Reading about Thunderbolt on another thread caused me to wonder; what needs to happen before we get Thunderbolt for Windows?

Are we waiting on a system level driver from MS as well as device drivers from vendors? What needs to happen? In what order?

Thanks.

It's all on MS, my friend.  They have not developed or integrated (or whatever you call it) TB into Windows.  They are dropping the ball on all of us Windows/2bTB users and it sucks.  TB2 is already on the market!
 
http://www.anandtech.com/...-is-thunderbolt-headed

sorry for the dup.

Is iThunderbolt needed for Windows systems?

What happens when you buy a Mac Mini Server and put Windows on that. Will Thunderbolt still function.

Thank you.

I am more interested in learning what a process of adoption may be than learning opinions regarding the merit of adopting the use of Thunderbolt.

Thank you.

Important to note:
Thunderbolt provides access to the PCIe bus.
To avoid derailing the thread, I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions.   

1) it most certainly is NOT MS fault please stop with that myth.
it has to do with manufacturers not wanting to write drivers.
case in point Lynx has TB for windows and not only is it real TB (unlike Motu 828x and previously working Apollo that used Firewire protocol thru TB)
and to add to that Lynx can daisy chain (up to 6 units or 192 I/O), all other present TB on the market are end point devices. and look to be for awhile.
 
2) TB is absolutely pointless, it offers NOTHING over what we have now
3) it will NOT give you lower latency
4) it will not offer more bandwidth than PCIe Cards or RME USB3
5) if you own Apple then you don't have much a choice.. (of course this being a sonar forum that would not apply to anyone) but USB still is as good. (assuming the manufacturer knows how to write drivers EG RME)
 
but hey feel free to believe all the marketing hype
 
 

my two cents...
 
TB is PCIe. So if you have a form factor that supports cards in slots TB has only one advantage, access to certain audio hardware, e.g. The UAD Apollo family. If you really want to use an Apollo you need TB, and it is not yet supported on Windows.
 
PCIe bandwidth is overkill for audio! Note I said bandwidth and not throughput...
the CD standard requires approximately 10MByte/sec, or roughly 1,411,200 bits per second.
32 channels of 24 bit audio sampled at 96 kHz requires about 70 MBits/second, or about 8.8 MBytes/second
TB v1 provides 10 Gbits/second, TB v2 provides 20 GBits/sec. So can you fit 70 MBits/second on TB???
 
But nothing is ever quite that simple. In addition to the maximum bandwidth, one needs to worry about how I/O requests are serviced. Well, with USB2 and Firewire you need to worry about that, and in fact the big benefit of Firewire over USB was how I/O was serviced. From what I've read (I have not dug very deeply) USB2 and especially USB3 now support DMA and high efficiency interrupt handling, so there is no longer a performance difference between a well written (with respect to our requirements) USB driver and a well written Firewire driver is minimal. (This does assume you are not using plain vanilla "class compliant" drivers.)
 
TB enjoys all the benefits of PCIe (because it is PCIe) - very efficient interrupt handlers, Direct Memory Access, and a very mature driver framework. So even though we'll never use 20 GBit/second of bandwidth - which would be over 9000 (if I did the math correctly) channels of 24 bit, 96KHz audio.
 
But that's not the point, is it?
 
No, the point is some folks - myself included - would dearly love to have an Apollo interface if only to gain access to the Unison Microphone technology. And today that means one of two Firewire cards that are approved, if you are running Windows. Could UA add microphone inputs and A/D converters to their PCIe cards? Probably, but how big would that market be? Oops... speculating...

Some folks complain about using Firewire over TB, but that's nothing new. I used to network my studio computers together using TCP/IP over Firewire. One has to separate the protocol layer(s) from the physical layer. I think the criticism about FW over TB is overstated.
 
As far as who is at fault, UA or MS, that's a business decision that is way above my pay grade. I can understand a small developer wanting to wait for official support. Developing your own has several risks, and if I were UA I might consider that path, but I'd have to think long and hard about it. That's not faulting Lynx for gambling, and frankly I hope it works out for them, I think it will.

But I've now wandered into the realm of speculation, so I'm stopping here.

Some Windows laptops already have TB. The HP ZBooks for example.

MS are an irrelevancy here. If card manufacturers/laptop manufacturers wish to implement TB then they can and will simply write the drivers themselves (or use drivers supplied by chipset manufacturers). Hardware support is the issue.

As I understand it the lack of PCIe TB cards comes down to Intel's policies and attitudes. In particular that TB has to handle video as well as data, which might be putting off third party manufacturers now that Intel has finally decided to license third parties.

As for how useful TB might be, as far as audio is concerned while USB might have suitable bandwidth it is still the case that a PCI(e) connected card will give much lower latency than USB. Even FW400 often has an edge over USB2 in latency terms, but there are the chip/Windows/interface issues to deal with. Whether that issue continues with TB remains to be seen.

As for USB3, are there any USB audio interfaces that can be guaranteed to work 100% with the USB3 implementation on any random selection of motherboards/laptop chipsets? I've three USB2 interfaces kicking about and none of them are happy connected to USB3 on my tower or the three laptops I've tried them on. USB3 is fast becoming the only USB connection on laptops and motherboards will follow pretty quickly I would expect.

I'm actively considering a new audio interface, but since no manufacturer is willing to give a definitive "yes/no" on the USB3 issue, Macs are starting to look very appealing. At least I can be sure that Focusrite/RME/MOTU firewire interfaces will actually work.