Intel is planning to make the Thunderbolt specification royalty-free, and include support for the protocol on its CPUs rather than on external chips:
Intel's dream of making one cable to rule them all took a huge step forward this week. On Wednesday, Intel announced it will integrate Thunderbolt 3 into future CPUs. More importantly, the company said it would open up the long-secret protocol to the world, royalty-free. The company's explanation for the change is practically utopian. "Intel's vision for Thunderbolt was not just to make a faster computer port, but a simpler and more versatile port available to everyone," wrote Chris Walker, Intel's vice president for Client Computing, in a blog post.
[...] By moving Thunderbolt onto the CPU, Intel says it can lower the cost and the power requirements. Intel didn't actually detail which CPUs would get Thunderbolt 3 or when. If it's truly coming to all of them, it would mean every PC that uses an Intel chip would get the much sought-after feature. There's no fear of a proprietary lock now, either. "In addition to Intel's (CPU integrated) Thunderbolt silicon," Walker wrote, "next year Intel plans to make the Thunderbolt protocol specification available to the industry under a nonexclusive, royalty-free license."
Here's an idea: take the Intel Management Engine off at the same time.
Also at BusinessInsider, Wired, CNET, Tom's Hardware, and Ars Technica.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Snotnose on Saturday May 27 2017, @12:13AM (8 children)
Mostly because I thought the isochronous would be the bee's knees for audio and video. It was also faster than USB at the time, and you could power your devices through it (which USB didn't support at the time). Contributed to the Linux Firewire drivers, built a driver for the company I was consulting for at the time, got to know the protocol inside out. Don't remember why, but I think Apple licensing kept it back.
Oh well. Back in, I dunno, 04 or so I went to a CTIA show in New Orleans. Big thing was sending a picture and your phone info to someone, they would make a new case with the picture and send it back to you. I thought that would take off, forgetting the average person isn't comfortable with taking their phone apart and replacing the case. The thing I thought would die a quick and painful death? Ringtones. I remember listening to Enter Sandman on several 8 bit phone speakers and thinking "Yeah, no way this is going anywhere."
The moral? Never ask me to predict the future.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 2) by archfeld on Saturday May 27 2017, @12:54AM
LOL, I bought a Laserdisc, and then a Betamax, and I also figured that HD-DVD was the way of the future so I sympathize with you wholly. The idea of a single cable fitting almost all needs is pretty awesome though. Not needing 45 different black boxes or constantly having a device tell me that is not the correct charging device would make life so much easier and better. HDMI rocks so I still hold out some hope. Well Cheers anyhow...
PS Did I mention the Zune I have in a drawer someplace :)
For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Saturday May 27 2017, @03:47AM (4 children)
Licensing (to MPEG) was absolutely a big factor in keeping Firewire back: they wanted $0.25 for every device with a FW chip in it IIRC. See here. [wikipedia.org]
But it wasn't just that: it was a more complicated system, requiring more intelligence on the peripheral side, which isn't so great if you just want to make a mouse or something. FW was basically a peer-to-peer protocol, not a master-slave one. USB required a more powerful CPU as it needed more work from the CPU instead of letting dedicated hardware do it; back in the late 90s it was more significant than today. So Intel had two interests in pushing USB: 1) selling more powerful CPUs, and 2) avoiding the patent mess with FW and keeping PCs and their peripherals cheap (except for their CPUs). And it wasn't really USB vs FW anyway: Apple itself was one of the first big users of USB, and made it popular by adopting it for keyboards and mice. PCs were still using PS/2 connectors at this point. Apple likely used it because FW was simply overkill and too expensive for that purpose, and at that time USB was only at 1.0 or 1.1 and was really slow, which is why FW got its name (it was much faster). USB didn't catch up until USB 2.0 a little later.
As for ringtones, those are dead, along with fonts. Remember in the 90s when everyone was going nuts collecting fonts? No one does that anymore; they just use whatever's installed (which is a bunch). Same with ringtones; back in the early 00s people were actually paying money for those things! Now they just use whatever's installed, or I'm pretty sure modern phones also let you make yourself a clip of a song too. But people aren't really paying money for them like they used to, or the way they do with apps. As for phone speakers, those have gotten really impressive in this decade. Obviously they're no match for real speakers, but for a little tiny speaker in a phone, they make some really fantastic sound.
Anyway, back to your Firewire mis-prediction: your failure was ignoring two things, the licensing costs and the hardware costs compared to the simpler and cheaper USB (FW also needed an expensive chip). Basically you ignored the importance of cheapness in consumer electronics. The cheaper-yet-slightly-inferior solution *always* wins in consumer electronics. Just look at VHS vs. Beta. Beta had better fidelity and better quality players, but was more expensive, and had shorter recording time, so VHS won.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Saturday May 27 2017, @06:06AM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 1) by Frost on Saturday May 27 2017, @07:25PM (1 child)
His failure was not using hindsight, like you are now. It's by far the best way to predict the past.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Sunday May 28 2017, @01:18AM
It's not hindsight. The Beta vs. VHS format wars came *long* before Firewire, and there were plenty of other examples of consumers generally preferring the alternatives that cost less.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 27 2017, @11:15PM
Remember in the 90s when everyone was going nuts collecting fonts? No one does that anymore; they just use whatever's installed
When a website includes JavaScript and won't work without those scripts (and the site looks like it might actually contain something interesting), I hand the URL to archive.li.
That site will run the scripts and show the resulting page.
I find that the same web developers who use scripts to do basic content on their pages also include webfonts as part of their pages--typically by the dozen.
I block anything with "font" or "fnt" in its URL.
Again, archive.li takes the bandwidth hit associated with those, listing them as it downloads them, and rendering the result.
So, you may not have a bunch of fonts as part of your OS install but, if you're a typical web user, you're constantly using new fonts and having to download those--and having to waste bandwidth on them yet again after you have flushed your browser's cache.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 27 2017, @04:28PM
DMA + cost (as others have said) is what killed FW. DMA made FW a non-starter for many media companies. If you could talk FW to something, you could not DRM content in memory. For example, Windows MEdia Center would disable FW ports when playing DRM content.
(Score: 2) by Leebert on Saturday May 27 2017, @08:09PM
I thought cameras in cell phones were a stupid fad. So yeah, right there with you, man.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jmorris on Saturday May 27 2017, @01:44AM
It is too useful to the corporate world, asking for them to remove a desirable feature is pointless #VirtueSniveling. Instead ask for something at least remotely possible that would be better. Ask them to open the specs on how it works and to allow a way to securely add a key to permit a different management engine firmware. Same for signed boot, if you can use it for your own purposes it is a great thing that adds (we can argue how much) to total system security but if it is locked to only permit booting Windows 10 then it is evil.
All of this tech is morally neutral in concept, the devil is always in the implemention details.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Immerman on Saturday May 27 2017, @02:53AM
Forgive me if I'm paranoid, but I don't see how planning to make it a nonexclusive, royalty-free license next year removes any such fear. A legally binding perpetual royalty free license would do that, but I've heard no such intention voiced.
Seems like making it free for a few years to catch on, and then starting to charge again for the license would be a potentially extremely profitable tactic.
Plus - just because it's free doesn't mean there's no lock-in. Where are device manufacturers supposed to turn if Intel decides to revoke their license?
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday May 27 2017, @03:33AM (1 child)
Evolution.. BadUSB.. to BadBolt ? :P
Direct link to the processor and with a strncmp() track record in security. It sounds like people will get the big electronic d-ldo in the wrong "entry". A royal security fail.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 27 2017, @12:04PM
National Security win! NSA NSA NSA!!!
(Score: 2) by black6host on Saturday May 27 2017, @04:00AM
New standards are great. Better, faster, cheaper (three things that should not be possible in nature :) ) all coming together. I'm tired of buying a new motherboard and chip every 6 months :)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by kanweg on Saturday May 27 2017, @06:05AM
Or is it a move to make its CPU preferable over those of AMD and boost sales in a way that gives way more revenue than licensing Thunderbolt currently does? Nah.
Bert
(Score: 2) by wisnoskij on Saturday May 27 2017, @08:01PM
You still need a physical port, and the port will need some form of controller. Why should the CPU have any idea directly about port architectures and encoding? The CPU is a general purpose processing unit. Some integrated circuit will do a better job of managing ports and the CPU does not have to have any idea which ports the motherboard it will eventually be plugged into has.