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Intel Connects PCs To Devices Using Light
CWmike writes "Intel is working on a new optical interconnect that could possibly link mobile devices to displays and storage up to 100 meters away. The optical interconnect technology, Light Peak, could communicate data between systems and devices associated with PCs at speeds of up to 10Gbits/sec., said David Perlmutter, vice president and general manager of Intel's mobility group. The technology uses light to speed up data transmission between mobile devices and connected devices like storage, networking and audio devices, the company said. The technology could help transfer a full-length Blu-ray movie in less than 30 seconds, says a post on Intel's site. Light Peak can run multiple protocols simultaneously over a single cable, enabling mobile devices to perform tasks over multiple connected devices at the same time. 'Optical technology also allows for smaller connectors and longer, thinner, and more flexible cables than currently possible,' according to the Intel entry. It could also lead to thinner and fewer connectors on mobile devices, Perlmutter said."
Oh that sounds cool but I already have a technology to transfer a full-length Blu-ray movie in less than 30 seconds.
It's called a cable.
Ooohhh, how about Fibre Optic?
Catch the fancy spelling of Fiber?
.........fiber? :)
Is this just cheap components for Fiber? 100 meters is pretty far, I am guessing that this could have networking uses beyond ripping media to external drives.
What I've wanted for some time is a universal standard of structured cabling: I'd run a "bus" cable round the house, and in each room or termination point I'd have a box that allowed me to run different signals and different protocols over that bus - audio, HD video, ethernet, etc. No more running new cable runs each time I wanted to add a phone point, or an extra network socket. If this provides a way of doing this over a universal optical bus, then count me in...
I've always known that it's easier to connect my devices with light than with the lights off. Can't see the port otherwise.
My webcomic
Who would think to use Electromagnetic energy to transfer information! Maybe the new WiFi will use light so we can get these faster speeds.
... ten-gigabit-ethernet doesn't do 100 metres over copper and much, much more over fibre? Or is it that 10GBASE-whatever isn't already available and this intel thing is? What?
I'd be interested in the cabling and connectors. 10Gb/s over fiber is certainly good, and would have a variety of fun uses; but is hardly groundbreaking, you've been able to get 10Gb over fiber for a while now.
To be putting it in consumer electronics, though, you pretty much have to make the cabling and connectors quite durable and generally idiot proof. This hasn't, historically, been the first set of attributes you associate with optical fiber(it's a hell of a lot more durable than you'd expect a tiny thread of glass to be; but you have to care about turn radius, and dust and stuff getting on the connectors, and whatnot). Either Intel is just handwaving, or they actually think that they've got a set of mechanical designs that'll let fiber be as robust as USB, and still work despite accumulations of pocket lint, and people rolling over cables with chairs, and stuff getting bent in laptop bags, and whatnot.
Bright idea.
and 10 gigabit Ethernet is an existing standard, also handles "multiple protocols simultaneously," and depending on the PHY, can go much farther than 100 meters.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Can anyone enlighten me as to which part of this story is meant to be news?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Nothing exciting here, move along.
What you describe is similar to the old 10base5 (thicknet) Ethernet. Structured cabling uses a star topology.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Hang on, are there cables or are there not? If this is wire-less (something like IR) and reliable then that sounds like quite a big achievement, if not then it just sounds like fibre optics with a bit of a twist. I can't tell from the description or the article whether this new "Light Peak" is a system over wires (at which point why trumpet the mobile applications?) or some big jump in wireless peripheral connection.
Pretty interesting stuff from a layman's point of view. Does this mean that eventually my internet connection will get faster (because it's really slow these days) and I'll be able to enjoy DubLi.com without having to wait too long?
I hope they use this technology to isolate computers from lightning as well.
Well, the title was not very helpful - it came from the first of the linked articles. The second was a bit more informative but still quite vague.
The interesting thing here seems to be that they're planning to tunnel multiple protocols over the optical link. So you might be hanging monitors, USB devices, SATA drives, whatever off this link. It'd be a bridge that could tunnel your device connections to somewhere quite physically distant, using only a single cable. One assumes (maybe this is a big assumption) that an important part of the effort is in getting hardware that can efficiently do the encapsulation / decapsulation of the various device protocols. I'm not entirely sure why you couldn't do this over a 10Gb ethernet link, with some kind of protocol for tunneling over ethernet. I'd speculate that it'd make the controller chips more expensive if you did this but I really don't know. Everything is guesswork anyhow, until they give us more information.
The main thing I can see this being useful for is stuff like blade desktops - the real computer you're using as your desktop is just a blade server in a chilled room, with sysadmins leaving it regular sacrificial offerings for optimal uptime. The monitor, USB devices, everything would then be connected to the blade desktop by a single optical cable. Only one slim cable to route for each desktop, everything runs over it so the "desktop" can still have functional USB ports etc. Having an optical cable seems like it would be ideal for that kind of scenario. The ultimate thin client. If you have multiple Light Peak ports on a single blade then perhaps you could get multiple virtual machines to drive separate workstations, making your datacentre density even higher.
Other stuff it might be interesting for is some kind of cheap (?) high speed networking, home media servers, low cost SAN hardware, etc. Depending on how they do it of course. But if they made it generic enough it would be really interesting for a lot of applications that are now priced out of the reach of individuals and probably also small businesses.
The article is scarce on information. I agree with all the others who've said that this seems like they re-invented fiber. I'm guessing since they mentioned mobile devices that this is really a low-power, low-cost fiber transmitter that they're talking about. Current electro-optical transceivers at 10gbps are pretty large in form factor and suck up a lot of power (~300mW) which would be inappropriate for mobile devices.
perhaps your 5 digit uid has blinded you
1000Bt is enough TODAY
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
This technology is doomed to fail because it can't provide power for the attached devices.
For everything else, there is Gigabit or 10G Ethernet over fiber, a much more supported and widespread technology.
Current consumer cables can be kicked around the floor, dropped in water, and not have the terminating ends covered with protective caps when not in use ....and still the connectors perform their intended function. Welcome to an all-new tech support hell calls on all the stupid^H^H^H^H^H^H inventive methods consumers find to destroy fiber connectors. The company which provides the cables for this venture should probably use a pricing model which includes a 50% failure rate in the first 6 months for all optic cables. Good luck.
Every mans' island needs an ocean; choose your ocean carefully.
We have had IEEE 802.3ae for six years now. What's the benefit over your run-of-the-mill 10 Gbps Ethernet?
Transfer a full-length Blu-ray movie in less than 30 seconds?
From what to what?
Really? The article positions this as a consumer technology. What is there in the consumer space that can either supply or store bits fast enough to keep up with this? Even enterprise-class storage would sweat to keep up with this.
Laboratory conditions used to create the marketing specs don't count.
look forward to transferring my music through LPs.
Why hasn't some enterprising inventor come up with a cable/connector that combines optical (for data) and copper (for power) in a single cable?
Probably wouldn't be great for long distances, but I could imagine something like that having some advantages for replacing USB and ethernet w/PoE (at least in a home or office setting).
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
Since Blu-Ray refers to a disc medium, once the "full-length Blu-Ray movie" is no longer on the physical disc, but on a "light pipe," how is it a Blu-Ray movie anymore?
... and then they built the supercollider.
Never really thought about it 'til now but -- why isn't there a consumer-level optical PHY already??.
The only thing close to a technological limitation that I can imagine would have to be the modem silicon
This would be great for underwater communication (as radio waves get absorbed by water). I would like one of these for my DIY underwater ROV - but I guess it won't affect Intel's buget that much:) /Thebadkarmaguy
OMG! You can use light to transmit data over a cable? That's freaking crazy!! Wow.
What's next? Some way to switch circuits without using tubes or relays? Yeah -- like that would ever happen.
Actually, if you do your cabling right, yes you can. Ethernet's got distance limitations- fiber has less of one. Power can be ran the same distances if you pair it up around the fiber and make it part of a special connector... Moreover, the crowd they're tailoring this to doesn't care as much about power concerns over the interconnect. They want reliability, ease of cabling, distance, and overall speed- and they're not wanting to dangle all sorts of things like people do with USB stuff.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
... in 1979 10base5 cost $thousands per node. In the mid-90's, a 100Mb switch port cost a thousand. In the early '90's, 1000baseT switch ports cost ~$300 each.
Today, 1000baseT is included on $500 laptops, and you can get a 5 port 1000baseT switch for $25. If you think similar things won't happen with 10G, you're wrong.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I wondered how long a "full length Blu-Ray movie" is? Is it, like, just under 100 metres so it fits in the cable? Or is it 3 km, so that you have to drag that 100m cable for 30 seconds at 1 m/s to transfer it?
All these new units of measurement get me really confused.
Musicians don't die. They just decompose.
dust and stuff getting on the connectors, and whatnot .. and still work despite accumulations of pocket lint
Although this isn't mentioned specifically in the video, it appears as if the transceiver is meant to be permanently attached to the fiber. This would be the easiest solution to the lint issue, plus it would eliminate the complexity of making good optical connections. Essentially, I think they intend to have the transceivers molded into both ends of the fiber and it would probably look just like an USB cable to the average user, only with fiber running end-to-end, rather than copper. Of course, I'm not sure USB can reach 10 Gbs, so it probably would have a different type of electrical connection to the host PC.
I think the key innovation here is that they can have a short, high-speed electrical connection between the PC and the transceiver, and a large arbitrarily long fiber link between the transceivers themselves.
Do not stare into cable with remaining eye.
Liberal? Conservative? Compare perspectives at Left-Right
link from a german phd:
http://ccn.et.tu-dresden.de/index.php?id=410
translation here:
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fccn.et.tu-dresden.de%2Findex.php%3Fid%3D410
Nothing new here
Yes, infrared is, in a way, the same thing, but the main difference, is speed. IrDA has been around for, what, a decade or longer? But, it's not 10 Gb/s.
Engineers can't design for the present, lest their products be obsolete-on-arrival. It's not unreasonable to think that storage and bus speeds will get faster, as will the speed of hard drives (SSDs are already increasing disk storage performance, though, granted, not many people have those, *yet*). If we are using optical externally to increase data transfer, there's no reason to think this tech won't be applied *internally* to allow the Mobo to send data to your SSD (or whatever other storage device tech comes out which replaces current HDD and SSD tech).
So, if this will support 10Gb/s on arrival (and one can suppose, based upon past experience with technology, that if the 'first generation' of this tech is 10Gbit/s, through refinement, they can scale that up faster over time - just like IDE and SCSI got much faster over the course of their lifespans), then this is probably a good candidate to push us forward for another 10 years, or maybe longer.
Signals actually travel slightly faster in a copper coax than they do in a glass fiber, I've been told. So, while the bandwidth is impressive, your ping times are going to increase by a few nanoseconds...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
How long does it take to transfer the blu-ray disc 100m if I toss it like a frisbee?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
10G supports optical PHY.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Infrared *is* light, you know...
Technically, any wireless link uses photons (of too low wavelength to be considered light though :) ).
Paul B.
I thought one of the limitations with using optical fibres is that they aren't very bendy. Certainly not as bendy as, say, a soft ethernet cable. For my 90 degree wire bundles, will they work at all?
Or did they somehow invent super-flexi fibres?
1) The article is about a cable.
2) You probably don't have a 10Gb/s cable
3) You certainly don't have a 100m long 10Gb/s cable.
Category 6a cable is available for purchase if you want to do 10 gigE over 100m. Regular Cat6 does 10 gigE only to 55m.
Its the PCjr keyboard incident all over again... the nightmares!!! The sore arms trying to align it...
Seriously tho, why not just enhance bluetooth instead? Its here, its now..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
And if you overclock your Wii using the new "LightPeak TM" technology, you can finally have "real" light sabers for wii users to play/fight with!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
sky HD+ does has e-net just not on yet. You may get direct tv stuff like pc play back, vod, mvr, soon.
I will eat my hat if they enable this port on the Sky boxes in the next 3 years. Sky boxes have had these for years, and they're never going to be operational.
1394/Firewire is wonderful; the only downside is that it lacks the wonderful driver classifications (and support) that USB has.
As far as I am concerned, if Apple designed the basics again as they did with firewire and intel adds the driver support that USB has it'll be a win-win situation.
PLUGS:
I just hope that Apple designs the plugs because USB plugs always have been stupid!
Not that firewire is a whole lot better-- but I for one hate this A/B plug insanity that we must deal with. I only want 2 kinds of plugs-- ones without copper(power) and ones with copper. No mini plugs or new mini standards later. Also, there is no reason these connectors can not be extremely small and work no matter how you rotate them into the socket. A variation on a headphone plug would be circular... In fact, if one was smart they would take one of those AC/DC power adapter plugs and run the optical down the center of it-- consumers could use an AC/DC adapter for charging-- resulting in 1 kind of socket in devices that handles charging, power, and data. Naturally, I'm assuming 1 optical cable; ideally you'd want 2 which would make it harder to make such a plug as small or round.
DRIVERS:
classes-- basing them on USB is a good idea; however:
I'd like to see the classes expanded - especially for mice - where there is a little room for these fancy products that add just 1 more button or another scroll wheel. Hardware makers are horrible at drivers and the better the classification system the less troubles consumers will have. Oh, a standard class for SERIAL and PARALLEL devices would be greatly appreciated! Especially for industrial uses-- we still run industry on serial and parallel.
Actually, a driver sub-classing system for drivers could be quite handy-- often we see devices that go slightly outside its class so it then must have a whole driver when its core functionality could have been handled without a driver... some get around this already but many devices do not. We need to encourage devices to comply with the closest standard class driver and then "subclass" it for their extensions. Properly implemented, this would result in more stable drivers because the OS would handle aspects of the standard class or at least provide the source code for the standard class driver (MS.) Ideally, the standard driver could be in kernel and the "subclass" would be in user space (I'm thinking of those hard disks with backup buttons or those DVD library systems... and Mac OS X which has split-space-drivers already.)
POWER:
Everybody has run into the power limits on firewire AND especially USB. If any power is to be provided, it should be done CORRECTLY this time. I can't believe 1394 didn't have enough to drive a HD when it was planned for disks. USB was hacked up so its understandable it has no real power. If we are going to bother to run copper then we should get some SERIOUS power down those wires for a change. So it adds some cost; you think buying power bricks is cheap? you think those things save power?? My computer's supply is much better than a cheapo power brick that constantly draws power; I leave my computer on all the time but those bricks are not. It would actually be GREEN to cut out the power bricks and run a HD from the connector. Oh, it would be nice to have an powerless version of the cable if I am going to network or hook a computer to some future TV; but also because long runs of low voltage will cost me more power than running from a power brick. Now, to get more bang out of our copper - I don't think it would be so horrible to go to 12V or higher-- many devices already must step down voltage. USB's 5V is just too low; it does however do a nice job at "tracking" power load.
The world needs a DC power standard for small devices desperately and the closest we've got is crappy USB and google's work for a DC power standard. Sure, I'm not saying it should handle 500W computers; although, if you think about it-- (dare i say it) a larger class of cable could power such devices.
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