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

[Erasmus]

Sure Optical is faster now but if history shows us anything they will be able to get copper up to that speed in a short time.

Copper will not catch up. The only electrical technology that is known about that has a hope of beating optical is carbon nanotubes, and that is a long way off. A single copper cable simply cannot contain such high frequency signals over any useful distance without a huge input of power, which will most likely lead to the copper melting. Optical systems do not have this problem.

There's no point sending the data through optical just to have to convert it back into electrical charges.

Not true, the shorter the cable, the less the inductance, and the less power needed to transfer super-high speed data. That means wires traveling between two CPUs (eg. QPI) can transfer more bits/s than similar wires connecting the CPU to your external SSD can without melting. Very short distances can remain copper, and will for a while at least.

It's 3 bites at the sales cherry instead of one.

Good point.

The question is how long will it take for this technology to reach the internals of a system, allowing companies like alienware to 'play' with the light in expensive, eye-candy gaming rigs.

Reaching the internals of a system, I wouldn't expect it to be long. Computer companies can have a bundle of copper wires leading from the CPU to the GPU, or just one or two Light Peak interconnects. Miniaturise Light Peak further, and you can print everything right on the circuit board, along with optical waveguides right there on the silicon, no more cables. I've worked for a research company successfully doing this, but the progress is slow. So slow you wonder if other technologies, like nanotubes, will beat optical technologies to the on-chip arena.

Oh, and the wavelengths used to transmit data are all infra-red. They are for telecommunications too, and that is unlikely to change due to efficiency and optical attenuation. So sorry, but no light shows.

 

[EagerDragon]

Hubs will be needed

I would think every computer will have 2 to 4 of these connectors and that routers will be needed to take it further.

Imagine a bank of drives connected to a router along with the rewiring of your house to get at least one or two of these in every room and all those connect to the one router.

One would use wireless only when there is no other choice since it would be a lot slower than connecting to the wire.

But now intel has to sell it to Dell, and to disk and peripheral manufactorers to make it a go. No point in having it on your Mac if there is nothing that connects to it.

Just a guess here but this is likely to comeout on Mac Pro first and maybe on iMac and in 2011 it may come out on laptops. Not sure how power hungry it would be on a laptop with the light peak 2010 version.

Looks good, I am looking forward to rewiring the house with this and have all my computers connected at these speeds. A music and video server playing 5 or 10 different streams concurently would be a joy on this.

Correction: Replaced Router with Hub

 

[immaculate]

punched cards are here to stay

Here we go again - Apple/Intel are innovating again and making us all buy new cables and devices and such like, and all because they're miles faster and way simpler! How dare they! Why can't they stick to punched cards as any sensible Luddite would?

 

[*LTD*]

Here we go again - Apple/Intel are innovating again and making us all buy new cables and devices and such like, and all because they're miles faster and way simpler! How dare they! Why can't they stick to punched cards as any sensible Luddite would?

Is that a "hanging chad" I see?

 

[toke lahti]

I wonder if the technology allows for external hubs?
I mean one cable out to a external 8 port hub,that could route the
data to the right place.Display(s),HDDs,ODDs,interwebz etc..
Or is it forced solely to computer-target unit type of connectivity?
It would be nice if you could just route the stuff out of the computer
via one port to a hidden hub,that would route the stuff further.

Hmm, let's look at year 2015:
I have this 3D-4k-display here which needs 12bit colors @ 200Hz (4096x2160x3x12x200)=63Gb/s...
So we don't have to go very far to the future to see that single 10Gb-link won't be enough for everything.
Also every port in LP hub has to have both optical-to-electrical & electrical-to-optical converters, so they won't be very cheap for the first years.

Now, with MBP, you need to carry mDP-adapter for display and fw800-adapter for fw400 devices. I guess that people won't accept many more adapters, so at least usb3 connectors will remain in computer. Also I think that they can't take ethernet away, so in the future we will still have at least 3 types of connectors in our computers. So that's only one less than now...

Or could LP replace ethernet? Could our local networks be built on LP? To connect all peripherals to home network and every display, blu-ray & STB could transreceive as uncompressed data?
That would make home network hubs easily pass need for 1 Tb/s routing speeds, so not in next decade yet...
And next thing we need is wireless 10Tb local networs! Peripheral companies have their roadmap already for year 2050!

 

[MorphingDragon]

Not true, the shorter the cable, the less the inductance, and the less power needed to transfer super-high speed data. That means wires traveling between two CPUs (eg. QPI) can transfer more bits/s than similar wires connecting the CPU to your external SSD can without melting. Very short distances can remain copper, and will for a while at least.

No, what I mean is. It will be limited by the conversion chip's operating frequency. So the data is really only being processed at the speed which the conversion chips operate. It just travels down the pipe a hell of a lot faster.

With Quantum, the signal can be sent and received as light. (Basic principle of quantum mechanics)

 

[Lesser Evets]

Makes me wonder if in maybe 2 years we will see a redesign of the floor macs, especially once this takes over USB and other input options. It's been 5 years of this design, which is getting on in years.

Without all the other connectors, they might be able to trim down the size and profile. It would be interesting if Apple began cramming the floor Macs down like they are all the other computers they make.

 

[jamesryanbell]

Well..........

That's pretty much the coolest thing I've seen in years.

 

[EagerDragon]

Makes me wonder if in maybe 2 years we will see a redesign of the floor macs, especially once this takes over USB and other input options. It's been 5 years of this design, which is getting on in years.

Without all the other connectors, they might be able to trim down the size and profile. It would be interesting if Apple began cramming the floor Macs down like they are all the other computers they make.

What do you mean by "floor" Macs?

 

[MorphingDragon]

What do you mean by "floor" Macs?

He forgot how to say Pro.

 

[wizard]

USB2 will be around for awhile.

This sounds sweet. That is some serious speed. Only problem, that is one more interface to add on to the ever growing list of interfaces. FireWire 400 is dead, 800 by next year. USB 2.0 is going be dead soon, and 3.0 is nowhere to be seen. Very interesting stuff here.

I agree with everything disappearing with the exception of USB2. There would still be a need to support low speed devices, for example mouses, keyboards and the like.

However those USB2 ports may no longer be on the computers chassis. I could see Apple running Light Peak to a display where your USB ports would be.

This is all speculation on our part right now, as a result it will be interesting to see what Apples plans are. I suspect we are thinking to small here and Apples plans might not be fully exposed yet. But I will go out on a limb here with some predictions.

1. Extremely high resolution displays in the near future. Apple will probably shoot for 4k or better.
2. Tablets that hook up to your desktop over fast optical so that the system ends up working as one.
3. High speed solid state storage. Here this optical solution is desperately needed. The SATA solutions are dead in the water for the coming solid state solutions. Even 10Gbs is likely to be seen as slow in the future.
4. Very cheap clustering. This could give Apple a huge advantage in the medium end HPC arena. Apparently the connector supports two channels so out of the gate you could connect computers together at 20Gbs
5. Storage decoupled from your computers chassis. Imagine storage as a separate component you buy for your computer. External drives then becomes the norm. Now I don't like this idea personallly but can see advantages
6. A replacement or PCI Express for expansion cards. This would mean exactly the same interface for a board in the box or one a hundred meters away. This could lead to a whole new generation of I/O products.
7. Home theater. Given the bit rates, Apple could leap frog Bluray by several times.

In any event I suspect that Apples goals with this tech is storage, HPC, local clustering and displays. The only problem is that they think this is a year away. Frankly I kinda doubt that considering the quality of the demo. I'm kinda hoping that there is a Mac Pro rev early next year with this capability.


Dave

 

[Mister Snitch]

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.

Right on all counts. It's such a fresh concept (and long overdue) that it's not surprising many will have a hard time getting their heads around it. ONE cable type for EVERYTHING.

But re legacy ports - you know how Apple (i.e., Steve) HATES legacy ANYthing. So I am wondering if they might push adapter devices, instead. Remember the original iMac, sans floppy? External floppy drives were the answer (the ONLY answer). I think Apple will push the envelope with this, the same way they did with the floppy, by making devices without legacy ports. Anyone with a legacy device (meaning just about everyone) would have to buy an external adapter. One such adapter might be capable of replicating many different types of ports.

Steve's plan will be that, if you want to get rid of that horsey adapter, you'll have to upgrade your various devices to the new standard. And to have an elegant Apple device hooked up to 'matching' elegant devices, people will spend the money (sooner or later). They will, because they always have.

The device makers will LOVE it.

 

[mmccaskill]

Yet again Apple leading the way in innovation.

 

[bassjunky]

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...

The article says 10Gb, not 10GB. Learn the difference.

 

[Mister Snitch]

[*]Storage decoupled from your computers chassis. Imagine storage as a separate component you buy for your computer. External drives then becomes the norm. Now I don't like this idea personallly but can see advantages

This is intriguing, but let's take it further. Perhaps Apple sees a day when ALL storage is in the cloud. You'll have a moderate amount of solid state storage in whatever device you are using (tablet, iPhone, iPod, laptop, iMac) and some kind of networked storage that complements it, sitting in a closet somewhere. Or - in that massive storage facility Apple has started building?

Then the only people with big hard drives attached to (or inside) their computers will be those using Mac Pros. Video editors, engineers, designers, that sort of thing.

 

[rumplestiltskin]

Sounds nice.

It would still need at least two copper wires to supply power to devices without their own power plugs. Only way to get power through optical would be to have little solar cells on the end.

Be afraid...

I've seen iMacs whose defective FireWire ports burned out camcorder FW ports (Rev C iMacs), defective cables or bad enclosures burning out Mac's FW ports.

As long as the power is kept very low (maybe just enough for USB hard drives), we shouldn't have a problem. Power over FireWire has always been a very bad idea.

 

[*LTD*]

This is intriguing, but let's take it further. Perhaps Apple sees a day when ALL storage is in the cloud. You'll have a moderate amount of solid state storage in whatever device you are using (tablet, iPhone, iPod, laptop, iMac) and some kind of networked storage that complements it, sitting in a closet somewhere. Or - in that massive storage facility Apple has started building?

Then the only people with big hard drives attached to (or inside) their computers will be those using Mac Pros. Video editors, engineers, designers, that sort of thing.

Well, I work entirely off the Cloud. I've got my entire Documents folder (~1,200 items) on my iDisk (of which there is a local copy on my desktop.) I've got a shortcut to my Documents folder in the Dock as well as the Finder sidebar. Whenever I work on a document the changes are uploaded automatically. I can work on my papers from anywhere in the world, and from any device, depending on its capabilities.

 

[BongoBanger]

Looks pretty cool although I imagine this will be available to all OEMs that Intel deal with since its their tech not Apple's.

 

[MorphingDragon]

Sounds nice.

It would still need at least two copper wires to supply power to devices without their own power plugs. Only way to get power through optical would be to have little solar cells on the end.

Laser light probably wont make the solar cells respond. Specially if its below the Green Hue.

 

[wizard]

SSD already exceed PCI Express speeds.

This really doesn't mean squat if our storage media can't keep up with it... At it's supposed release date around this time next year, show me some fast new-gen SSD's that are somewhat affordable in larger capacities (let's say, 640GB for <$400) running at the full SATA-6gbps standard, and then maybe we'll talk fast connectors.

Sure those are expensive PCI cards this year but who knows what the cost will be next year. The reality is that SATA 3 is a joke with respect to transfer speeds.

In anyevent it isn't an issue of the speed of one protocol that makes Light Peak interesting but rather running multiple protocols at once. I highlighted some of Apples potential uses above but have to think that they have a serious interest in using this in docking stations for future MBP. You would have one cord to connect your high and low speed devices.

Dave

 

[toke lahti]

[*]Extremely high resolution displays in the near future. Apple will probably shoot for 4k or better.

Like: "3D-4k-display which needs 12bit colors @ 200Hz (4096x2160x3x12x200)=63Gb/s"

[*]High speed solid state storage. Here this optical solution is desperately needed. The SATA solutions are dead in the water for the coming solid state solutions. Even 10Gbs is likely to be seen as slow in the future.

Sata is dead? Sata3 is 6Gb and available now. LP isn't available for years.
If you need fast storage now or next year, which would you choose?

[*]Storage decoupled from your computers chassis. Imagine storage as a separate component you buy for your computer. External drives then becomes the norm. Now I don't like this idea personallly but can see advantages

Every other company than Apple knows this as eSata & iSCSI.
Nothing new here. You can use multi lane eSata and 16 lane pci express v3 delivers 16GB/s which is 128 Gb/s. LP will reach this, ummm, let's say year 2020?

 

[Airforcekid]

So USB 3.0 next gen firewire etc became obsolete before it was out man you cant future proof these days!

 

[rdowns]

Very smart move by Jobs giving this to Intel so it can become a standard. Were Apple to go it alone, we'd have another Firewire and MDP on out hands.

 

[toke lahti]

Well, I work entirely off the Cloud. I've got my entire Documents folder (~1,200 items) on my iDisk (of which there is a local copy on my desktop.) I've got a shortcut to my Documents folder in the Dock as well as the Finder sidebar. Whenever I work on a document the changes are uploaded automatically. I can work on my papers from anywhere in the world, and from any device, depending on its capabilities.

Good for you.
I work with video and amazingly can't use The Cloud at all.
Many times gigabit ethernet to NAS is too slow.
LP won't change this at all, unless your telco is offering you LP connection less than 300 feet away your house...

 

[Xibalba]

exciting technology - and as with any unreleased product - questions still remain. it would be interesting to see if this Apple/Intel development will become mainstream.

it certainly would be nice to consolidate ports for all connections and also to get such a significant boost in speed.