Intel's 50Gbps Light Peak Successor 122
Barence writes "Intel has unveiled yet another high-speed optical interface – before its long-awaited Light Peak connector has even reached the market. The Light Peak optical interconnect can transfer data at 10Gbps in both directions, and is touted as an all-in-one replacement for USB, DisplayPort, and HDMI. The new interface uses an indium phosphide hybrid laser inside the controller chip — a process that Intel calls silicon photonics — rather than using a separate optical module, as with Light Peak. And by encoding data at 12.5Gbits/sec across four laser beams of differing wavelengths, the connector yields a total bandwidth of 50Gbps, five times that offered by Light Peak. 'This is not a technology that's ten years away, but maybe three to five years,' Intel fellow Mario Paniccia announced. 'Light Peak, as we've stated, will launch next year.'" HotHardware quotes Intel in more detail on the difference between the two programs: "This research is separate from Intel's Light Peak technology... Light Peak is an effort to bring a multi-protocol 10Gbps optical connection to Intel client platforms for nearer-term applications. Silicon Photonics research aims to use silicon integration to bring dramatic cost reductions, reach tera-scale data rates, and bring optical communications to an even broader set of high-volume applications."
Re:Why optical? (Score:3, Insightful)
Just run parallel wires instead of serializing everything and you have all the throughput anyone could possibly use.
Why would you want the link to be slower? Hint: There's a reason everything is serial now rather than parallel.
Delicious DRM. (Score:3, Insightful)
I just have one question -- is the purpose of all this crap to make a device that only few manufacturers can produce, then make sure that only DRM'ed to Hell version is available on the market?
HDMI DRM is for all practical purpose defeated (YA, RLY) by the use of mass-produced $100-$300 HDCP strippers in homemade DVRs -- now our beloved content providers want hardware companies to build something else, easier to keep out of consumers' hands?
It's all part of the Connector Conspiracy (Score:3, Insightful)
It's all part of the Connector Conspiracy.
I must have $500 tied up now in 40/80 pin IDE cables, SATA cables, 8-Bit Apple SCSI, four or five other flavors of SCSI interconnects-- mini- sub-mini, regular and LVDS, VGA cables, HDMI cables, USB type A, B, and Mini. Let's not forget the big bag of "RCA Phono" cables, to and from eighth-inch mono and stereo plugs. Then all those offbeat motherboard to PCI-slot Parallel port flat cables. ANd parallel-port printer cables, and who could forget serial cables, DB9, DB25, gender-changers, and breakout boxes. And the various internal flat- SCSI cables and connectors. And the various Vidio connectors on iMacs-- at least four varieties there. Somehow, no matter how many bulging cardboard boxes of cables and adaptors I have, each month I have to make a new trip to BEstBuy to purchase some overpriced new cable. I thought things would plateau for a while with the cheap SATA cables, but noooooo, we better start saving up for a whole new series of optical interconnects.
Re:Why optical? (Score:3, Insightful)
I also remember reading somewhere that it's easier to achieve high speed over a serial interface because once you start dealing with very high speeds the timing differences of when a signal arrives at the destination become a big factor.
In a super simple, flawed I'm sure, example, assume you have an 8-bit interface (and ignore other lines required). When you send a byte down the line, you have each bit traveling down it's own data line. When they reach the other end, you have to wait until you have all eight before you can reconstruct the original byte and hand it off.
To human perception, those 8 bits will arrive simultaneously, but in computer-time (bullet-time?) it can seem like ages waiting for all 8 slots to fill, and will probably become more and more out of sync as time goes by, forcing all 8 lanes to shutdown periodically (maybe one of the data lines has a kink, flaw, or is simply slightly longer than the others).
Right or wrong, that's my understanding of it ;)