If you have Thunderbolt3+/USB4 on both ends, you can just plug in a cable between the hosts and they'll network. From there you should just be able to find the other host(s) through the normal Windows networking environment for things like file share. RDP shouldn't be more than connecting to `otherhost.local`.
Looks to me like this is just a GUI for managing features that USB4 already supports. Maybe they have some optimisations for Thunderbolt network speeds (I don't think SMB is designed to work over 20Gbps links?) but it feels like someone could develop a small Windows application to do all of this without too much effort. The ground work has already been done.
I don't have a pair of devices to test this feature with, but based on the documentation alone, none of these features should be new. I would've expected this tool to come with the Intel driver package to make Thunderbolt relevant for end users, not for it to be sold and licensed.
All the applications they're describing can already be done over IP and are only held back by the lack of easy to use, fast reliable network interfaces in consumer hardware especially laptops. If Intel made Ethernet over Thunderbolt fast and efficient on their hardware by making it look like a decent NIC to the operating system this problem would be solved and AMD would have to play catch up since they don't have a line of good enough modern NICs in house. Intel could even show off how fast and efficient their systems are compared to software packet processing.
Solve the usable external bandwidth bottleneck for mobile hardware. Launch a line of media converters to 10/25/40 Gb/s Ethernet priced to establish an ecosystem. Give users docking stations that just work.
Yes, usb4 standard includes host-to-host, which sets up IP networking between computers.
And yes there's lots and lots of file share over local network apps. That would just work.
Intel Thunderbolt Share adds their own ways reimplementation of something like MediaTek CrossMount, a set of standards atop UPNP to share sound cards, screens, input devices. From the article:
> It’s really going to offer users an easy, fast, and efficient way to do more with your two PCs by securely sharing screens external monitors, keyboard, mouse, storage and all your files,
Intel Thunderbolt Share (ITS) has shown up a number of times, and this elementary confusion with base USB4 capabilities persists. ITS seems semi cool to me, just, 100% would rather have a protocol than a piece of software. Super glue usb-ip to mdns or UPNP, and be real about it. ITS feels like a cheap substitute of the real deal: Software as a Protocol Substitute.
https://hn.algolia.com/?query=thunderbolt%20share&sort=byDat...
Been using thunderbolt networking for years on macOS, and it is definitely the way to go for things like migration assistant. Prior to thunderbolt you could use ethernet or firewire, the latter also supporting target disk mode.
I like universal access etc., but I still wish Apple would bring back target disk mode, target display mode (makes iMacs a lot more useful!), and back to my mac.
"Isn't this just LapLink with a Thunderbolt cable" was my immediate thought when I read this. If you're around long enough everything is shiny and new, even the things that you thought were long ago killed by better solutions (like Ethernet in this case).
For general networking, sure Ethernet is a better solution, but I also don't imagine you're going to get 18Gbit/s+ from regular desktop/laptops over ethernet, regardless of how much gold plating it has.
Thunderbolt Share offers several options, all at blazing 40Gbps or higher speeds ...
Yet further down the page it has:
Thunderbolt Share uses up to a 20Gbps connection over Thunderbolt 4 ...
And even further down the page it has this:
Drag and drop files: Nothing special, though the copy/move functions should take
place at Thunderbolt speeds — between 80Gbps and 120Gbps speeds, depending on the
specification.
> Nothing special, though the copy/move functions should take place at Thunderbolt speeds — between 80Gbps and 120Gbps speeds, depending on the specification.
That seems a bit fantastical. There are no hard drives I'm aware of that will permit sustained I/O at those speeds, in fact I'm pretty sure NVMe doesn't have the bandwidth for this.
Unless you hook up a drive with RAM characteristics to PCIe 6.0 x8+ I don't see this happening anytime soon.
For example Crucial T705 [0] can do 14.1 GB/s sequential reads. That's 113 Gbps. Requires PCIe5, though.
A lot of "old" NVMe disks can also do over 50 Gbps. Samsung 980/990, WD SN850X come to mind right away. You could run two in a RAID-0 configuration to get over 100 Gbps.
(that card can theoretically go quite a bit faster)
But yeah, seems like a bit of a stretch to be portraying it as consumer stuff. Maybe give it a few years though, cat pictures aren't losing resolution. ;)
Everyone's talking about how USB4 can do the same job perfectly well with host-to-host networking or presenting as a disk, i.e. target disk mode.
That's lame and no fun. Why not do something more exciting and fast and furious (the author said, sarcastically), like PCIe DMA over USB4? I want to send files as fast I can stream vertices to a GPU dammit!
wouldn't one be able to just setup a local ip address on the interface (thunderbolt or usb) on both ends of the cable so one can scp or tar mbuffer (on linux) things over?
ip addr add 192.168.100.1/24 dev thunderbolt0.
that's probably to complicated for the average user.
usb-c is fast enough for me by the way, but i keep loosing the usb disks, i'd be nice if they had a kind of airtag.
You don't even need to set up a local IP, you'll get an IPv6 address for free. Combined with Avahi/Bonjour/mDNS (preinstalled on most computers these days), accessing devices through `hostname.local` should just work out of the box.
The only challenge I can think of is "what is the other computer's hostname" and configuring the firewall to treat the TB link as a trusted network.
If you're on a Mac (at least, I assume Windows too), you just plug them together, they automatically get link-local IPs, you click "enable" on File Sharing (SMB) and boom you're sharing files.
It doesn't in USB4. USB4 adds Thunderbolt compatible signalling for DisplayPort and PCIe tunneling. It also adds some faster data modes. Thunderbolt 4 is separate, but USB4 products can be Thunderbolt 4 with all the features presumably including Thunderbolt 3 compatibility.
Readit News
Looks to me like this is just a GUI for managing features that USB4 already supports. Maybe they have some optimisations for Thunderbolt network speeds (I don't think SMB is designed to work over 20Gbps links?) but it feels like someone could develop a small Windows application to do all of this without too much effort. The ground work has already been done.
I don't have a pair of devices to test this feature with, but based on the documentation alone, none of these features should be new. I would've expected this tool to come with the Intel driver package to make Thunderbolt relevant for end users, not for it to be sold and licensed.
Solve the usable external bandwidth bottleneck for mobile hardware. Launch a line of media converters to 10/25/40 Gb/s Ethernet priced to establish an ecosystem. Give users docking stations that just work.
And yes there's lots and lots of file share over local network apps. That would just work.
Intel Thunderbolt Share adds their own ways reimplementation of something like MediaTek CrossMount, a set of standards atop UPNP to share sound cards, screens, input devices. From the article:
> It’s really going to offer users an easy, fast, and efficient way to do more with your two PCs by securely sharing screens external monitors, keyboard, mouse, storage and all your files,
Intel Thunderbolt Share (ITS) has shown up a number of times, and this elementary confusion with base USB4 capabilities persists. ITS seems semi cool to me, just, 100% would rather have a protocol than a piece of software. Super glue usb-ip to mdns or UPNP, and be real about it. ITS feels like a cheap substitute of the real deal: Software as a Protocol Substitute. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=thunderbolt%20share&sort=byDat...
SMB Direct, which uses RDMA, is apparently designed for (very?) high speed links.
I have no idea if TB4 includes anything like RDMA in its list of capabilities though.
I like universal access etc., but I still wish Apple would bring back target disk mode, target display mode (makes iMacs a lot more useful!), and back to my mac.
https://support.apple.com/en-sg/guide/mac-help/mchlb37e8ca7/...
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31013707
Second paragraph:
Yet further down the page it has: And even further down the page it has this:That seems a bit fantastical. There are no hard drives I'm aware of that will permit sustained I/O at those speeds, in fact I'm pretty sure NVMe doesn't have the bandwidth for this.
Unless you hook up a drive with RAM characteristics to PCIe 6.0 x8+ I don't see this happening anytime soon.
A lot of "old" NVMe disks can also do over 50 Gbps. Samsung 980/990, WD SN850X come to mind right away. You could run two in a RAID-0 configuration to get over 100 Gbps.
[0]: https://uk.pcmag.com/ssds/150961/crucial-t705
https://www.highpoint-tech.com/nvme-individual/ssd7749e
(that card can theoretically go quite a bit faster)
But yeah, seems like a bit of a stretch to be portraying it as consumer stuff. Maybe give it a few years though, cat pictures aren't losing resolution. ;)
That's lame and no fun. Why not do something more exciting and fast and furious (the author said, sarcastically), like PCIe DMA over USB4? I want to send files as fast I can stream vertices to a GPU dammit!
Furthermore Thunderbolt Share is focused on TB5 so ~120Gbps which is roughly PCIe4 x8 / PCIe5 x4 so it's getting there ;)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbolt_(interface)
https://www.phoronix.com/news/USB4NET-End-To-End-Flow-Contro...
that's probably to complicated for the average user. usb-c is fast enough for me by the way, but i keep loosing the usb disks, i'd be nice if they had a kind of airtag.
The only challenge I can think of is "what is the other computer's hostname" and configuring the firewall to treat the TB link as a trusted network.
Why does Thunderbolt still exist as a discrete technology?