Thunderbolt on old macpro

PJ'sPal wrote:

Sonnet Technologies has a PCIe card for Thunderbolt 3.

www.sonnettech.com/product/thunderbolt3-upgrade-cards.html

No, no, no.

What this is, is part of a kit which allows a Mac which has Thunderbolt built-in to connect an external box, an 'expansion chassis' via which PCIe cards can be used. The expansion box contains a PCIe card and that card connects via Thunderbolt to a Mac which as stated already has Thunderbolt built-in. This PCIe card is acting as the converter from Thunderbolt to PCIe, it cannot convert from PCIe to Thunderbolt.

This kit is to replace a Thunderbolt2 version of the card with a Thunderbolt3 version.

It cannot be used to add Thunderbolt to a classic Mac Pro. (Sadly. 😟)

There are two typical uses of such a kit -

1. Adding a traditional PCIe video card to any current Mac - none of which have upgradeable video chips and none of which have PCIe slots via which they could directly fit such a card. Since Apple have a history of fitting only feeble video chips this is a way of enhancing performance
2. Adding a specialist PCIe video card, perhaps for video capture, instrument monitoring, FDDI, or something else

Note: Apple themselves are currently selling a similar kit to developers which contains an AMD Radeon RX 580 video card. This is to allow developers to start work on apps which do virtual reality and which even Apple realise their current feeble video chips cannot cope with. See https://developer.apple.com/development-kit/external-graphics/

Upgrading a Mac Pro tower to support Thunderbolt would require a new motherboard design. Apple would not do this unless they were to reintroduce the product and that isn't going to happen. They would see it as a step backward.

In my situation, I'm in a corporate creative department for a manufacturer and have had my Mac Pro for six years. They figure that if it is in great operating condition will do the job there is no need to replace it just to get something faster and more powerful. I see their point.

Frankly, if Apple were to move past the son-of-Mac-Cube mentality and replace the current model with one that offers internal expansion, then I could persuade my employer to invest in a new machine and bring thunderbolt into my world. Until then, the move would require the additional purchase of outboard hardware including a PCI enclosure and a JBOD enclosure.

Agree that this card goes into Sonnet's expansion box.

What is to stop one from using the hardware and writing a software driver so it functions with MacOS?

The PCIe bus is standard.

There has to be a Thunderbolt controller on the card to communicate with the Thuderbolt ports.

The missing link is the software driver between the hardware card and MacOS.

Obviously, Apple is not going to look back on such old systems.

However, some third party might.

Sonnet has done adapter cards in the past.

Intel is said to be not interested in "data-only ThunderBolt", and has flat-out refused to develop the chips required for it, and has said they will not certify any "data-only" Thunderbolt devices.

For those who come late to this party, you CAN add a USB-3 card to your Mac Pro silver tower, and get fast speeds for connecting a couple of external drives at far less cost than ThunderBolt.

USB-3 is a good idea. I have preferred Firewire 800 in the past.

Instead of using the trademark Thunderbolt, someone should just use Thunderdata for the data only port.

Then Intel is not in the certification part of this.

The biggest question is engineering/manufacturing costs and the revenue from such a card.

My first MacPro has the FBDIMM memory with the serial bus and the huge heat sinks.

That technology did not last very long due to the high memory module costs.

Perhaps Thunderbolt is in the same position. Overly expensive cables, adapters, and external devices.

I have serious doubts that Intel will allow that to happen. They don't appear to be the least interest in such a solution and would probably do their best to prevent it.

Do you really think there would be enough of a market for such a thing?

I know I have a Mac Pro that could use it but I am looking to replace it with either the iMac Pro or new Mac Pro due out next year.

no.

Physically impossible.

Why?

It is not "physically impossible" as a matter of size or whatever, it's impossible because Thunderbolt is a new bus architecture that requires a new and different chipset. It is faster than PCI, so making a PCI card is pointless. What you'd need is a new "mother board" that incorporated the T-bolt capabilities as part of the fundamental design.

Apple makes such a board, but unfortunately it is very expensive, not currently available, and only fits in the new (Late 2013) Mac Pro case...

We have historically also had display protocols that had a 60-100 times a second screen re-draw, whether the data had changed or not. DisplayPort and Mini DisplayPort changes that, so the screen-redraw bandwidth is used only when the screen actually changes. When the screen stops changing, DisplayPort goes quiet.

That wildly-variable screen data was originally combined onto the other side of a ThunderBolt cable. To get a "true" ThunderBolt port, you would have to pick up that display data from the graphics card, re-route it onto another PCIe card, and combine it with the basic ThunderBolt data to get "true" ThunderBolt.

Intel has told us this is too messy and they won't make the chips for an add-on card of ANY description, not even a Data-only ThunderBolt card.

Several developers had propositioned Intel on making a PCI/data only upgrade card. Intel wasn't impressed. They didn't even hesitate before rejection.

Not talked much about, there are developers outside of Intel's developer process. Their products don't get a Thunderbolt label and don't have approval. No idea how they buy their chips. So far I have never seen one that worked as well as one that made it through what I would consider the excessive, overly expensive and very long approval process.

RatVega™ wrote:

it's impossible because Thunderbolt is a new bus architecture that requires a new and different chipset.

That is the definiton of "Physically impossible".

RatVega™ wrote:

It is faster than PCI, so making a PCI card is pointless.

Incorrect.

Thunderbolt occupies 4 pci-e lanes, there are 8,16 and (in some computers) 32 lane slots available.

Several developers had propositioned Intel on making a PCI/data only upgrade card.

Intel wasn't impressed. They didn't even hesitate before rejection.

References please.

References please.

Some of the money was mine. Not in a place where I can name my relationships. Sorry.

No references? Thats okay, we can take your word on it

I was just asking since nobody can seem to provide ANY proof that thunderbolt could be added to any computer not desgned for it. Every fact points to what Intel has already confirmed; Thunderbolt cannot be added to any computer not designed to accommodate it from the start. People keep referencing Asus' (never released) motherboard as an example, yet fail to recognize that it was designed for thunderbolt and the card is just a feature enabler.

The same can be said about PowerPC. PPC cards were made to work with 68K Macs (two completely different architectures), so why hasn't anyone made an Intel upgrade card for PPC Macs?

Its the same answer for Thunderbolt; Computers were far more simple back then, modern computers are far too complex to add technology 3-8 years newer than them.

Then there is the fact you have a MacPro, which means you have "internal thunderbolt", AKA PCI-express slots. They are also much faster! Thunderbolt is limited to 4x PCI-e lanes, while Mac Pros have several 4x and/or 8x slots open.

All other Macs (Laptops, iMacs, Minis) have no expansion slots, which means adding thunderbolt would be physically impossible even if there were a thunderbolt card!

PC users don't want anything to do with thunderbolt since its very expensive, entirely focused on Apple products and most PCs have internal PCI-e slots (see the above paragraph).

Thus the entire argument about "why won't anyone make a Thunderbolt card" is completely pointless and needs to stop.