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I don't understand. It doesn't matter which USB port you plug your mouse/keyboard/iphone/printer/scanner/thumb-drive into. Why? Because they all identify themselves over a common protocol. Why couldn't this connector do the same? It just has the ability to cover more uses such as video and networking because of its higher bandwidth abilities.

I was thinking more along the lines of how current graphics ports are wired to the graphics chip. How would the mobo be designed to allow the GPU display output to any of the many LP (light peak) ports?
 
Will dongles be easy to manufacture? Say to ease the transition from USB, will USB-LP dongles be cheap to make? Also, will LP hubs (like USB hubs) be cheap too?

Gb not GB.

... correct... little 'b' stands for "bits". big 'B' stands for Bytes. It's fast, but you're talking about a magnitude of 8 difference.

Generally, protocol transfer speeds are represented in bits per second, and storage mediums are represented in bytes.

The calculation before was correct. A BR movie in 30 seconds at 10Gbps is 37 GB (seeing as everyone is clarifying/correcting things).
 
Aliens

Remember the movie Aliens when the android Bishop remotely pilots the second drop ship from the Sulaco... his remote console plugs in to the up-link dish via optic cable connector...:cool:
Looks great :apple: !
 
I am glad Apple is thinking about cutting down on the cords. But, how exactly will my future iPhone charge with light?
 
Optical certainly has its advantages in regards to bandwidth and noise immunity.

I'd be concerned about the durability and flexibility of the cables for portable use. Even if the cable can withstand repeated bending without breaking, a kink or sharp bend can stop the internal reflection (i.e. no light gets through). The Average Joe is not going to coil an optical cable neatly. He would fold it and knot it just like he would for every copper cable he has. He would then wonder why it suddenly quit working.

I am glad Apple is thinking about cutting down on the cords. But, how exactly will my future iPhone charge with light?

My guess would be that the cable would also contain two copper wires to supply +5V and GND.
 
Heard it transfers at 10GB/s. At the moment that's a BluRay movie in 30 Seconds. And plans for it to increase to 100GB/s within the next 10 years. :)

Also notable is that it can be used in Exchanges to speed up internet connections and phone calls/SMS... :cool:

10Gb not 10GB. Big difference :p
 
I am glad Apple is thinking about cutting down on the cords. But, how exactly will my future iPhone charge with light?

easy... but you have to decipher my message below... :)


... start la;ksjdflwjeoriuq[iwjlckmlksajoqwop234asdbvbq[;lkpqoke[q89812wdwe;askzxcvbddwdkjfolihjoqw
... end.
 
Optical certainly has its advantages in regards to bandwidth and noise immunity.

I'd be concerned about the durability and flexibility of the cables for portable use. Even if the cable can withstand repeated bending without breaking, a kink or sharp bend can stop the internal reflection (i.e. no light gets through). The Average Joe is not going to coil an optical cable neatly. He would fold it and knot it just like he would for every copper cable he has. He would then wonder why it suddenly quit working.

You'd probably have to harden the cable enough that you can't fully bend it, but not too much that you can't coil it.
 
Well, if this comes out in 2010, it'll make SATA3.0/eSATA/USB3/FW3200 all redundant before they get mainstream.

It might get a tad confusing if every connector on the computer has the same shape.

I think thats the point one connector for everything. Multiple ports of the same connector in which any device can be plugged in and be detected as the device in which its intended for.
 


Last week, Intel demoed a new interconnect technology called "Light Peak" which promises to be a flexible high performance optical connector:The technology could eventually replace the use of Firewire, USB and even display connectors in the future. Engadget has since revealed that 'Light Peak' was actually originally conceived of by Apple and brought to Intel. The original conversations happened between Apple's Steve Jobs and Intel's Paul Otellini. In fact, the technology was said to have been demoed last week on a prototype Mac Pro motherboard.

The new connector is rumored to be introduced into the Mac lineup in the Fall of 2010, with a low-power variant due in 2011 for mobile devices. Such a move could result in a single connectivity standard in the future, reducing the types of ports on a device to only this single one. The fact that various types of data including High Definition displays can be driven through the connector has led to some speculation that Apple could incorporate such a connector into their rumored tablet.

Article Link: Apple and Intel Collaborate on Next Generation 'Light Peak' Connectors?



My my those devils hands have been busy!!!!




There is no replacement for optical. Remember optical is the quintessential data transfer GOD. nothing is better than it. When coppers gone the world will connect via glass and RF. Optical is more hardened in the actual cable its self.
Gee no wonder apple is all "what is this firewire you speak of" someone has seen the light at the end of the tunnel and we haven't even found the tunnel.
Although I see 2012 before its finally a standard.

This is commercial grade optical connectors and speeds at sub micro miniature consumer grade prices more than likely.
 
Kinda underwhelmed...

Yes, it is faster speed, but the cabling/connectors look quite pricey. For the comparisons used by Intel in the Youtube video linked here, optical cable is not cheap.

We're likely looking at fiber channel networking, maybe the odd display (though Display Port hasn't taken off, and VGA is still quite prevalent.) But, the influx of cheap printer connectors, cheap camera connectors, and cheap mouse connectors. Firewire lost out to USB in a lot of respects simply due to need, and costs involved in implementing... meaning that if we aren't committed to changing all our peripherals over to ones that utilize expensive cables, we're stuck with machines attempting to maintain backwards compatibility.
 
Right off the heels of USB 3.0, Light Peak is advancing techn.... wait, you mean USB 3.0 might not even ship before Light Peak?
 
I was thinking more along the lines of how current graphics ports are wired to the graphics chip. How would the mobo be designed to allow the GPU display output to any of the many LP (light peak) ports?

I guess it would be possible to just have the PCI-E card push the video back to the motherboard and have it available to output on any of the LP ports on the mobo. 1920x1200x36b (12b/channel) is 83Mb/s on a 5,000Mb/s PCI-E-2 x16 channel. 2560x1600x36b is 150Mb/s. Even quad 30" ACDs would be 600Mb/s. So as long as the PCI-E chipset (or CPU in the case of lynnfield) could handle pushing that much data back out to a LP port, it would be OK, your graphics card just wouldn't have ports on the back anymore (probably another win for Steve).

Isn't this was USB 3.0 was supposed to be? Fiber optic with copper for power? Then everyone got bent out of shape and it went back to another set of copper wires.

This seems like a great technology. I guess as long as the cables are robust and don't break easily it'll be fine. 10Gb/s is a ton of data to push around. No more need for docking stations, just your monitor that has speakers, USB, etc and the keyboard/mouse plugged into it. You set your laptop down, plug in one cable for LP and one for power and thats it. I don't see much use for it as an internal connector (e.g. SATA), but who knows, if SSDs bump up against the 600MB/s ceiling of SATA 6Gb/s quickly then it'll be on to move them to LP (1250MB/s, more than twice SATA 6Gb/s, yea I know, its because SATA uses 10/8 encoding to transfer a byte in 10 bits, that would probably go away with LP).

What becomes the bottleneck isn't the transfer medium (the cable and sender/reciever transceivers), rather the Intel and AMD IO chips - if they can manage to push around 50Gb/s throughout the system without issue and heavy CPU intervention (I'm looking at you USB). Intel's IO chips are already becoming saturated with multiple SSDs in RAID configurations.

Finally, I hope they can push more power down the pipe vs what they can with USB now - 5V at 500mA is kinda weak. A full 1A would provide for 5W of power - definitely enough to power a HDD. Maybe not at a full 100m, but for shorter cables (less than 5 feet) they should be able to push 5W.
 
At face value, it sounds more like a reincarnated ADC (Apple Display Connector) than a replacement for USB.

Additionally, it’s going to take a hell of a lot of marketing and arm twisting to get the entire peripheral industry to adopt Light Peak. I just hope Apple doesn’t go radical with it (like they did with USB 1.0, which worked in their favor).

The big question is why is Intel promoting USB 3.0 if they have Light Peak coming around the corner (2010). And why did Apple (who has never been afraid to develop a new standard) have Intel develop it?

Somehow this story doesn’t add up.

I love apple just as much as the next Mac lover, but the bottom line is that windows is still running on 80% of the worlds product. I see a play on this solely by apple carrying less weight than it being introduced for intel. SJ realizes that as much as he'd LIKE to control all electronic devices in his garden, people will always have outsiders that want to get in and he needs THEM to adopt the technology. It can't be forced upon them. Firewire is a good example of a great technology that struggled to get traction and acceptance. Just because something is faster (FW800), doesn't mean that device makers will go to it (USB 2.0). Seems pretty straightforward to me...
 
ODN conduit. ;) Steve Jobs has a 25th century time traveller held prisoner in his basement giving him plans for future technology.
:p
This is all starting to make sense now.

Also, I'm glad someone else picked out the ODN reference there. It was glaring for me. :p
 
Apple been smart

Apple this time is been smart and is not going to keep it for only mac.

If this goes main stream, we could see a real bright future and not what we have now of so many different plugins.

Life is good. :)
 
Um...no...

The whole point is that all the connectors are the same. You can plug anything into any port.


So no DVI, HDMI, Displayport, USB, Firewire, ADB, TOS link, microphone, etc... Everything would plug into any LightPeak port reguardless of it's function.

Of course, for a while they'd have to have all the legacy ports until the device makers catch up.

I would think that integrated graphics on a motherboard would have such a port connecting to its north bridge or some other onboard graphics processor that would make it matter.

I mean, yeah USB and things like that could easily be replaced. But display would be different I think. This is moot if you have a graphics card though or a sound card of course :]
 
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