Can Displayport pass Ethernet ?

M

melk

[H]ard|Gawd
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Jan 21, 2014
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I am trying to reduce cables between computer <> display.
 
Thunderbolt can. I've never seen DisplayPort do it - As far as I know, DP is just for video.
 
I am definitely going with Thunderbolt on my Skylake board then :)

I remember when it was LightPath
 
DracoNB said:
Video and audio
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Err, yeah... That's what I meant. My bad. Here, have some classic game dialogue as an apology.

1399069494526.jpg
 
defaultluser said:
I would avoid Thunderbolt on PCs. It's not well supported like it is on Macintosh.

Just look at this crap: they announced the driver for Thunderbolt networking on Windows in April 2014, but they still have not produced a driver.

https://communities.intel.com/thread/51348
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I can only guess that Apple paid them a bunch for exclusivity or something. I remember hearing about it before Apple got a hold of it and renamed it, and it was going to be amazing tech for all PCs.

mkgBa.jpg
 
DracoNB said:
I can only guess that Apple paid them a bunch for exclusivity or something. I remember hearing about it before Apple got a hold of it and renamed it, and it was going to be amazing tech for all PCs.

mkgBa.jpg
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Not really. Thunderbolt cables are expensive because they are active. And they have a maximum length of 3 meters (copper). And those 3 meter cables are around 50 bucks. That's not priced very favorably with 10GbE (cables only, yes the cards are currently expensive).

This is really just a convince factor for the extreme corner case of users who:

1. need a faster interconnect than Gigabit, and can actually NOTICE the difference.
2. have computers less than 10 feet apart (and even closer if you like your cable management),
3. and also happen to be recent Macs with Thunderbolt ports.

They probably put the PC driver development on the backburner because this feature is not in high demand. But they made a press release to test the waters, and to make investors happy.
 
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defaultluser said:
Not really. Thunderbolt cables are expensive because they are active. And they have a maximum length of 3 meters (copper). And those 3 meter cables are around 50 bucks.

This is really just a convince factor for the extreme corner case of users who:

1. need a faster interconnect than Gigabit, and can actually NOTICE the difference.
2. have computers less than 10 feet apart (and even closer if you like your cable management),
3. and also happen to be recent Macs with Thunderbolt ports.

They probably put the PC driver development on the backburner because this feature is not in high demand. But they made a press release to test the waters, and to make investors happy.
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I'm talking about before Apple got involved, when it was light peak and used fiber optics:

Intel has said Light Peak technology would use light to speed up data transmission between mobile devices and products including storage, networking and audio devices. It would transfer data at bandwidths starting at 10 gigabits per second over distances of up to 100 meters.
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Current thunderbolt goes to 30 meters though, not 3.
 
Read my post next time dude, I already mentioned that that limitation was copper. They chose copper because optical is too damned expensive.

http://www.computerworld.com/articl...e-that-s-30-meters-long--and-costs--899-.html

There's a reason 10GbE started on optical (10GBASE-*R), and then made it's way toward copper (10GBASE-T):

1. long-distance backbones are already optical, so this is a no-brainer making them Ethernet. The extra cost of the optical fiber is spent for DISTANCE first, throughput second.
2. there's no way you'd install fiber to each PC. So instead they found ways to increase speed on copper (as the cost of DSP dropped).

Lightpeak was a dead-end when it was announced because it was just a competitor to Ethernet. This is why Intel re-branded it as Thunderbolt, and made it (primarily) copper. You can already move around that much data easily if you want to drop hundreds of dollars.
 
How has this not been worked out yet.

My 2 year old MBA works awesome with my monitor; acts as a usb3 hub wonderfully for keyboard/mouse/dac/etc. Then when i switch it back to my desktop I have to manually fumble with cables.
 
Worminater said:
How has this not been worked out yet.

My 2 year old MBA works awesome with my monitor; acts as a usb3 hub wonderfully for keyboard/mouse/dac/etc. Then when i switch it back to my desktop I have to manually fumble with cables.
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It has been. It's called USB Type C. Already on the Macbook, and coming soon to mobile PCs everywhere. This might be harder to make work on desktops, as they have upgradable graphics (and some machines ship without an IGP).

Yeah, it's doing the exact same shit Thunderbolt did. But the reality is: Thunderbolt lost BECAUSE it tried to ignore USB, instead of just enhancing it!

You can still send Thunderbolt 3 over that Type C cable if you want a high-efficiency connection, but for the majority USB 3.1 + DisplayPort will satisfy 99.9% of our needs.
 
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DisplayPort does not have specifications for Ethernet in the specification. Thunderbolt does and is compatible physically with the mini-DisplayPort connector. If your getting Thunderbolt 3.0 with a Z170 Express motherboard you will be getting Thunderbolt through a Type-C USB 3.1 connector. Keep this in mind if your trying to mix that in with Thunderbolt 2.0 and earlier devices.
 
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