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Intel Shows Off First Light Peak Laptop

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the more-bits-please dept.

Barence writes "Intel has provided the first hands-on demonstration of a laptop running its Light Peak technology — an optical interconnect that can transfer data at 10Gbit/sec in both directions — at the company's inaugural European research showcase here in Brussels. Intel has fitted Light Peak into a regular USB cable, with optical fibres running alongside the electrical cabling. Intel provided a visual demonstration of how data is passed through the cable by shining a torch into one end of the cable, with two little dots of light visible to the naked eye at the other end. The demonstration laptop was sending two separate HD video streams to a nearby television screen without any visible lag. The laptop includes a 12mm square chip that converts the optical light into electrical data that the computer understands."

15 of 271 comments (clear)

  1. Server technology? by Happy+Nuclear+Death · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's nice they've developed a way to transfer data at ridiculous speeds, but it does the average user no good as long as we're using mechanical hard drives. Even a "mere" 1 gigabit network connection outstrips the ability of spinning platters to absorb it. I guess this Light Peak thing is aimed at the server market then?

    1. Re:Server technology? by Atmchicago · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Don't you suppose Intel is aware of it, and would like to sell you their SSDs? In a few years nearly all new PCs will sport an SSD.

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    2. Re:Server technology? by ryanleary · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It's nice they've developed a way to transfer data at ridiculous speeds, but it does the average user no good as long as we're using mechanical hard drives. Even a "mere" 1 gigabit network connection outstrips the ability of spinning platters to absorb it. I guess this Light Peak thing is aimed at the server market then?

      That's not really a fair analysis. HD video is often stored compressed, but needs to be transferred at full resolution uncompressed to the display medium. The DVI spec supports 3.96Gbit/s. HDMI even goes up to 10.2Gbit/s. There are plenty of other examples where a high-bandwidth transport will be useful.

    3. Re:Server technology? by doogledog · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Ooh and with that unification think of the DRM possibilities!

    4. Re:Server technology? by V!NCENT · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "It's nice they've developed a way to transfer data at ridiculous speeds, but it does the average user no good as long as we're using mechanical hard drives."
      What's the problem with most humans? They always seem to want to only advance to the bare miminum required.

      How about:
      "Yo guys, I got an idea!"
      -"Shoot"
      "How about making a cable that is so fast that we'll never have to think about the transfer speed anymore?"
      -"That'll be awesome!"
      ???

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    5. Re:Server technology? by Kjella · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Also called "putting all the eggs in one basket"...

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    6. Re:Server technology? by vux984 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Analog copies after 1 or 2 copies of copies you can tell the difference.

      Of course, one would digitize the first copy from analog sans drm, and be able to reproduce it millions of times from there without further degradation.

    7. Re:Server technology? by Shatrat · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Precision is not accuracy. What are you doing on Slashdot?

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  2. Re:Optical light? by Jamu · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I guess it just means it uses visible light, as opposed to, infrared or ultraviolet for example.

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  3. plug by theheadlessrabbit · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Seems like this could be an effective plug for the analogue hole.

    Cautious optimism should be shown. Sounds like something that could come back to haunt users.

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  4. Horrible USB Connector by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why did they have to stick it in the horribly designed USB connector?

    The engineers responsible for that connector must have never made it past sophomore design class. You either make a part that is obviously asymmetric (d-sub, ieee1394, 8p8c) or one that is truly symmetric (RCA, TRS connectors). Instead, we're stuck with this symmetric-appearing but actually asymmetric USB connector that I try to plug in backwards half the time.

  5. Re:Optical light? by mweather · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I've never once heard someone refer to a burning stick as a flashlight.

  6. Re: two separate HD video streams? ahahhahah, wow by m85476585 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    That's compressed size. Uncompressed HD video is gigabits per second, and most displays take in uncompressed video.

  7. Re:Optical light? by TheRaven64 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Sure, there's dual-meaning words, but I'll bet most of them we inherited.

    Check? In written English, there is no ambiguity between a cheque and a check, in US English, there is, and you also use check to mean bill, which adds another layer of ambiguity (you use a check to pay the check after you check it, we use a cheque to pay the bill after we check it). There are a number of similar cases where homophones have different spellings in English but the same spelling in US English.

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  8. Re:Some concerns by PitaBred · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Do TOSLINK (SPDIF) cables fail regularly? Are they prohibitively expensive?

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