbolt on Mac Pros?

Did you ever think to read specs prior to making purchases?

Intel has not released the processors for the Mac Pro with ThunderBolt yet. They are planning to do that 1Q12. So Apple can't release a Mac Pro with TB until after that.

Allan

Stores have a 14-day return policy for any unit I buy there ... you can ask if you "just bought".

Intel releases new features on the bottom of the line first. It only come to the server grade chips used in the Mac Pro later. This has always been their way of doing things.

Sounds like you need someone who is a bit more technically competent in the purchasing department.

Allan

While the buyer is ultimately responsible for understanding what is being purchased, it is easy to understand small IT depts not always getting all of the facts. An alternative that might work is to contact Apple or the source of your hardware, explain the situation, and try to come to agreement on resolution. Afterall, if the equipment was purchased from one source, they should have also alerted you to the inconsistency in the purchase order.

http://www.apple.com/contact

See if there is someone on there who can help you, also.

There are plenty of PCIe SATA/SAS controllers that can handle your storage demands (without getting into Fibre).

Intel won't have TB out for new PCs until 2012. And controller cards supporting TB storage are probably something that would be 3rd party until a new motherboard to support not just TB but PCIe 3.0 and new processor socket as well (and hopefully full support for SATA3 but that remains just what I want and the largest shortcoming, now).

Does seem that they didn't look at the Build To Order options on the product page.

Seems that swapping out for "standard" SATA interfaced enclosures and invest in a good SATA controller to make do.

How about someone just answer the question, instead of being a Intel and Apple deflector, Allan. No doubt they could have caught it sooner, but the question is why isnt Apple selling them yet, when all of their advertising and promotion sure seems to imply they have integrated solutions today. Who in the heck needs 12TB of storage for their laptop, and with those transfer speeds. Thunderbolt is designed for the heavy work load specialists, that would buy a tower. Apple could be a lot more clear, that Thunderbolt is not everywhere in its line

Old thread... some vendors have invested in making your MacBook series run with the big dogs on storage.

http://www.barefeats.com/hard147.html

Sandy Bridge-EP is the first major overhaul for Intel servers since 2009, and nearly ever aspect has been enhanced (read "changed and redesigned")

http://www.realworldtech.com/page.cfm?ArticleID=RWT030612034439

- one of the better articles detailing the new Xeon

Carl Eberling1 wrote:

How about someone just answer the question,

To answer the question, no you cannot use Thunderbolt with the current Mac Pros.

Carl Eberling1 wrote:

How about someone just answer the question, instead of being a Intel and Apple deflector, Allan. No doubt they could have caught it sooner, but the question is why isnt Apple selling them yet,......... Thunderbolt is designed for the heavy work load specialists, that would buy a tower. Apple could be a lot more clear, that Thunderbolt is not everywhere in its line

Thunderbolt is not going to make much difference to a MacPro tower. Thunderbolt is more expensive and less performance than a decent SAS or Fiber channel PCIe card. Adding a Tbolt card to a MacPro with Rev2 PCIe slots is making that slot have less performance capability. Tbolt is just PCIe (and Display Port - more on that later) over an external copper wire.

Tbolt RAIDs are a great step forward for an iMac, Mini or MBP. On a MacPro you will get much better performance and even more important, maturity, which equals reliability, from an existing RAID card. And because they have been around a while, for PCs and Macs, they cost less to implement.

And as has been stated - INtel has not yet released a CPU for the big machine that can handle Tbolt.

Also, there are no Tbolt PCIe adapter cards because Intel licensed Thunderbolt exclusively to Apple for the first year - and through Apple to select members of Apple Developer. That license is up in April and we can start seeing development from other vendors. Even then we will not see a *real* Thunderbolt host bust adapter for PCIe - reason being there is no way, at least none I can fathom, to integrate Display Port and PCIe protocols at that level. A Tbolt HBA would most likely just have the PCIe protocols.

Lastly - Using Thunderbolt for display port on a MacPro would downgrade the graphics. An ATI 5870 graphics card has three times the bandwidth of an entire Tbolt bus.

Rick

Ricks ricks@macgurus.com wrote:

Even then we will not see a *real* Thunderbolt host bust adapter for PCIe - reason being there is no way, at least none I can fathom, to integrate Display Port and PCIe protocols at that level. A Tbolt HBA would most likely just have the PCIe protocols.

Lastly - Using Thunderbolt for display port on a MacPro would downgrade the graphics. An ATI 5870 graphics card has three times the bandwidth of an entire Tbolt bus.

Rick

I've never really understood why someone couldn't (although I can imagine cost/profit margin might prohibit it) make a video card with a Thunderbolt output. A 16 lane PCIe slot (ver. 1.0) has a spec of 4 GB/sec each direction (well over the 10 Gb/sec each direction for Thunderbolt). Do you know of any links that I could further study on the subject?

Your last statement about the ATI 5870 having 3x the bandwidth puzzles me because the maximum display resolution it supports and the fact that the displayport protocol can be transmitted over Thunderbolt. Are you saying that the current Thunderbolt bus can't handle a 2560 x 1600 pixel display signal?

It's comming soon!!!!!

About Thunderbolt

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.7/en/mh35952.html

https://www.apple.com/thunderbolt/

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4941

Technical Specifications

https://support.apple.com/kb/SP642

Promise Pegasus R6 Thunderbolt Performance

High-Speed I/O Performance Up to 800 megabytes per second :-(

Anandtech (2/2011): Thunderbolt already faces competition from 4.8 Gbps USB 3.0

How it works:

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/io/thunderbolt/thunderbolt-technology-dev eloper.html

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4194/intels-codename-lightpeak-launches-as-thunder bolt

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Thunderbolt

10 Gbit/s Thunderbolt bandwidth per channel

Products Affected

Mac mini (Mid 2011), Mac mini Server (Mid 2011), MacBook Air (11-inch, Mid 2011), MacBook Air (13-inch, Mid 2011), MacBook Pro (13-inch, Early 2011), MacBook Pro (15-inch, Early 2011), MacBook Pro (17-inch, Early 2011), iMac (21.5-inch, Mid 2011), iMac (27-inch, Mid 2011)

The latest updates available are:

• For Mac OS X Lion, build 11C74 and Thunderbolt Software Update 1.1.
• For MacBook Pro (Early 2011) and iMac (Mid 2011) running Snow Leopard: Mac OS X v10.6.8 build 10K540 and Thunderbolt Software Update 1.1 (Snow Leopard).

The latest updates available are:

• Thunderbolt Firmware for the Mac: Thunderbolt Firmware Update.
• Thunderbolt Firmware for the display: Thunderbolt Display Firmware Update.

Using Thunderbolt with Boot Camp and Windows 7

https://support.apple.com/kb/HT4617

Every other product has a support page (www.apple.com/support/product) except this.

http://www.apple.com/support/thunderbolt

- which would usually where I would look for all support links and articles.

So just start: https://www.apple.com/thunderbolt/

ThunderLink is an expansion adapter for the ThunderBolt computer bus interface, and adds support for the SAS, SATA, fibre optic and ethernet interfaces. The adapter can support throughput speeds of up to 10Gb/s^[1].

http://www.syntechsa.co.za/atto-thunderlink-adapters/

PCI Express 4.0 On November 29, 2011, PCI-SIG has announced to proceed to PCI Express 4.0 featuring 16 GT/s, still on copper technology. Additionally, active and idle power optimizations are to be investigated. Final specifications are expected to be released in 2014/2015.^[25]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express#External_PCIe_cards

Apple Thunderbolt Displays, including the stand-alone display as well as the Thunderbolt iMacs, cut compatibilities with all previous standards, including VGA, DVI, and DisplayPort.^[2] As such, they cannot be connected to computers lacking a Thunderbolt port, including pre-2011 Macs and the vast majority of Windows PCs.

Thunderbolt could be beneficial with a Mac Pro update.

Imagine a smaller form factor (think G4 cube) with RAM, maybe 2 internal SATA III HDD's, processor(s), USB 3.0, Thunderbolt and perhaps a graphics card or a graphics box. It can be placed in a closet or such, with one Thunderbolt cable running to your desk, connecting your HID's, displays, etc. That would make perfect sense for a Mac Pro system.

Without Xeon processor and heatsinks it is a Mini but it would never be a workstation.

So no it would not make sense for a workstation at all but build your own small form factor PC now that Intel will have Tb.