Wayne Morellini
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Out of the blue (pardon the pun) Intel has renamed it's Light Peak optical interface port, Thunderbolt, and released it on the new Apple Macbook Pro's.
The pros are fast and nicely featured. The interface now goes into a display port type connector with displayport, known for being able to send and receive a post HD video feed. More details are below. But despite the interface looking a bit anemic at the moment, in reference to the possibility of using it for 8K monitoring or uncompressed output to recoding deck, I thought this would be an excellent low cost port to have on the Scarlet, even though it is Apple only for now and maybe even changed in coming years. The combination with displayport may lead it to be the display interface of choice for computers and even consumer electronics. The interpolarity of the port also gives new options in using the camera with other devices. The only other real low cost competitors are USB3 (less datarate) and Sata standards (simpler and nearly as much datarate, but no interpolarity with other devices).
Analysis
The upside of Lightpeak is that it was going to be up to 100Gb/s and low overhead (meaning not so much of that 100GB/s was going to be taken up by the administrative system running it compared to USB) and could run many of the present interfaces (HDMI, Displayport, USB, networking, Sata, PCI express etc over it) on this lightweight protocol (two things I was advocating for the USB3 standard) and very sensibly would include copper power lines alongside the optical fibers. Intel even showed off an optical version of USB3.0 when they announced that.
Instead, they have dropped the optical (to reintroduce it later) and have two bidirectional 10Gb/s "copper" cables combining PCI-express and displayport in a displayport type plug on Apple computers for the next year. They had had cost concerns producing the optical transceivers, and the lack of available bandwidth/PCI-E lines on PC chip-sets. It was then suggested that the interface would drop back to 40Gb/s, a big disappointment, but now two 10Gb/s. They also are planning on including the optical transceivers inside the newer longer reach optical cables this year (does that mean they will also be 10gb/s?). This might appear more expensive, but I guess it is cheaper then making a reliable robust high performance optical cable end that can plug into a port (linking two high performance optical cables can be expensive) and still support higher than 10gb/s interface to optical. With existing technology such cables would be expensive, but I expect Intel will bring out very low cost versions based on their low cost laser on silicon tech, until they find a solution or move to laser off the chipset/processor.
A bit of a mess, but a nice mess anyway.
Thanks
The pros are fast and nicely featured. The interface now goes into a display port type connector with displayport, known for being able to send and receive a post HD video feed. More details are below. But despite the interface looking a bit anemic at the moment, in reference to the possibility of using it for 8K monitoring or uncompressed output to recoding deck, I thought this would be an excellent low cost port to have on the Scarlet, even though it is Apple only for now and maybe even changed in coming years. The combination with displayport may lead it to be the display interface of choice for computers and even consumer electronics. The interpolarity of the port also gives new options in using the camera with other devices. The only other real low cost competitors are USB3 (less datarate) and Sata standards (simpler and nearly as much datarate, but no interpolarity with other devices).
Analysis
The upside of Lightpeak is that it was going to be up to 100Gb/s and low overhead (meaning not so much of that 100GB/s was going to be taken up by the administrative system running it compared to USB) and could run many of the present interfaces (HDMI, Displayport, USB, networking, Sata, PCI express etc over it) on this lightweight protocol (two things I was advocating for the USB3 standard) and very sensibly would include copper power lines alongside the optical fibers. Intel even showed off an optical version of USB3.0 when they announced that.
Instead, they have dropped the optical (to reintroduce it later) and have two bidirectional 10Gb/s "copper" cables combining PCI-express and displayport in a displayport type plug on Apple computers for the next year. They had had cost concerns producing the optical transceivers, and the lack of available bandwidth/PCI-E lines on PC chip-sets. It was then suggested that the interface would drop back to 40Gb/s, a big disappointment, but now two 10Gb/s. They also are planning on including the optical transceivers inside the newer longer reach optical cables this year (does that mean they will also be 10gb/s?). This might appear more expensive, but I guess it is cheaper then making a reliable robust high performance optical cable end that can plug into a port (linking two high performance optical cables can be expensive) and still support higher than 10gb/s interface to optical. With existing technology such cables would be expensive, but I expect Intel will bring out very low cost versions based on their low cost laser on silicon tech, until they find a solution or move to laser off the chipset/processor.
A bit of a mess, but a nice mess anyway.
Thanks
