News Intel bets on LightPeak

I know what you're saying but you seem to forget that digital is a sieries of ones and zeros. Why convert at all when light is the same language, one=on, zero=off.

The whole curcuit would only require a very little power as no electricity would need to be pushed(amps). The chips would probably use a solar cell to read the information any way, so it would do the job of recieving the power as well.

If you can power a calculator in a sparcely lit office, then think what you could power with a pure laser(which I believe is in the invisible spectrum range).

It's just up to the peripheral manufacturers to forget about their shares in the power companies and start working together as it requires a total rethink and change of the current standards. That goes for the GFX card munufacturers that believe we need to draw the same power as a hallogen oven(and create the same heat output as well).

Shoot!!

Fail. That'll never hapen will it.

 

I don't think anyone is saying that this wouldn't be a cool technology. What irks some of us is the possibility that intel might intentionally try to hinder the adoption of USB3, in order to give their tech a higher chance of success. That would not be in the customer's interest.

 

You can have a laser of almost any frequency from infrared used in CDs and DVDs to ultraviolet used in lithography.

Almost all optical communication systems are digital all the way but you still need more components to produce an optical bus than an electrical bus, a laser and most likely a photodiode and a converter chip (to clean up the signal) at the receiving end, this makes it less suitable for consumer level use than an electrical bus. Also, there's no way currently to produce optical fibres in or on a PCB.

Also, the is significantly less power available at the end of an optical fibre than there is to a calculator in an office and calculators are very low power devices, powering peripherals optically simply will not work.

Optical communications don't really have any advantages to a consumer at the moment and they wont until required bandwidths increase beyond the ability of electrical busses. Which may never happen as electrical busses are improving faster thant he devices they're attached to, why have a harddisk capable of ~150-200 MBps connected with a bus capable of 10GBps? especially if you cave to pay more for it.

Optical interconnects do have advantages in other situations where interference is a problem (manufacturing) or there are long distances (telco) to be covered or very high bandwidth is required (network backbones)

Moriquendi

 

I, for one, welcome our optical overlords.

 

I don't get it.

So Light Peak is just the cable, just a pipe to send whatever through, be it USB, SATA, IP etc.

What the hell is wrong with the many garden varieties of fibre that are widely used at the moment? There are plenty of optical technologies at the moment which can pipe 10Gb+ over fibre now. Never mind the impracticalities of fibre over a copper cable. Don't get me wrong, fibre is the best thing since bread, but its advantages over copper are moot at home.

And what's the point of having any more than 2 strands? hmm.

Generally speaking:

 

I would welcome it soley to replace cat 5 cable. especially with the bandwidth.

and the people claiming no need for bandwidth are like the no one ever needs more than 24K of ram type. sure 10GB/s right now might be "too fast" but when sata 1 was launched it was "faster' than any pata drive could push and look how that changed. in 3-5 years a SDD array on a NAS box could push 10GB/S easily.

FIber optic is the future, it's already proven itself for long haul and even last mile to customer houses. Slowly coming into consumer range is next especially due to the advantages in throughput it offers over electrical buses.

 

The point isn't that it's not a good tech. The problem is that intel is hindering the adoption of USB 3 in order to promote it.

 

You can already replace cat5 with fibre but you'll pay through the teeth for it, I haven't heard yet how Intel intend to keep the price reasonable.

My point was that electronic busses are improving too, in 3-5 years we may very well have usb4 or something similar that can push that much data down a copper wire

Why? Fibres advantages are not well suited to the consumer space, the added cost is not rewarded with added performance. Put simply, fibre in the consumer space is a solution looking for a problem. In the long haul and even in the last mile fibre has advantages, it is currently difficult or impossible to push bandwidth that people will use over those distances over copper but for distances under 100m you can do it with copper and at significantly lower cost.

Maybe electronic busses will hit a bandwidth wall while devices demand more bandwith in which case, if fibre can offer the bandwidth, I'm all for it but that is not the case at the moment.

Moriquendi

 

While intel maybe taking there time in putting USB3 into there chipsets it has not stopped alot of board manufactures just using the NEC chip and adding it them selfs.
I doubt intel is going to have much luck on slowing USB3, it's here and it's going to stay.

I do like the idea of 10Gbs fibre for external storage and networking.
With the amount of data floating around theses days I feel gigabit is now becoming some what of a bottleneck

 

the main problem i have with optical is they are damn stiff!!! and they break if you bend them around a more tight corner than say, a coke can so usb will live forever in the mouse/ keyboard i reckon

 

I just don't get it. How is this not a good thing from Intel?

Most new motherboards come or are about to come out with additional USB3 sockets anyway in addition to the many USB2 sockets and eSata. So why are Intel getting dumped on by the doom sayers here?

This is progress being driven positively forward by Intel so why are you all moaning?

Well Done Intel for taking on another area of the industry and making it better (by a long way!)

 

Have you handled a USB 3 cable lately? They got 8 conductors in them are have the rigidity of a steel cable. An optical cable is positively flexible in comparison. There are also types of fibers which can take a lot of abuse and very tight corners.

 

I suspect Intel isn't in a huge rush because they realize the appeal is limited.

For printers and scanners, it's useless.
For external drives we already have Esata.
For Lan, we already have optical, and 10gigabit is coming soon. Plus, I have to wonder about lag on Lightpeak.
Then as mentioned you have the stiff cable...

It's impractical.
Ask yourself, how badly do most people really need USB3 right now?
How much would it cost Intel to re-engineer another chipset to add USB3?
How much to then do it again to add Lightpeak?

So while you are bitching about Intel (who's already boards have it , making your complaints rather pointless), AMD isn't even on the map. Not that most people have a need for USB3 anyway.

 

It's really amusing to hear people bitchin' about Intel 'sabotaging' USB3 when most new mainboards include USB3 via the NEC chip, whether they are Intel or AMD boards. Intel is right about sitting this one out.

 

It's another HD-DVD V's Blu-Ray war. Where is the logic in backing the lesser tech? Why get stuck with 25GB when you can have 50GB in the same package?

 

Greetings!

Cheaper, and always to be cheap, 5Gbps now or expensive, and always to be expensive, 10Gbps in the future?
The 5Gbps seems the best choice, even more after factoring that you dont really need 10Gbps for anything.

 

even though the cost of fiber optic cable may be coming down, the cost the optic sensors isn't. I'd expect this type of technology to be used in high end equipment, not really flash drives but possibly huge backup arrays or other equipment that would already be powered. Just my two cents on the matter.

 

Based on what are you claiming that Intel is currently holding back native USB3 support to give LP a better chance at adoption?
Your confusing "Intel could" with "Intel is".

 

That would make sense because Apple is woking on this with Intel. Not sure why they did not mention this joint venture in the article. It is probably powered more by Apple anyway now that I think back on all the useful and useless alternative sockets Apple has had a hand in engineering. They can't seem to help themselves. But hey, all devices including video through one connection could be pretty cool.

 

The cost of the detector needed is pennies.... just saying.