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Thunderbolt has as yet to take off as a standard, mostly due to the high cost of not only the peripherals, but also the associated cables that next to no accessory maker supply with their devices. Now we’re hearing about another massive hurdle when it comes to adaptation of the standard, Intel is planning a separate certification program for Windows 8 compatible Thunderbolt devices.What does this mean? Well, it’s really bad news for consumers, as Intel is willing to go as far as to lock out all current Thunderbolt devices from Windows 8. The manufacturers could re-submit their devices for Windows 8 certification, but it’s not that simple, as Intel is apparently going to force a firmware upgrade that sets a device ID flag which will tell the OS if the device has been certified or not. Our understanding is that so far, there’s no simple way of upgrading the firmware of a Thunderbolt device and it might not even be possible in some instances.
On top of all this, Intel will be enforcing a new Thunderbolt firmware on the motherboard side, which means that older devices with the wrong device ID flag, won’t work on a basic hardware level, as the Thunderbolt equipped motherboards and notebooks will simply ignore the device if it doesn’t have the right device ID. It’s possible that we’ll see some kind of workarounds for this, but we really can’t see the logic of a two tier Thunderbolt ecosystem.
Keep in mind that Intel is enforcing a strict policy of Thunderbolt being a peerless interface and as such refuses to produce any kind of drivers for Thunderbolt. This is part of what appears to be related to the new Windows 8 Thunderbolt certification, as Intel has forced many of the peripheral chipset manufacturers to enable Thunderbolt support in their drivers for say a SATA, USB 3.0 or Ethernet controller so that the device can be hot-swappable.
Apple appears to have taken a different approach by having a simple Thunderbolt driver that recognises Thunderbolt devices as such and takes care of the hot-swap support on an OS level. One additional concern with Intel’s proposed certification program is that we might see a separate program from Apple compatible Thunderbolt device and a possibility of the two not being compatible in the future.
It’s hard to believe that this is the way Intel wants things to progress, but it also shows how immature the Thunderbolt standard is. We’ll keep a close eye on the development with regards to the certification program, but we really think Intel is heading in the wrong direction if they want Thunderbolt to appeal as a high-speed interface for the masses.
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