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."

Comments

Server technology?

[Happy Nuclear Death]

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?

Re:Server technology?

[Microlith]

It's aimed at reducing the number of different cables on your desktop, I believe.

The initial demo showed an LCD panel, HDD, and at least one other thing running off a single Light Peak chain. Effectively, they want it to replace USB (for data connections), Firewire, eSATA, SATA, SCSI, SAS, DVI, DisplayPort, probably every audio connection you have, Ethernet, and likely more.

Re:Server technology?

[travisb828]

Someone will develop something that will take advantage of that ridiculous speed, and then someone will develop something that can take advantage of data being transfered at ludicrous speed. Then one day, in the future, computers will go to plaid.

Re:Server technology?

[V!NCENT]

"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!"
???

Re:Server technology?

[vux984]

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.

Re:Server technology?

[Shatrat]

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

Horrible USB Connector

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Optical light?

[mweather]

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

Re:Optical light?

[TheRaven64]

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.