Abstract:
As the misguided U.S. economy continues to run up massive debt and continue massive trade deficit, the sell-off of U.S. High Technology assets continues to non-U.S. companies, fat with outsourcing cash. Lenovo, a Chinese company, continues their purchases in the United States of inventors of technologyu.
[Chinese glorifying revolution, courtesy, The Telegraph]
Chinese Lenovo Purchasing U.S. Hard Technology
Chinese global company Lenovo has been purchasing their way into the U.S. market through many technologies essentially invented in the United States. IBM seems to be the most significant seller.
Chinese computer maker Lenovo has completed its $1.75 billion purchase of IBM’s personal computer division, creating the world’s third-largest PC maker, the company said Sunday. The deal — one of the biggest foreign acquisitions ever by a Chinese company
Since Lenovo took over the IBM personal computer business on May 1, 2005, the company's advertising and marketing efforts have excluded IBM almost entirely. The four television spots that Lenovo ran during the Turin Winter Olympics, for example, never mentioned IBM at all. In fact, the only connection to the iconic brand is the IBM logo, which still adorns Lenovo's ThinkPad laptops.
Lenovo is reorganizing its operations into two business groups... As part of the restructuring, it will create two new divisions, Lenovo Business Group and Think Business Group.The reorganization, which will be completed on April 1 [2013]
Lenovo and IBM announced on Thursday they have signed a definitive agreement that will see the Chinese hardware giant acquire the IBM's x86 server business for the tidy sum of $2.3bn, with approximately $2bn to be paid in cash and the balance in Lenovo stock. Adding to the PC business Lenovo acquired from IBM in 2005, Lenovo will take charge of IBM's System x, BladeCenter and Flex System blade servers and switches, x86-based Flex integrated systems, NeXtScale and iDataPlex servers and associated software, blade networking and maintenance operations.
Lenovo has signed a deal to buy the loss-making Motorola Mobility smartphone manufacturer for $2.91bn, but a switched-on Google is keeping the patents owned by the firm it gobbled two years ago for $12.5bn. "The acquisition of such an iconic brand, innovative product portfolio and incredibly talented global team will immediately make Lenovo a strong global competitor in smartphones," said Lenovo's CEO Yang Yuanqing. "We will immediately have the opportunity to become a strong global player in the fast-growing mobile space."
A few days after announcing its plan to buy IBM’s x86 server business, the Chinese company is dividing its operations into four business groups... enterprise products... developing a software ecosystem...PCs and mobile products. The changes go into effect on April 1 [2014]
Clearly, Lenovo has a vision for the U.S. Market and is executing upon it. How unfortunate that American companies such as IBM and Google see little value or possibility in domestic hardware innovation, moving into the future.
There is a great deal of uncertainty felt by partners and customers of IBM through such acquisitions. Previous attempts to leverage the IBM logo to help assure customers was performed, but with the latest purchase - competitors such as HP are seeing the a lot of noise.
"Customers and partners are concerned. They are concerned about what the future will be for them – not only in the product but also in support and services," claimed the exec veep and GM of the Enterprise Group. HP has an internal migration programme to support customers with IBM servers as they decide to make the switch, he pointed out. But providing maintenance support is something that HP and other vendors already offer on third-party kit as standard.
HP was tried to consolidate all of their computing systems under Intel Itanium, before trying to shut them all down. HP also tried to sell off their PC business, but relented, possibly due to customer pressure. How conservative customers who would only buy IBM will respond in the U.S. to their favorite manufacturer leaving the industry may not be a difficult conclusion to reach, especially from companies like HP.
Concluding Thoughts:
The massive technology bleed from the United States is partially due to commoditization, but also due to the migration to Cloud and Appliances and value provided by Intel computing vendors becoming less significant with Intel shipping entire motherboards bundling CPU, Floating Point, Memory Management Units, Ethernet, and most recently Video. Cell phones appear to be drastically simplifying, as well. Perhaps there was nothing of value left for Intel or cell phone based manufacturers to do? Can Apple buck the trend?
Abstract:
Nearly every computing device today is connected together via a network of some kind. These connections open up opportunities or vulnerabilities for exploitation by mafia, criminals, or government espionage via malware. While computers such as MacOSX are immune, along with their mobile devices based upon iOS iPhone and iPads... huge numbers of Linux and Android devices are at risk!
Heartbleed:
This particular vulnerability can be leveraged by many sources in order to capture usernames and passwords, where those account credentials can be later used for nefarious purposes. Nefarious includes: command and control to attack commercial, financial, government, or even launch attacks against entire national electrical grids; stealing money; stealing compute resources. The defect is well documented.
Apple and Android/Linux Vulnerabilities:
There are many operating systems which are vulnerable to this defect, but for this article, we are only really concerned about the mobile market.
While most of the buzz surrounding OpenSSL's Heartbleed vulnerability
has focussed on websites and other servers, the SANS Institute reminds
us that software running on PCs, tablets and more is just as potentially
vulnerable. Williams said a dodgy server could easily send a message to vulnerable
software on phones, laptops, PCs, home routers and other devices, and
retrieve up to 64KB of highly sensitive data from the targeted system at
a time. It's an attack that would probably yield handy amounts of data
if deployed against users of public Wi-Fi hotspots, for example.
While Google said in a blog post
on April 9 that all versions of Android are immune to the flaw, it
added that the “limited exception” was one version dubbed 4.1.1, which
was released in 2012. Security researchers said that version of
Android is still used in millions of smartphones and tablets, including
popular models made by Samsung Electronics Co., HTC Corp. and other
manufacturers. Google statistics
show that 34 percent of Android devices use variations of the 4.1
software.
The company said less than 10 percent of active devices are
vulnerable. More than 900 million Android devices have been activated
worldwide.
After taking a few days to check its security, the fruity firm joined
other companies in publicly announcing how worried or secure its
customers should feel. “Apple takes security very seriously. IOS
and OS X never incorporated the vulnerable software and key Web-based
services were not affected,” an Apple spokesperson said.
Conclusions:
To give an adequate understanding regarding the number of mobile Android devices at risk, one could take the population of the United States, at roughly 317 Million people as a baseline. 90 million Android Linux based devices vulnerable, that is equivalent to nearly 28% of the population of the United States is at risk! This is no small number of mobile devices - there is a lot of patching that either needs to be done or mobile devices which should be destroyed. Ensure you check your android device!
Despite a version number increase from 2.X to 3.X, OS X Server is finished with the major overhauls. The software has been changed from an enterprise-targeted package to one better suited to power users and small businesses. Now that the transition is complete, it's clear that slow, steady improvement is the new normal.
Abstract:
Sometimes in the computer industry, one just wants a pleasure machine to work, when one works on systems all day long. The Apple Macintoch is a fine platform which just normally works, but when it breaks, there can be interesting problems. This article walks through a short scenario common to some users.
The Problem:
When someone has an older family of systems, often hard drives will be moved from one machine to another, as systems are upgraded. The original system was moved to an external hard drive and carried from system to system, until eventually finding it's way upon this Mac Mini 2 GHz Intel 2 Core Duo. The external hard drive crashed, so a new external hard drive was formatted up, A new version of iMovie and iPhoto were needed, but we could not download them from the Apple Store, because a new version of the MacOSX was needed (10.7.5 minimum.) This platform had MacOSX 10.6.8, so this means a new OS needed to be installed, but no longer appeared to be available on the Apple App Store. The new OS required a minimum of 2 GB, when this platform only had 1 GB. The platform would need to be opened, but opening up the older generation Intel Mac Mini is not quite that simple.
Opening an Intel based Mac Mini
The first phase in the adventure is opening the Mac Mini. The 2006 Macmini1,1 and 2007 Macmini2,1 both offer similar opening instructions. It takes some care, so watch the video included above.
Memory Requirements
It should be noted, the memory required is one or two 200-pin PC2-5300 DDR2 (667 MHz) SO-DIMM cards. While lower configurations are possible, Apple supports dual 512MB cards (Mac OSX 10.6.8 compatible), dual 1 GB chips (Mac OSX 10.7.5 compatible), and dual 2 GB chips are possible (but only a little over 3GB is available, due to a chipset limitation on these models, but this configuration is not officially supported.) When two identical chips are used, the system will operate at it's peak performance.
Mac OSX 10.6.8 to 10.7.5
The OS this machine came to me with was Max OSX 10.6.8. While this was a fine OS for the time, apparently I should have purchased iPhoto upgrade when I had the chance. It was too late to download OSX 10.7 from the Apple App Store, but when you call Customer Support, you can purchase it on-line and upgrade over the internet!
Conclusion:
Perhaps one should have just asked to purchase an older version of iPhoto? This will be the last OS upgrade done on this Mac Mini, because Apple will no longer support a newer OS version on it. It may also be a good time to upgrade to an internal SSD. The platform will continue to be a reasonable platform for phone sync'ing, photo storage, and movie editing for some time, however, so this final upgrade may be very worth my while since it works so well on a 1080p television and existing Bluetooth Keyboard and Trackpad.
Abstract:
Computing systems do not exist without various interconnect technology. Over time, interconnects went from parallel to serial, always incrementing faster along the way. Toward the modern end of this progression comes Apple/Intel Thunderbolt technology, combining digital video ports with PCI Express, leveraging daisy-channing concepts from FireWire and SCSI.
A Short History of Interconnects:
Computing systems always had some kind of proprietary interconnect, normally originating with a single vendor, but over time, the interconnects started to standardize.
[System Bus Illustration, courtesy Wikipedia]
System Bus Interconnects: Some interconnects would connect cards along a parallel path, often CPU's to memory and I/O peripherals... sometimes from CPU's to CPU's, othertimes specifically for video cards. This is sometimes referred to as a "bus".
[VERSAbus memory card, courtesy Wikipedia]
Initial Motorola (and later cross-vendor compatible) bus connections included: VERSAbus, VME (ANSI/IEEE Std 1014-1987, ANSI/VITA 1-1994), VXI Bus [VME eXtensions for Instrumentation], VPX or VITA46 [VME International Trade Association].
[Two SBus cards, courtesy Wikipedia]
Initial Open Systems SPARC bus connections included: SBus (IEEE-1496), MBus (document), XBus, KBus, UPA (Ultra Port Architecture.)
[5x 16 bit and 1x 8 bit ISA card slots, courtesy Wikipedia]
Intitial open and proprietary Intel bus connections included: S-100 (or Altair bus, IEEE696-1983), ISA (IBM PC/XT 8 bit, IBM PC/AT 16 bit), EISA (32 bit Intel based bus), MCA (proprietary 16 bit or 32 bit bus), VLB (VESA Local Bus), AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port), PCMCIA (Personal Computer Memory Card International Association, Type I-IV), PCMCIA 2.0 (PC Card), PCMCIA 5.0 (CardBus), ExpressCard.
[3x PCI Bus Slots, courtesy Wikipedia]
Later industry cross-platform standards included: PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect), PCI-X [PCI eXtended], PCIe (PCI Express),
[Televideo Terminal, courtesy Wikipedia]
Human Interface Interconnects:
Human interfaces have typically been serial for low speed and parallel for high-speed applications, with a movement toward analog for high speed applications and back to serial again for display outut. Terminals were initially just keyboards, where the keyboard attached via a parallel connector and the output converted to serial for long transmission. Display output was driven typically through parallel printers (or serial printers for longer runs.)
[5 pin DIN, courtesy Wikipedia]
Human interfaces moved towards integrated terminals, where serial (RS232) connections attached to an integrated keyboard and video display unit. The serial port of choice for many devices became the ubiquitous DIN connector - covering applications such as Cassette & Disk Drives (Commodore Vic-20, 64, etc.); keyboards (IBM PC, XT, AT, etc.); Cassette, Joystick, and Modem/Printer ports (TRS-80 Color Computer, Color Computer 2, Color Computer 3, etc.) While DIN was firmly established, new devices like the Mouse would use standard DB-25 or later DE-9 pin serial and later keyboard and and mouse serial interfaces (IBM PS/2) used smaller DIN-like form factor. The video display units used analog connections internally or externally. Keyboard which were integrated typically used a parallel connection, but needed a parallel-to-serial converter when broken into a separate discrete part. Printers could be driven from the terminal or the computer less locally via slower serial or (more locally via higher-speed Centronics parallel printer ports. The parallel ports were also used, with SASI/SCSI protocols, for accessing later external removable disk & tape media (Zip, Jaz, CD-ROM, Tape, etc.) drives.
[Some video display types, courtesy Wikipedia]
As video interfaces moved towards external monitors, various analog and digital interfaces were developed: RF, Composite (analog), 9 Pin Digital, CGA [Color Graphics Adapter], EGA [Enghanced Graphics Adapter], VGA [Video Graphics Array] (analog) and other derivatives (XGA, SVGA, etc.), DVI [Digital Visual Interface] (digital and analog), HDMI (digital only), DisplayPort (digital only).
[Sun Workstation, courtesy Wikipedia]
Storage Interconnects:
The Terminal continued to grow in functionality and capabilities, until they turned into hobby personal computers, business computers, scientific workstations, and later, ironically, back into thin clients with graphical processing power (X Terminals), and even thinner clients with merely acting as a audio-video multiplexer (SunRay.) This created an ever needing expansion in communication technologies for interconnects. Long term storage was done against punch cards (printers without ink), tape, solid state cartridges, rotating disks, with a movement back to solid-state in more recent time.
[SCSI Logo, courtesy Wikipedia]
Communication to storage was done via serial, parallel for speed, and back to serial via technologies such as, SASI [Shugart Associates System Interface], ST-506, ST-412, ESDI [Enhanced Small Disk Interface], SCSI [Small Computer Systems Interface] of various parallel bus widths for intelligent controllers, AT Attachment (aka IDE [Integrated Drive Electronics] & Parallel ATA) for consumer grade usage, FibreChannel, SAS [Serially Attached SCSI] for enterprise/industrial grade usage, SATA [Serially attached ATA] (with derivatives such as eSATA) for consumer grade equipment.
SAS was unusual in that it also offered backwards-compatibility with dumber SATA devices, so enterprise-grade controllers could take advantage of consumer-grade higher capacity (but lower quality) storage drives.
[Host based computer network, courtesy Wikipedia]
Network Interconnects:
The business computer eclipsed the personal computer and scientific workstation markets, with specialization occurring on Gaming Consoles, integrated Smart Phones (Blackberry, iPhone, etc.), and Tablets (Kindle, iPad, etc.) This process drove the need for many new communications modes and protocols - but nearly all of them centered upon the drive from parallel-type communication. These network interconnects, local or wide area in nature, were nearly universally serial.
WAN [Wide Area Network] technologies included technologies such as: modems over analog POTS [Plain Old Telephone Service) voice quality lines, X.25http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.25, ISDN [Integrated Services Digital Network] in the form of BRI [Basic Rate Interface], PRI [Primary Rate Interchange], B-ISDN [Broadband ISDN], DS-0/E-0, DS-1/T1, DS-3/T3, E1-4, ATM [Asynchronous Transfer Mode], PDM [Plesiochronous Digital Hierarchy], SONET [Synchronous Optical Networking] (including: OC-1, OC-3, OC-12, OC-48, etc.), SDM [Synchronous Digital Hierarchy].
With the advent of cellular phones, wireless communications grew in popularity, both for WAN and LAN usage. Various WAN technologies included: 1G (1st Generation), 2G (including 2.5G, 2.75G, 2.9G, etc.), 3G (including 3.5G and 3.75G, etc.), 4G (including WiMAX and LTE [Long Term Evolution].) Various LAN technologies included: WiFi (802.11b, 802.11a, 802.11g, 802.11n, etc.) and WiGig (802.11ad).
[Firewire Logo, courtesy Wikipedia]
Common Peripheral Interconnects:
Gradually, the communication to storage devices, printers, and human interface devices merged. There was 2 classes of standard interfaces: low-speed dumb interfaces at a lower price-point and high-speed smart interfaces at a higher price-point.
[USB Connector, courtesy Wikipedia]
USB (USB 1.1, 2.0, 3.0, etc.) appeared for lower speed applications (12 mbit/s, 480 mbit/s, 5000 mbit/s) where performance and quality of service were not as important. USB remained a master-slave relationship, where the main computer system was loaded with processing load, sometimes affecting quality of service, but significantly reduced costs. Devices would be added through a hub, where speed would be cut in half each time a ^2 factor of devices was hit.
FireWire (IEEE-1394a, IEEE-1394b, iLink, etc.) appeared for higher bandwidth (400 Mbits, 800 Mbit/s, 1.6 Gbit/s, 3.2 Gbit/s, 6.4 Gbit/s) and performance applications such as storage, video camera controlling connectivity HDTV video recording from cable boxes, high speed scanner connectivity, etc. FireWire was designed as a peer-to-peer protocol, where multiple initiators can be on the same network, devices could be daisy-chained for simple wiring, processing was offloaded from the main computer system... this increased cost but also providing consistent performance across many applications.
Next Generation Interconnects:
Newer generation interconnects consolidate additional functionality such as Infiniband and Thunderbolt.
[6x InfiniBand Ports, courtesy Wikipedia]
Infiniband was suggested to be a possible replacement for PCI, FibreChannel, and Ethernet. Various systems vendors, such as Sun Microsystems (now Oracle), moved to InfiniBand to gain superior performance in HPC [High Performance Computing] clustering and now integrated systems (i.e. Exadata, Exalogic, SPARC SuperCluster, etc.)
[Apple MacBook Pro Ethernet, Firewire 800, Thunderbolt, and USB ports, courtesy Wikipedia]
Thunderbolt, developed by Intel in collaboration with Apple Computers, was designed initially as an optical system, named Light Peak. When released through Apple, Thunderbolt used a digital DisplayPort copper connection.
[Thunderbolt Cable with microprocessor in the connector, coutesy TechWorld]
Description
Thunderbold combines some of the best features of SCSI, FireWire, and DisplayPort: Daisy chaining of SCSI, Serial of Firewire, and Digital Video of Mini DP [Mini DisplayPort]. In many ways, Thunderbolt continues in the spirit of SAS, where backwards-compatibility to an existing connection standard (in this case, Mini DisplayPort) was leveraged.
Perhaps the best description of Thunderbolt can be found on Wikipedia:
Thunderbolt combines PCI Express (PCIe) and DisplayPort (DP) into a serial data interface that can be carried over a single cable. Thunderbolt controller chips multiplex data lanes from these two sources for transmission via a duplex Thunderbolt lane then de-multiplex them for consumption from receiver chips. A single Thunderbolt port supports hubs as well as a daisy chain of up to six Thunderbolt devices; as many of these as the host has DP sources may be Thunderbolt monitors.
[Thunderbolt vs Mini DP comparison, courtesy CNet]
Thunderbolt to Mini DP
The Mini Display Port will attach directly into an existing Thunderbolt port, with no change. It will also connect to the last device of a Thunderbolt daisy-chain. Unfortunately, these legacy Mini DP devices will not be able to daisy-chain additional Thunderbolt devices from them, but at least the former purchase can still be leveraged. CNet published an article nearly 2 years back, warning of possible future confusion - but the backward compatibility is welcome by most.
[Apple Thunderbolt Monitor, courtesy The Register]
Thunderbolt to Apple Thunderbolt Monitor
In December 2011, Apple released a 27" Thunderbolt Display, which included a MacBook power connector, thunderbolt connector, and additional ports on the monitor. The monitor included: firewire 800, USB 2.0, Gigabit Ethernet, as well as an additional Thunderbolt daisy-chain port. Adding an old Display Port monitor, additional Thunderbolt monitor, or additional Thunderbold devices should be just fine - but be aware the USB 3.0 ports must be native on the Mac or additionally added through various ways described below in this article.
[Apple's $30 Thunderbolt to FireWire 800, courtesy CNet]
Thunderbolt to FireWire 800
CNet published an article clarifying the use of the Apple Thunderbolt to FireWire 800 cable. As one would expect, using this inexpensive cable, FireWire can be added to a Thunderbolt port or to the end of a Thunderbolt daisy-chain. One would expect that multiple FireWire drives can be chained to the end of this adapter, although the article does not discuss this.
[Apple's $30 Thunderbolt to Gigabit Ethernet Adapter, courtesy ARS Technica]
Thunderbolt to Gigabit Ethernet ARS Technica published an article on Apple's Thunderbolt to Ethernet interface. Of course, you can't attach a Thunderbolt accessory and control it over Gigabit Ethernet. Also missing is a way to daisy-chain Thunderbolt interfaces, so this should be the last in your chain. On the positive side, this adapter will get close to the theoretical throughput of 1 Gigabit!
[Promise SANLink Thunderbolt to 4GB FibreChannel, courtesy Promise]
Promise SANLink
Promise released the Thunderbolt to FibreChannel 4 Gbit/secl adapter box. This ~$1000 box is available through the Apple Store and will offer portable Macintosh access to SAN storage.
ATTO Technology ThunderLink NS 1101
ATTO released a Dual Thunderbolt to 10 Gigabit Ethernet adapter box. Yes, this means you can daisy-chain the box to another, a saturated 10 GigE adapter will saturate half of the Thunderbolt bandwidth. Driver support is available.
[ATTO ThunderLink NT 1102 (10GBASE-T), Courtesy ATTO Technologies]
ATTO ThunderLink NT 1102 (10GBASE-T)
ATTO released a Dual Thunderbolt to Dual 10 Gigabit Ethernet adapter box. Yes, this means you can daisy-chain the box to another. With two 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports, two saturated 10 GigE adapters will saturate an entire Thunderbolt port's bandwidth. Driver support is available.
[ATTO ThunderLink SH 1068, Courtesy ATTO Technologies]
ATTO Technology ThunderLink SH 1068
ATTO released a Dual Thunderbolt to Dual 6 Gbit SAS/SATA adapter box. Yes, this means you can daisy-chain the box to another! With dual SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) interfaces, robust storage is finally available... with the option of cheap/unreliable (yet roomy) SATA (Serial ATA) storage . Driver support is available.
[ATTO ThunderLink FC 1082 8Gb/s FC, Courtesy ATTO Technologies]
ATTO Technology ThunderLink FC 1082
ATTO released a Dual Thunderbolt to Dual 8Gb/sec FibreChannel adapter box. Yes, this means you can daisy-chain the box to another! Dual saturated 8 Gbit FC adapters will nearly saturate Thunderbolt bandwidth. Driver support is available.
Sonnet Thunderbolt to ExpressCard
Thunderbolt PCIe comptability means simple connections from Thunderbolt to external ExpressCard bus can be created. For laptops without enough ports (i.e. USB 3.0) - ExpressCards can easily be added through daisy-chaining via Thunderbolt. Sonnet is one such Thunderbolt to ExpressCard vendor.
Sonnet Thunderbolt to PCIe [PCI Express]
If one wants to work with a portable form-factor but has a need for PCIe [PCI Express] peripherals occasionally in an office, Thunderbolt offers the user such an option. Adding more PCIe cards needed for an existing desktop chassis is also possible. Sonnet is one vendor offering Thunderbolt to PCIe expansions.
Sonnet ExpressCard to USB 3.0
Using the ExpressCard to Thunderbolt, USB 3.0 ports can be easy added to portable systems, providing professional capabilities of larger systems. Sonnet is one such USB 3.0 ExpressCard vendor. Sonnet also offers other ExpressCards such as FireWire, Ethernet, Memory Cards, etc. that can be added through daisey-chaining another Thunderbolt external ExpressCard chassis.
Sonnet ExpressCard to Memory Card
Modern day SDHC Class 10 memory cards (30MBytes/s or 45MBytes/s) can saturate a USB 2.0 interface, so a [Thunderbolt to] ExpressCard to Memory Card Reader from Sonnet may be a good choice, since there is ample bandwidth under Thunderbolt to handle such traffic.
LaCie Thunderbolt to Storage
Traditional peripheral vendor LaCie offers an external single-ended USB 3.0/Thunderbolt hard drive. It should be noted, there is no daisy-chain off of this drive. This can also be run this drive from a LaCie USB 3.0 ExpressCard, but it requires LaCie drivers and will not work with other USB 3.0 hard disk vendors - the driver was coded to only work with LaCie storage.
[LaCie eSATA Hub, courtesy LaCie]
LaCie Thunderbolt eSATA Hub
LaCie also released a Thunderbolt eSATA Hub, with 2x eSATA connections (to connect to 2x high performance eSATA external drives) and 2x Thunderbolt connectors (to allow daisy-chaining!)
CalDigit Thunderbolt to USB 3.0 Storage
For those users with Thunderbolt and without USB 3.0, Caldigit has an ExpressCard to USB 3.0 generic external storage. For pre-USB 3.0 Mac platforms, drivers are required, but should work with any storage vendor, although not tested against everyone elses storage.
[CalDigit T1 and T2 external dual-thunderbold interface drives, courtesy CalDigit]
CalDigit Thunderbolt to External Storage
Thunderbolt external storage with dual interfaces is essential for daisy-chaining additional components. With the CalDigit T1 & T2, not only is this possible, but drives are removable, for hot-swaping in RAID sets.
Matrox DS-1 Thunderbolt Docking Station
Adding a Thunderbolt Docking Station may solve a lot of connectivity issues for the portable laptop user. The Matrox DS1 Docking Station adds: 1x USB 3.0 port, 2x USB 2.0 ports, DVI or HDMI port, Gigabit Ethernet, Stereo Headphones, and Microphone port. Note, no thunderbolt daisy-chaining on this unit, but with monitor & USB 3.0 - there may not be a need.
Belkin Thunderbolt Docking Station
The Belkin Thunderbolt Docking Station is late to be released, but offers daisy-chaining not available in the early-to-market Matrox unit. With 1x Gigabit Ethernet, 1x 800Mb/s FireWire, 2x Thunderbolt, and 3x USB 3.0 ports - this is an absolutely amazing unit!
[Thunderbolt Devices available circa 2013, courtesy TechWorld]
Thunderbolt Devices in 2013 TechWorld published a slideshow describing Thunderbolt devices due in 2013. Blackmagic has a Standard and High Definition Thunderbolt video capture unit on-tap. G-Technology announced 4 and 8 bay portable RAID enclosures. LaCie announced their Little Big Disk, daisy-chainable Thunderbolt. Apple announced their 27 inch daisy-chainable Thunderbolt monitor. Promise announced 4TB, 6TB, 8TB, and 12TB Thunderbolt RAID units.
[Buffalo Ministation Thunderbolt/USB 3.0 Drive, courtesy PC Magazine]
Buffalo Thunderbolt Hard Drives
Buffalo offers a 500 Gigabyte and 1 Terabyte Drive which is both compatible with Thuderbolt and USB 3.0, but note there is no daisy-chaining on this drive available.
[Western Digital 6TB Thunderbolt dual drive, courtesy MacWorld]
Western Digital Thunderbolt Hard Drives Western Digital offers both a 4 Terabyte and 6 Terabyte form factor dual external thunderbolt drive. Also, there is the WD 2 Terabyte MyBook with dual thunderbolt interface external drive. These drives are both daisy-chain capable.
PROMISE Pegasis J2 SSD Thunderbolt Drives
The Pegasis J2 is offered in 2 different sizes by PROMISE: 256 Gigabytes and 512 Gigabytes. The 256 GB solution uses dual 128 GB SSD's, while the 512GB solution uses diak 256 GB SSD's. Note, there is only one thunderbolt port, so there is no daisy-chaining. Also, the power draw of the SSD and RAID controller are so great that full-speed is only possible using an external power adapter.
LaCie Thunderbolt Hard Drives
LaCie is offering 3 types of desktop thunderbolt drives, ranging from: 5400RPM 2TB LittleBigDisk; to the 7200RPM 4TB and 6TB 2big external disks with removable drives; 512 GB and 1 TB SATA III SSD Thunderbolt LittleBigDisk without removable disks. All drives offer two Thunderbolt ports for daisy-chaining.
LaCie Rugged Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 Hard Drives
LaCie is also offering their Rugged portable USB 3.0 / Thunderbolt drives, in a 1 TB disk and 256 GB SSD form factors. Note, there is no daisy-chaining on these drives.
[G-Technology 4TB, 6TB, 8TB G-RAID with Thunderbolt, courtesy MacWorld]
G-Technology G-RAID Thunderbolt
Offered from G-Technology is a dual-thunderbolt port capable G-RAID sytsems in 4 Terabyte, 6 Terabyte, and 8 Terabyte systems. Yes, you can daisy-chain these thunderbolt systems.
Apple Macintosh with USB 3.0 Storage
Thunderbolt storage is not the only game in town. An effective step-down from Thunderbolt is to use USB 3.0. If an Apple Macintosh with native USB 3.0 is unavailable, one of several options are available: PCIe to USB 3.0, ExpressCard to USB 3.0, Thuderbolt Hub, Thunderbolt to ExpressCard to USB 3.0, Thunderbolt to PCIe to USB 3.0. The results will be close to what is illustrated in the above video.
Apple Macintosh with FireWire 800 Storage
USB 3.0 is only slightly faster (5% on a 16 Gigabyte file copy) than FireWire 800 in real-world performance to an external drive. If you need storage today, you can't hold out for Thunderbolt, you don't have USB 3.0 capabilities - FireWire is still a very reasonable path to move forward with. With an inexpensive Thunderbolt to FireWire interface, even newer Apple Macintoshes without FireWire can have robust performing daisy-chain storage using Thunderbolt to FireWire 800 interface.
Conclusions:
With Thunderbolt, formerly low-end and portable systems can now have full storage and various card expansion components available to them, at minimal extra cost. Machines utilizing Thunderbolt will probably start appearing on the LAN's and require additional management in the very near future, as more robust options continue to appear for them.
