14 DAY TRIAL // Intel's launch of a standard meant to go toe to toe with USB 3.0 was bound to cause reactions, and it seems that Advanced Micro Devices didn't bother trying to be surprising, having said that it lacks faith in the new interface standard.
End-users keeping track of things on the IT market will probably know that a certain chip developer recently released its own connectivity standard.
Santa Clara, California-based CPU maker Intel revealed the first iteration of its Light Peak interface technology, codenamed Thunderbolt.
It is said to have a maximum bandwidth of 10 Gbps, double that of USB 3.0, and uses copper wires, even though it was originally intended to employ fiber optics.
Of course, Intel does plan to move to fiber optics and says Thunderbolt can scale up to 100 Gbps.
There are, however, some disadvantages, one being that only two protocols are supported, PCI Express and DisplayPort, with rumors saying other protocols won't be added, at least not in the near future.
It is now reported that Advanced Micro Devices does not think Thunderbolt has any shot at gaining traction, being just one more proprietary standard to add to the long list of such technologies.
“Consumers generally benefit by having standard, high-speed ports available on their mobile devices. Proprietary ports, or the requirement of a dongle to employ those industry-standard ports may be an obstacle to consumers having the full computing experience at home or on the road," said an official for AMD.
AMD did not take part in the development of Thunderbolt so it is unlikely to be able to support it, but neither does it think there will be any use for it any time soon.
Mostly, the Sunnyvale, California-based company pointed out that there aren't really any devices that can take advantage of the bandwidth.
Another thing that AMD criticized was the use of the mini DisplayPort connector, as it reduces bandwidth for display plugged into it.
"Employing Thunderbolt in the DisplayPort connector implementation decreases the bandwidth available for DisplayPort reducing the bandwidth available for various multi-display configurations," the company is said to have stated.