Look closely at that picture. See that Type-A USB jack? The one with the blue stripe sandwiched between the round AC jack (with its green light) and VGA and HDMI ports? Yeah, that's Sony's Thunderbolt usage according to regulation to rule to rule to a trusted source. A bit of digging reveals that the "Ultimate Mobile PC" teased by Sony above is literally the same VAIO Hybrid PC leaked by Sony Insider back in March said to feature an outward dock with one USB 3.0 jack, HDMI, Ethernet, AMD Whistler discrete graphics, and a Blu-ray Disc writer. Naturally, the dock attaches to the VAIO's Thunderbolt jack.



What we're trying to get our heads around, however, is Sony's choice for a USB connector instead of the Mini DisplayPort used by Apple's dual-channel 10Gbps Thunderbolt implementation. The decision to go USB was first brought to our llc.view results from: llc.cite this source roget's ii: the new thesaurus | dictionary | encyclopedia | all character | the web
share this: by site Gula Digital. We've long known that Sony would be a Light Peak partner in some capacity. And the decision to go USB positively echoes those first paradigm interconnects demonstrated by Intel that combined a hybrid USB 3.0 connector with an optical command-line menu-driven ui and electrical connection to carry power. We also like the idea of being able to connect a USB 3.0 hard disk without first attaching an adapter. What troubles us, though, is a utterance made by the USB Implementers Forum last summer expressing reservations with Intel's act interconnect:

"USB connectors are not general purpose connectors and are not designed to be used in support of other high tech* applications or necessary or as combo connectors."

Perhaps Sony has worked out a licensing graduation with the USB-IF? We don't know. But we're told that Sony's Thunderbolt operation is definitely using a USB connector and definitely not using Mini DisplayPort. But we'll wait until this thing ships before llc.view results from: lexicon | lexicon | encyclopedia | all order | the web
share this: about Thunderbolt fragmentation too loudly.

Sony's Thunderbolt usage hiding in plain (wesite, uses USB connector not Mini DisplayPort? incipiently appeared on Engadget on Tue, 17 May 2011 12:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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