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Intel Shows Off First Light Peak Laptop
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."
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?
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 second little dot was a floating-point error.
As opposed to... mechanical light?
There's my new patented method for data transfer. Measuring the impact of photons on a force transducer.
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.
-I only code in BASIC.-
First, how much would it cost to produce a cable. And, second, how fragile would these cables be? Can you fold them up for storage or transport?
Are they practical?
I wonder how resilient the cables are to, say, me stepping on one. Or even better, accidentally sliding the back of my couch into my desk and pancaking it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qH_tCxmug6E
The white USB plug in the demonstration laptop looks rather Apple-ish. Any rumours here?
i remember when Firewire got spanked by USB. Sure it was faster but no one cared if their ipod took an extra 10 minutes to sync the first time. not enough to pay the premium at least.
same here. printers are wifi these days. i haven't had a printer for years but will probably buy a wifi one soon just to print coupons from my iphone coupons.com app.
keyboards and mice can be had in bluetooth
since wifi is faster than the internet there is no reason to use this as a network cable
and how is it better than today's hdmi cables?
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.
Great news for Lightfleet Corporation. They are now officially completely obsolete.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
In regards to Light Peak replacing both USB and FireWire: Anyone knows if LP uses a hub-controlled topology like USB or P2P-ish like firewire? Even 100GB/s throughput won't do much good if we have a huge bottleneck in the hub. I've tried to find out but couldn't find anything in regards to this.
Integrating a HBA/HCA onto a laptop? What's new?
That is seeing things transmitted from far away!
Amazing!
Deleted
For a desktop, I don't care about this. For my laptop. Especially for my Mac laptop, I want this because it's the closest Steve will get to doing a 'dock' for a Mac Laptop again. (I owned a Powerbook Duo 210/2100, so don't feel the need to remind me about them).
For now when I put my Mac laptop on the stand on my desk, I plug in 6 cables: power, network, display, Firewire, and two USB (one is for the KVM, so that can't go into a hub, and the KVM is only 12Mbit, so the other cable can't go into it for reasonable speed).
With Light Peak, I could do two cables: Power and Light Peak.
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Power? FireWire and USB give power also E-net can give power does this?
The British refer to 'the a big stick with fire burning at one end' as a 'burning torch' or sometimes simply as torch..
You are welcome.
I'd be curious to see how many people are old enough to actually get this one.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
It's nice they've developed a way to data on plastic discs, but it does the average user no good as long as we're using magnetic drums and punch cards. I guess these so called 'floppy' disks are aimed at the high end workstation market, then?
(end sarcasm)
And while we're at it: if the Americans call the "bonnet" of a car the "hood", what do they call a flap of fabric that goes over your head? (I kid, I kid)
Syphilis.
Well...are you certain they didn't use a "big stick with fire burning at one end"?
One that hath name thou can not otter
It isn't really all that old, to be fair.
Oblivion Awaits
we are on /. i'd hope most people here got it old or young..
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
Something to remember as you look at this, the LightPeak connection isn't just a connector onto itself, it's also designed to handle all other connector types (eSATA, USB, Firewire, DVI, etc). It's designed to be the one port you plug into your laptop while at the other end a dozen different devices are connected to it, all using different protocols.
DEMETRIUS: Villain, what hast thou done?
AARON: Villain, I have done thy mother.
Shakespeare invents 'your mom'
The plan is to include a copper wire along with the optical wire for powering devices.
It is sorta mentioned here: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-346181.html
You quoted it yourself yet somehow managed to miss the almost part?
I'd assume they'd call it a "torch" since the reason they use the word "torch" for what we call a "flashlight" is because it's a torch, just one powered by electricity instead of fire. Much like an electric oven in just an oven powered by electricity instead of fire.
A better question is "why did Americans decide it should be called a 'flashlight' instead of an 'electric torch'"?
Because 1) It emits light, and 2) it flashes! Er, wait a minute... how about because it was the device of choice for use by nocturnal flashers, unlike torches, lanterns, and candles which had the unfortunate side effect of causing serious burns to precisely that area of the anatomy that the flasher most wanted to illuminate?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
16 years ago. Back then Apple was selling Quadras for $5000 and office managers were buying Windows 3.1 for Workgroups. The FDIV bug was discovered months before the Linux kernel 1.0 was released, and people still regularly used something called "Grolier's Encyclopedia" on CD-ROM to watch 320x240 15fps movies of the Apollo launch. Phil Hartman (God rest his soul) was selling Phillips CD-i players, A kid in my neighborhood had just bought a JVC X'EYE, and Conan was still writing for Simpsons.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
The word "flashlight" was actually a derogatory term. The carbon-zinc batteries developed insulating bubbles under high load, and the light flickered and flashed. I'm sure most readers here have experienced this -- imagine how bad it was when the technology was new and barely understood.
That said, I have to agree: torches are what the mob from the village carries when they come to break down the door of your lab.
And their only reason for making it is so THEY can specify the required DRM compliance for high-bandwidth devices. It was the foremost issue during development. It's the only reason they've re-branded and protocol-ized existing technology. HDCP 3.0 anyone?
I just tend to remember that a lot better by reading the Quake readme.txt, and knowing that the game used floating point stuff. I had no idea what that was. (keep in mind my natural language isn't english)
Oblivion Awaits
Why a new proprietary optical transport when there are already standards-based transports that do the job just fine?
Or is this just a cheap, short-range, optical ethernet transceiver with a new connector, cabling system, and optics-integrated interface chip?
Two fibers would be consistent with using integrated LEDs for transmitters rather than separate lasers and/or using two frequencies to go bi-directional on one fiber. For short range you don't need coherent light or single-mode fiber.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Ahahaha, mod up!
life is a tragedy to those who feel, and a comedy to those who think
The very highest quality 1080p bluray rips have a bitrate of about 18Mbit. Meaning as long as you can handle 2MB/s sequential read speed, you are fine. Double this to 4MB/s for 2 streams. How is 4MB/s supposed to be impressive? Even the worst, cheapest USB flash sticks are capable of over 10MB/s. If Light Peak is supposedly capable of 10Gbit both ways, why on earth is it demoed with this?!
1 trillion bits /sec, 1Tbps? Not so fast. At this point, optic fibers can carry multiple wavelengths, each carrying up to 100Gbits/sec. Mind you, 100Gbits are pretty recent, with implementations coming up from the major companies, like alcatel-lucent (plz correct me if there's already a commercial product). A more sane number is 40Gbits, 10Gbits or even 2.5Gbits. To multiplex and demultiplex multiple lambdas in a fiber you need expensive optical de/multiplexers, an amount of pairs of transponders equal to the number of your lambdas and possibly amplifiers/regenerators. Although it should be easier if we are talking about fibers a few meters long, the electronics and the optical components to handle these rates are neither easy nor cheap.
It would sound more reasonable to expect to have a single connection maxing out at 10Gbps, preferably a 10Gbit ethernet connection.
...but I can buy an actual 10Gb copper adapter for a machine I have now. Granted that they've come up with some spiffy ways of using fiber in a consumer cable (as opposed to safely ensconcing it in conduit) and a 10Gb copper NIC is prohibitively expensive but that said it's not unreasonable to believe that the price of copper 10Gb NICs will drop before this thing is available in consumer products and although I get that this is essentially a point-to-point connection to replace things like USB. Yet Ethernet still seems - at this point anyway - as viable a choice as some new thing...which we will have to use in addition to Ethernet.
And a 60MHz Pentium was fast. I remember wondering what people would possibly do that required a Pentium, when a 66MHz 486 was already really fast. Then Windows 95 came out.
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From http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventions/flashlight.htm
Note that in most other languages, it's called a varation of "lamp" or "lantern".
Can this tie in to ATI and NVIDIA cards?
If locked to Intel video this will die fast.
But low latency is just as important. Why is it always the bandwidth which is advertised in big numbers and not the latency?
It seems we already have a standard for 10 GBit/s over short lengths of fiber: 10GBASE-SR
Did you mount a military-grade, variable-focus MASER on an unlicensed artificial intelligence?
Congratulations, you have been granted the Bogon of the Day Award. You have stated plainly counter-factual claims, which could have been easily verified if you had spent only a mere few seconds of your life checking in with the Google, prior to posting. Furthermore, the fact that you were subsequently up-modded to "Informative" means that you stated your claims in a sufficiently compelling manner as to fool the hard working Slashdot moderators.
Others have or will point out the errors in your claims, or you could consult the Google. I merely present this award, and once again offer congratulations. It's a special thing, to construct the most idiotic post on Slashdot, in a given day.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.