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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Intel's Light Peak

The rumor is that these will go in the 2010 Fall Mac Pros or the 2011 mobile units, should be interesting if the rumors are true...
 
Nice find...thanks for posting Mark!

Dave
 
if the wiring all becomes optical inside a computer, can we move on from binary to decimal or better yet hexadecimal by differenciating (?) light intensity instead of polarity.. ??

so we are not talking about 100 gigaBIT anymore but something like 100 gigaXHIT

=)
 
Expanding beyond binary signaling is possible with electronic circuits as well and is done from time to time. In fact, that is essentially the common practice used to ramp bus speeds for CPUs, RAM, etc.. Intel's "quad data rate" memory bus technique introduced a few years ago, didn't just sample the on and off signal, but the rise and fall as well as the vector or whether it was rising or falling.

This can be, and is occasionally, done with optical transmissions, but becomes increasingly difficult as distances increase and cycle rates on lasers increase.

I wrote a thesis paper in college called, "Nice Tits! A primer on trinary computing". A couple professors didn't find it particularly humorous though. I'm actually being 100% serious, this is true. But the paper itself was not exactly serious.

This is really cool though, Intel has effectively miniaturized 10G single mode fiber systems and targeted them for consumer applications. Just imagine a dozen of those fibers in a single cable that is half the diameter of a CAT-5 cable. 3Gbps USB-3 can suck it. I want my 10Gbps Light Peak.
 
Just wait until the day of a working totally optical "transistor" equivalent. Then it's goodbye electronics and hello optronics with massive-massive data throughput.
 
Hmmm... Optical circuits are cool (pun intended). Far less resistance to photons traveling on etched guides than pushing electrons through a conductor. So theoretically they could consume far less power and generate almost no heat by comparison. There was a post here the other day about an optical processor being demonstrated. The author of the article that was linked F'd up though by calling it a quantum computer. Whatever.
 
I don't know if I can trust a guy who looks like Bush(just kidding) but... this sounds awesome!:leaving:
 
I am ridiculously excited about this, especially after having done an initial time machine backup of a MBP. (12~ hours over GigE) :(
 
Fiber optics are proven to be great at transmitting lots of data and quick, which is becoming nessesary in the modern age of data overload and NOW NOW NOW. Couple that with some copper to power devices from the main computer, and you have a simple cable unified multipurpose system. No firewire for the camera, optical for the stereo, usb for peripherials, and a different cable for the display.

In the future an iMac or MBP will have power and Light Peak for everything else. Your iPod, Keyboard, mouse, external HD, monitor, stereo, camera... everything with one cable system. brilliant.

One cable to rule them all. Its so simple, it just works.

As long as its not licensed to death like Firewire.

Vive la Light Peak!
 
10 Gigabits/s.... Cute, but no cigar. 3 of these ports on separate busses in a laptop in 2011 would actually solve some real world issues we have today. Will they solve our issues in 2011? Knowing Apple they'd probably try to use just one port... Today we have a total of right below 11Gbps of theoretical max bandwidth (not including the Displayport) in the 17" Macbook Pro (2xSATA, 1x Expresscard, 1x FW800, 1x Gigabit Ethernet, 1x USB controller) and that is very, very, very far from adequate to get my work done in a timely manner.

So cute, and definitely a welcome improvement, but also a very far cry from competing with the speed and power efficiency of a film changing bag.... ;-)
 
Didn't RED originally have a concept for uncompressed over fibre optic? Looks like the rest of the world is slowly catching up with them :thumbsup:
 
Cüneyt Kaya said:
yeah, but back then you needed a truck for capturing the data
Click to expand...

So? I don't see much of a difference between a laptop and a Codex Digtal unit (http://www.codexdigital.com/products/recorder.php). You're still tied down via a cable. Not to mention they did make a portable Codex Digital unit that was lighter. And are there even Harddrives that can handle that kind of incoming data? You're not only looking at the fiber optic cable, but the harddrive speed. Codex has to use 4 drives to record a single 4k camera.
 
Fredrik Callinggard said:
And now it's just a van :emote_happyhappy:
Click to expand...

Soon it will be in the size of a carry on baggage...

The problem with the Codex style (cinedeck, kipro etc.) systems is that they do just that... recording images... ok and playback...

We need more open systems to be able to take more diverse roles...

To have slots that could take cards like Rocket, Kona etc.. run software that we like Scratch. Iridas, 3cp etc... be able to work with all available cameras...

Be so portable that can follow us were ever we go... be easily upgradeable...

This is what I'm designing...

When I will finish the patent I will be able to tell more...
 
I'm glad that Apple still remembers that it used to have Computer in its name.

I'm glad that Apple still remembers that it used to have Computer in its name.

(…) not only is Apple complicit in the development of Light Peak, but the company actually brought the concept to Intel and asked them to create it. More to the point, the new standard will play a hugely important role in upcoming products from Cupertino.
Click to expand...
http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/26/exclusive-apple-dictated-light-peak-creation-to-intel-could-be/
 
It just makes so much sense. In the demo video, they show a two-channel Light Peak interface that is no larger than a USB header. Lots of glass fibers can be embedded into a a single cable. I see no reason why future notebooks couldn't have two or three Light Peak ports, each with 4, 6 maybe 10 channels for each of them. It would be easy to also add copper for 5V DC power.
 
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