Understanding HD speed limitations, Thunderbolt, etc...

[maxiedaniels]

A little confused on something. I understand that SATA has a 6Gbps interface. I understand that Thunderbolt has a 10Gbps interface.

Question though - when Thunderbolt is built in to the system, is it still routing through SATA, and therefore limited to 6Gbps (if it's SATAIII)?

I was under the impression that Thunderbolt, when stock, is wired directly to the MOBO somehow, and doesn't involve SATA. Is this totally wrong?

 

[NoTrigger]

It will be a seperate interface/feature on the motherboard.

The only thing that it will have in common with SATA is that it will be Serial type interface ( one byte/bit sent at a time ).

 

[E4g1e]

A little confused on something. I understand that SATA has a 6Gbps interface. I understand that Thunderbolt has a 10Gbps interface.

Question though - when Thunderbolt is built in to the system, is it still routing through SATA, and therefore limited to 6Gbps (if it's SATAIII)?

I was under the impression that Thunderbolt, when stock, is wired directly to the MOBO somehow, and doesn't involve SATA. Is this totally wrong?

As NoTrigger stated, Thunderbolt is a separate controller on the motherboard. However, no single current platter based hard drive can take anywhere close to full advantage of even SATA II (3.0 Gbps) because no single mechanical HDD can sustain anywhere close to 300 MB/s (3.0 Gbps in terms of the 10:1 storage bit-to-byte conversion) in sequential transfers.