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Intel Also Launching 'Light Peak' Thursday

paradox00 said:
Any reason why you think a technology that Apple pressured Intel to develop won't show up in the MBP's expected to be released on the same day?
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What devices use lightpeak currently? Which displays? External hard drives?

Nothing does that I know of. USB 3.0 has more stuff out hardware wise and it is the most used standard for data transfer and connection.

Seems like putting the cart before the horse. Just my opinion.

I would be surprised if a stand alone lightpeak plug made it into the MBP.
 
some inaccurate things mentioned about LP that need clarification.

USB, firewire, eSATA are not going anywhere. all of these protocols can travel over a light peak interface, and can be daisy chained. connect that USB HD over lightpeak with the right connectors, bam. add a firewire device, bam. A dock cable for iPods and iPhones, bam. the great thing about light peak on a laptop is you can get rid of all that space being taken up by multiple firewire and USB ports, even a LAN port. granted the first iteration will be using copper and not fiber, but with intro speeds at 10Gb/s, over twice as fast as USB 3, which I'm sorry to say is not making any market penetration at the moment. and yes, you'll need some new cables. but if it scales as nicely as anticipated, we have a solid uniform and high speed peripheral interface that should kick a$$.
 
So there has been some confusion because in January, someone from intel mentioned light peak would be copper based instead of optical. I wonder if this was a mistake or if it will be copper and change to optical in a later version?
 
kellen said:
What devices use lightpeak currently? Which displays? External hard drives?

Seems like putting the cart before the horse. Just my opinion.
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Let me think...

There are no devices with lightpeak because at today's date IT DOESN'T EXIST. It's quite hard to make a peripheral device with a non-existent technology. Once the technology exists on the computer, the peripheral devices will follow.

To use your example, Lightpeak on the MBP is the HORSE. The peripheral devices are all the different carts that the horse can pull.
 
Alien987 said:
There are no devices because it's completely new and unreleased yet... give it a few months and they will start to slowly pop up.
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Starting with iPad, iPhone and it will extend it thru iPod touch for faster back up and faster transfers.
 
one more adapter for MBP...
<HDTV/Projectors>-[HDMI/VGA]-[Adapter]-[mDP]-<MBP>-[LightPeak]-[Adapter]-[USB]-<Peripherals> :rolleyes:
 
What this means in my reality is that I can skip buying anything for THIS revision, since nothing MetalPeak is out yet. When it does come out, it will be overpriced at first, anyhow. By the time the following new MacBook Pro or whatever else comes out, chances are good that there will be MetalPeak or maybe even actual LightPeak devices to use with it, and they'll be priced for earthlings as well. My eSATA drives will hold up just fine for the next year.

I'm imagining the horse / cart argument, with early adopters getting all crazy on their new horsies, dragging people by the leg up and down the dusty town while hollering and shooting their pistols in the air, just waiting for some carts to be invented that they can pull around.
 
vincenz said:
What's the point if no devices use it yet?
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Presuming that the new MBP's will have Light Peak (with other Macs soon to follow), I think it's likely that new Cinema Displays using Light Peak will soon follow.

Also, Intel frequently works with manufacturers in advance of product releases - and not just Apple.

So, likely they've been working with hard drive, display, cable manufacturers, etc. so that other devices and accessories will be available soon after the announcement.

A good example would be the Seagate GoFlex drives - a user could upgrade their GoFlex external drives just by replacing the cable/dock with a Light Peak version, and Intel would likely be working with Seagate already to make this happen sooner rather than later.

Things like cables will probably be pricey initially, but come down within a few months once the more open supply chain gets going, and monoprice/etc. can get stuff straight from 3rd-party mfrs in China.
 
gugy said:
Cool,
Now I just hope soon to see a card to add lightpeak on my MacPro.

The new MacBook Pros are looking amazing if they have a second SSD drive, lighter and lightpeak.
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That would be awesome!

md3392.jpg
 
Being able to connect a USB 3 hub to a single Light Peak port, and getting two ports to be able to run at full speed at any one time? Or 4 running at full speed, if two are reading, and two are writing?

How is that not awesome???

Although I'm most interested to see exactly how compatible LP is with USB. Based on the picture, I'm assuming it's an otherwise standard USB 2 port with extra connections. I'm wondering if Intel manage to make the final product directly compatible with USB 3. Which, of course, would pretty much be the ultimate port.

EDIT: I'm pretty sure I can see four of the five extra USB 3 connections right at the back of the LP connection. Which is freaking awesome.

220905-LPBlog5.png
 
Last edited:
There were so many naysayers! I knew we'd get light peak all along. And liquidmetal. And quad cores. Just wait and see.
 
Am I right in thinking that Display Port (and perhaps Mini DP) is already faster than LP? Not sure if it has the daisy chaining capacity though.
 
damnit. I bet LightPeak will only be in the high-end MBPs. It won't make it to the 13" lineup yet.
 
enfanteribl said:
Am I right in thinking that Display Port (and perhaps Mini DP) is already faster than LP? Not sure if it has the daisy chaining capacity though.
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Yes, but it's also bigger, and not nearly as versatile.

Plus LP 2 (whenever it's released) will be much faster, remain the same size and shape, and probably be backwards compatible with LP 1, as well as USB 1/2/3.

trip1ex said:
damnit. I bet LightPeak will only be in the high-end MBPs. It won't make it to the 13" lineup yet.
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I wouldn't be surprised if it is. Not surprised at all.

If LP also doubles as USB, then I'd be confident Apple would use it. As the latest rumours suggest the 13" will be going to 3 USB ports (and one would assume the 15" and 17" will gain an extra port too) it seems likely that at least one of those ports (if not all) will be Light Peak enabled.

Light Peak being compatible with USB 3 would also explain SJ's negativity on USB 3. Apple would know the specifics of Light Peak, as they helped design it. So why would they bother implementing USB 3 from a 3rd party source, when they get it bundled up in the Light Peak port?
 
Are there any hardware vendors on board with Light Peak yet?

The only thing keeping me from getting excited about Light Peak showing up on the new MacBook Pros is that I haven't heard of any hardware manufacturers telling us when Light Peak will be supported on their devices. Sure, Light Peak sounds awesome, and I love the idea of being able to plug in all my devices via a new high speed port (by today's standards) on my MBP.

However my biggest question is, am I going to have to purchase all new external hard drives or will Light Peak be reverse engineered to work with USB 2 devices? 10 Gbps throughput sounds amazing, but I'm not crazy about the thought of replacing 3 TB+ of external storage that are otherwise working just fine to take advantage of it.
 
kellen said:
What devices use lightpeak currently? Which displays? External hard drives?

Nothing does that I know of. USB 3.0 has more stuff out hardware wise and it is the most used standard for data transfer and connection.

Seems like putting the cart before the horse. Just my opinion.

I would be surprised if a stand alone lightpeak plug made it into the MBP.
Click to expand...

Creating a LightPeak device before there is anything to plug them into would be putting the cart before the horse in my opinion. Or perhaps this a chicken or the egg problem... One of them has to come first, however illogical it appears.

Regardless, Apple has two imminent refreshes. The first is the new MBP and the second is something that plugs into a MBP. Apple can provide devices for both ends of the cable. I don't recall a lot of Mini DisplayPort devices before it shipped on the MBP either.

Furthermore, as this is an Intel standard, it's virtually a lock to be included on all Intel chipsets moving forward (note, that includes every mac product). That means that there will be plenty of ports for future devices to plug into, so the devices will come. Apple products shipping with new Intel products in them the day they are announced isn't even without precedent. The Mac Pro with new Xeon processors beat the Intel's press release out the door just a couple years ago...
 
avanpelt said:
The only thing keeping me from getting excited about Light Peak showing up on the new MacBook Pros is that I haven't heard of any hardware manufacturers telling us when Light Peak will be supported on their devices. Sure, Light Peak sounds awesome, and I love the idea of being able to plug in all my devices via a new high speed port (by today's standards) on my MBP.

However my biggest question is, am I going to have to purchase all new external hard drives or will Light Peak be reverse engineered to work with USB 2 devices? 10 Gbps throughput sounds amazing, but I'm not crazy about the thought of replacing 3 TB+ of external storage that are otherwise working just fine to take advantage of it.
Click to expand...

Apple isn't ditching USB and LightPeak is supposed to be backwards compatible anyway, but we won't know all the details until Thursday.

Edit: Although you will have to buy new devices to take advantage of the speed, that's a given. USB 1.1 devices didn't get faster when USB 2 was released.
 
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