Or use an adapter. This works exceptionally well for headphones. At home, use the large 1/4" plug, and for mobile use, there's the smaller 1/8" plug.
This technology is arriving with zero legacy connectors. If headphones just came out today, would there be any logical reason to have two different connectors? Why should it be any different with Light Peak?
This is what happens when engineers don't think ahead:
And that doesn't even include the USB-3 variations:
Isn't Apple going wireless for as much as possible? Keyboard, mouse, printer are all wireless now. Wouldn't wireless be a better goal than another port?
Isn't Apple going wireless for as much as possible? Keyboard, mouse, printer are all wireless now. Wouldn't wireless be a better goal than another port?
Wireless is tricky, as it's susceptible to interference. I experience random signal drops daily on my Airport. Sure, it's temporary, but still, it's annoying, especially when I'm downloading a large software update, or transferring lots of files to or from my network drive.
Wireless is fine for low-bandwidth situations like mouse, keyboard and printer connections, but as the bandwidth requirement increases, it becomes increasingly problematic.
While wireless is certainly convenient and versatile?being able to connect without having cables strewn all over the place?there is a trade-off in terms of reliability.
Of course, technology is continually evolving, so perhaps wireless protocols will improve to mitigate problems associated with signal loss/interference at higher bandwidths. Here's hoping!
Will we be seeing Lightpeak on iPhone and iPad and answer everyone who gripes about not having enough connectivity? Or is the silicon behind it still too immature and bulky? I would love to see the dock connector on the iPhone disappear. I would love to see a universal connector that has 10 Gbps transfer speeds. Alas probably a pipe dream as Lightpeak is probably voraciously power hungry. And its connector will probably be the size of an old RS232C connector.
Not sure why it would be so expensive?a lot of Firewire devices had an additional port, which allowed daisy-chaining, and they weren't prohibitively expensive. Of course things are expensive in the development stages, but as the protocol becomes standardized, the actual interface hardware shouldn't cost that much.
It all depends upon just how successful Intel will be in lowering the cost of optical transceivers. Currently they are very expensive if you are talking data center quality cabling. Of course this isn't data center hardware but the fact remains it is new and initially anyways will be expensive.
Quote:
Yes. It would be phenomenally stupid for Apple to abruptly drop every port in 2011 in favour of Lightpeak. I was thinking more like 5-10 years down the road. USB has been pretty much the standard I/O port for the last 10 years. I was just wondering out loud if Lightpeak might possibly become the new standard I/O port. If it becomes the new standard (with incremental speed improvements over time), it would be pretty cool if all our peripherals could be daisy-chained to a single port.
In my work we still use RS232 ports extensively. USB likewise will be around for a very long time, we could be talking another 20 years of use. In any event the more I think about it the more I think that the intention is not to replace USB for low speed devices. Hopefully Intel and Apple will clear up their view on these issues early next year.
Quote:
I think we're reaching the feasible limit for pixel resolution on displays. Even allowing for the possibility of 4K displays in the next five years, presumably LightPeak will be up to 100 GB/s by then (if LightPeak will progress at a similar rate to USB)
Nope, there is a good possibility that we will see a doubling in linear resolution in the near future
Quote:
Holy crap! I sincerely hope that the advertised numbers are not adding input and output. That would be shamefully dishonest! Let's say for example, the 10 Gbps (btw. I'm realizing I was wrong by saying "GB/s"?not the same as Gbps. My bad! ) was really 5 Gbps in + 5 Gbps out. Well, as a consumer, I'll be looking at the 10 Gbps, and think, oh wow, that means I could copy a 1 TB file in only 15 minutes! But, in reality it would take a half hour. That is misleading in my book. If it is some kind of additive thing, then they better include that in their literature and advertising!
That was a thought that came in a moment of madness. However it is not dishonest as the aggregate bandwidth is 10Gbps. Every thing seems to indicate 10 in and 10 out.
Quote:
I was actually just making a snarky remark about some of the comments I read from people who seem to care more about stats and numbers than they do about actual user experience. I like to refer to this as 21st century "geek machismo". Benchmarks are meaningless to "regular" guy like me. And I'm not going to notice the difference between a 2.6 GHz processor and a 2.8 GHz processor.
Maybe, maybe not. I know on my 3G iPhone I could easily notice the speed difference between it and the Touch of the time.
As to benchmarks there are good and bad and everyone has their favorites. Apple and Steveo where adept at manipulating the customer base with their G5 bench marks carefully selecting what they offered up tot he public. The would often concentrate on floating point or Alt-Vec when for the majority of users the thing that makes a PC snappy is strong integer performance and a good GPU. Back then G5 sucked at integer and the GPU where underwhelming.
The thing was back then I was a Linux user on i86, but was longing for Apple to come clean. In any event it was almost laughable to watch people lap up Steve benchmarks. Then the transition to i86 on the Mac came. Almost immediately everybody noticed that their machines where for the most part much faster. I'm not sure why but little mention of this was made in the Apple press, probably because they fell for the nonsense too.
The point is when dealing with marketing benchmarks you really need to take the information with a grain of salt.
Quote:
In terms of displayport vs LightPeak, I'm certainly not advocating that DisplayPort be dropped next year in favour of LightPeak. As in my point above about dropping ports, it would be phenomenally stupid of Apple to do something that drastic, especially as DisplayPort has not yet worn out its welcome. It's relatively new and has still got some years left. I'm talking again about 5-10 years in the future.
Maybe after 5 years or so. Even then just loo at how old the AV equipment is in your average business or college.
Quote:
Again, it would be stupid for Apple to switch to LightPeak exclusively next year, for the very reason you say?everyone would have to carry around adapters for their legacy peripherals. But, if Apple is smart, and adopts an evolutionary strategy, then eventually, as more and more peripherals adopt LightPeak, we could see a future where everything could connect to a single LightPeak port on a MacBook.
Well like I said I work with RS232 devices on a daily basis. As to USB it is actually a good low speed port and I see no reason for it to go away anytime soon. Mice and keyboards for example will never have a need to high data rates.
Quote:
Yeah. I agree that it's not wise to use Wikipedia as an authoritative source. My standard practice is to use it as a starting point, and then verify what's there against other sources.
Well I do wish that Wikipedia had a policy of some sort to label such sites as speculation pending release of detailed information. This is going from memory but some to the things in that article seemed to conflict with info Intel had detailed and then there seemed to be big jumps to conclusions that I'm not certain are valid.
If the article is in fact true and Lightpeak comes in early 2011 then we really don't need to worry to much longer about what the plan is.
Note that I don't travel much either so maybe I'm not skilled at selecting the right places to lay my head.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Futuristic
I wouldn't go so far as to say wireless sucks, but certainly physical connections are faster and more reliable.
I've been in hotels where my dial up of 10 years ago was faster than the WiFi connections they where serving up. The big chains seem to be the worst examples.
However on a good note at Treasure Island in Vegas I plugged into their system and had the fastest wired connection I've ever had anywhere. Even there though no Wifi.
Quote:
I use Airport all the time, because it means that I'm not "chained" to my desk. I can be anywhere in the house and have access to the internet and to my network drive. It's like magic!
Yes it can be great for that type of usage. Also remember you have control there, if it isn't right you can fix it in one way or another.
Quote:
But I do experience the occasional, inexplicable signal loss, which can be really annoying if happens in the middle of a chat, during a download, or during large file transfers over my network.
In your home that is surprising. That is not generally what frustrates me about Wifi, rather it is what I run into while traveling. Honestly I was hoping for 3G in Apples new AIRs, as cellular networking is often more reliable. and that is not saying much. A 3G AIR would have made for a better than iPad device.
If you start there, you can get to some Intel blogs about the tech.
I like the dock idea, but Apple hasn't had a dock in years. Would monitors be a good choice? Yes, I know DisplayPort is still fresh, but a LightPeak connector to handle video, audio, & USB would seem like a no-brainer. How about a MacPro with Light Peak? Apple could move a bunch of connectors off the back of the cabinet up to the monitor.
From Intel's site above: "Light Peak module with four fibers each capable of carrying 10Gb of data per second." And another: "It does run bi-directionally at 10 gigabits per second, simultaneously carrying multiple existing protocols such as Display Port and PCIe."
Maybe Apple intends to skip over USB 3.0? All those connectors really do look like a headache. I'm looking forward to where this goes, and I hope Apple is at the forefront of it.
If you start there, you can get to some Intel blogs about the tech.
The info is still thin to say the least. Further the blogs have questions but no answers. This is what causes all the speculation.
Quote:
I like the dock idea, but Apple hasn't had a dock in years. Would monitors be a good choice? Yes, I know DisplayPort is still fresh, but a LightPeak connector to handle video, audio, & USB would seem like a no-brainer. How about a MacPro with Light Peak? Apple could move a bunch of connectors off the back of the cabinet up to the monitor.
Maybe in the future. The problem is selling the idea when the transition to Display Port is only a couple of years old. The problem is really political more than anything.
Quote:
From Intel's site above: "Light Peak module with four fibers each capable of carrying 10Gb of data per second." And another: "It does run bi-directionally at 10 gigabits per second, simultaneously carrying multiple existing protocols such as Display Port and PCIe."
Nice isn't it?
The board mounted transceivers even have four fibers running out of them, that would lead to 40Gbps of bandwidths if the electronics can keep up. Oh an the electronics keeping up is a real concern as PCI-Express would barely handle the data rate. Interesting but they say they can do that over 100m. Also they say the connector will be one tenth the cost of datacom connectors but the problem is datacom connectors can go for $120 buck each.
You take all this information together and I think you have to realize that this is an entirely different class of port. That is one reason I don't see USB going anywhere soon.
Quote:
Maybe Apple intends to skip over USB 3.0? All those connectors really do look like a headache. I'm looking forward to where this goes, and I hope Apple is at the forefront of it.
- Jasen.
Those connectors will still be there. At least the USB connectors will be. Light peak just provides Apple with the ability to put those connectors where people will use them.
Will we be seeing Lightpeak on iPhone and iPad and answer everyone who gripes about not having enough connectivity? Or is the silicon behind it still too immature and bulky? I would love to see the dock connector on the iPhone disappear. I would love to see a universal connector that has 10 Gbps transfer speeds. Alas probably a pipe dream as Lightpeak is probably voraciously power hungry. And its connector will probably be the size of an old RS232C connector.
I believe your fantasy is more likely than your nightmare. The demo videos I've seen show a very small connector. I believe Light Peak is very low power, but I haven't seen "low power" as one of the selling points.
Imagine an iPhone with a Light Peak connector instead of the dock connector, able to do HDMI, DisplayPort, USB, FireWire, Ethernet, eSATA, whatever - all at the same time. You'd just need the proper driver in the iPhone and the proper conversion hardware on the other end.
It all depends upon just how successful Intel will be in lowering the cost of optical transceivers. Currently they are very expensive if you are talking data center quality cabling. Of course this isn't data center hardware but the fact remains it is new and initially anyways will be expensive.
There was a time when USB was new as well. Now the "U" might as well stand for "Ubiquitous".
Quote:
In my work we still use RS232 ports extensively. USB likewise will be around for a very long time, we could be talking another 20 years of use. In any event the more I think about it the more I think that the intention is not to replace USB for low speed devices. Hopefully Intel and Apple will clear up their view on these issues early next year.
I'm gonna choose to respectfully disagree here—mostly just for the fun of speculation.
First, in terms of your RS232 use. Yes, I'm sure there are others who use legacy interface technologies as well. Are you in a scientific/engineering/research field? I understand that RS232 is used mostly for data acquisition/monitoring/remote control/etc. And if you're using RS232 on a Mac, you're definitely using an adapter of some kind. But science and research are highly specialized fields, and utilize hardware/software that is probably not used very often by the average home or business user. I don't mean to marginalize what you're doing, but customers who need RS232 make up a pretty small percentage of Apple's customer base, and even the overall PC customer base. My point was simply that in 10 years, if LightPeak becomes the de facto interface standard, people with legacy USB and possibly even RS232 devices won't necessarily be left in the lurch.
Second, more and more low-bandwidth peripherals (mice, keyboards, printers) are going the Bluetooth or Wifi route, which makes sense, as it reduces cable clutter. I can imagine a time comes when Bluetooth/Wifi replaces USB as a low bandwidth peripheral interface, and LightPeak becomes the de facto high bandwidth standard (displays, servers, scanners, photo, video, music production).
Again, this won't be a sudden switch: back when USB was new, many peripherals came with at least a couple interfaces: USB and Serial. Now, you'd be hard-pressed to find a new printer with serial port or a new scanner with a SCSI port. Even now, we're seeing more printers with Wifi and/or Bluetooth capability as well as USB. I would not be surprised if, in the next 5-10 years, it will be difficult to find a new low-bandwidth peripheral with a USB port. I can't find my crystal ball, so I can't say for sure whether this will happen, so I'm left with pure speculation. Sigh.
Quote:
Nope, there is a good possibility that we will see a doubling in linear resolution in the near future
Oh, I don't doubt that the technology will get there—in fact, pixel pitch and size is here already in the form of EVFs in digital cameras and camcorders. But going from a 1 inch EVF up to a 50 inch home theatre system with the same pixel size and pitch, while technologically feasible, is currently prohibitively expensive. But I was making my point from the perspective of user experience rather than technological feasibility (I probably didn't make it clear in my original comment. Sigh). It would certainly be possible to cram 33 million pixels into a 27" or 30" display, but it would be overkill, because from a distance of 3-6 feet or more, our eyes would not be able to resolve individual pixels anyway.
We will see 8K projectors and giant screens within the next 10 years for sure, but I'm sure that today's DisplayPort doesn't even have the bandwidth to drive that. So, DisplayPort will have to be updated. But, I was simply thinking if LightPeak advances at the proper pace in the next 10 years, it will have the bandwidth to support not only an 8K projector, but a high-speed RAID system and other stuff as well, all daisy-chained together. And, using one protocol is cheaper than building ports (with the associated software and hardware required to support it) for different interfaces. A full 8K display would require nearly 30 Gbps of bandwidth—unsupportable by next year's reported 10 Gbps LightPeak protocol, but there's no reason that a 100 Gbps or higher LightPeak protocol could not handle that and then some, no?
Alas probably a pipe dream as Lightpeak is probably voraciously power hungry.
I might be wrong (and expect some science-geek here will correct me if I am), but I believe it takes less energy to push photons through a glass fiber than it does to push electrons through wire. That's why internet backbones are optical fiber rather than wire.
I might be wrong (and expect some science-geek here will correct me if I am), but I believe it takes less energy to push photons through a glass fiber than it does to push electrons through wire. That's why internet backbones are optical fiber rather than wire.
Maybe, but the main benefit is clear signal, to do many different things with the light wave form. Metal wire, signal gets messy. That's one reason power wires are not used for hispeed transfer, although people have tried.
Fuck this - release ONE version small enough for mobile devices and DO NOT BOTHER with a larger version. When are these people going to learn?
Oh, and make the internal connector the same as the external, instead of like the idiotic decision to make SATA and eSATA use slightly different, but ostensibly the same connecter. Just leave the locking tab off the internal connector but otherwise don't change the mating specs.
I might be wrong (and expect some science-geek here will correct me if I am), but I believe it takes less energy to push photons through a glass fiber than it does to push electrons through wire. That's why internet backbones are optical fiber rather than wire.
Fiber optic cables for connection have been around for years. I remember when I was in college back in the 80's that the talk was connecting cables were all going to be fiber optic. That was great for signal clarity but they were expensive, fragile and you needed an adapter at each terminal to convert to fiber, so they never caught on except in audio where audiophiles will pay whatever if it means better sound. The energy is in the conversion from electrons (digital) to photons (optical) and then back. Anytime you convert from one energy to another there is loss( and yes I know Newton's laws but I mean in practical application). I was merely speculating, but I have learned if something sounds too good to be true it usually is and that means a tradeoff especially in a brand new technology.
Comments
"A full-length Blu-Ray movie could transfer over Light Peak in less than 30 seconds ..."
.
Well, as the Son in the Film "Brainstorm" says
When Dad is telling him about the "device"
And how the boy could finish the 7th Grade in about 10 minutes
"Hook it up"
.
Or use an adapter. This works exceptionally well for headphones. At home, use the large 1/4" plug, and for mobile use, there's the smaller 1/8" plug.
This technology is arriving with zero legacy connectors. If headphones just came out today, would there be any logical reason to have two different connectors? Why should it be any different with Light Peak?
This is what happens when engineers don't think ahead:
And that doesn't even include the USB-3 variations:
"Universal" my ass.
Isn't Apple going wireless for as much as possible? Keyboard, mouse, printer are all wireless now. Wouldn't wireless be a better goal than another port?
Wireless is tricky, as it's susceptible to interference. I experience random signal drops daily on my Airport. Sure, it's temporary, but still, it's annoying, especially when I'm downloading a large software update, or transferring lots of files to or from my network drive.
Wireless is fine for low-bandwidth situations like mouse, keyboard and printer connections, but as the bandwidth requirement increases, it becomes increasingly problematic.
While wireless is certainly convenient and versatile?being able to connect without having cables strewn all over the place?there is a trade-off in terms of reliability.
Of course, technology is continually evolving, so perhaps wireless protocols will improve to mitigate problems associated with signal loss/interference at higher bandwidths. Here's hoping!
Brian
Not sure why it would be so expensive?a lot of Firewire devices had an additional port, which allowed daisy-chaining, and they weren't prohibitively expensive. Of course things are expensive in the development stages, but as the protocol becomes standardized, the actual interface hardware shouldn't cost that much.
It all depends upon just how successful Intel will be in lowering the cost of optical transceivers. Currently they are very expensive if you are talking data center quality cabling. Of course this isn't data center hardware but the fact remains it is new and initially anyways will be expensive.
Yes. It would be phenomenally stupid for Apple to abruptly drop every port in 2011 in favour of Lightpeak. I was thinking more like 5-10 years down the road. USB has been pretty much the standard I/O port for the last 10 years. I was just wondering out loud if Lightpeak might possibly become the new standard I/O port. If it becomes the new standard (with incremental speed improvements over time), it would be pretty cool if all our peripherals could be daisy-chained to a single port.
In my work we still use RS232 ports extensively. USB likewise will be around for a very long time, we could be talking another 20 years of use. In any event the more I think about it the more I think that the intention is not to replace USB for low speed devices. Hopefully Intel and Apple will clear up their view on these issues early next year.
I think we're reaching the feasible limit for pixel resolution on displays. Even allowing for the possibility of 4K displays in the next five years, presumably LightPeak will be up to 100 GB/s by then (if LightPeak will progress at a similar rate to USB)
Nope, there is a good possibility that we will see a doubling in linear resolution in the near future
Holy crap! I sincerely hope that the advertised numbers are not adding input and output. That would be shamefully dishonest! Let's say for example, the 10 Gbps (btw. I'm realizing I was wrong by saying "GB/s"?not the same as Gbps. My bad!
That was a thought that came in a moment of madness. However it is not dishonest as the aggregate bandwidth is 10Gbps. Every thing seems to indicate 10 in and 10 out.
I was actually just making a snarky remark about some of the comments I read from people who seem to care more about stats and numbers than they do about actual user experience. I like to refer to this as 21st century "geek machismo". Benchmarks are meaningless to "regular" guy like me. And I'm not going to notice the difference between a 2.6 GHz processor and a 2.8 GHz processor.
Maybe, maybe not. I know on my 3G iPhone I could easily notice the speed difference between it and the Touch of the time.
As to benchmarks there are good and bad and everyone has their favorites. Apple and Steveo where adept at manipulating the customer base with their G5 bench marks carefully selecting what they offered up tot he public. The would often concentrate on floating point or Alt-Vec when for the majority of users the thing that makes a PC snappy is strong integer performance and a good GPU. Back then G5 sucked at integer and the GPU where underwhelming.
The thing was back then I was a Linux user on i86, but was longing for Apple to come clean. In any event it was almost laughable to watch people lap up Steve benchmarks. Then the transition to i86 on the Mac came. Almost immediately everybody noticed that their machines where for the most part much faster. I'm not sure why but little mention of this was made in the Apple press, probably because they fell for the nonsense too.
The point is when dealing with marketing benchmarks you really need to take the information with a grain of salt.
In terms of displayport vs LightPeak, I'm certainly not advocating that DisplayPort be dropped next year in favour of LightPeak. As in my point above about dropping ports, it would be phenomenally stupid of Apple to do something that drastic, especially as DisplayPort has not yet worn out its welcome. It's relatively new and has still got some years left. I'm talking again about 5-10 years in the future.
Maybe after 5 years or so. Even then just loo at how old the AV equipment is in your average business or college.
Again, it would be stupid for Apple to switch to LightPeak exclusively next year, for the very reason you say?everyone would have to carry around adapters for their legacy peripherals. But, if Apple is smart, and adopts an evolutionary strategy, then eventually, as more and more peripherals adopt LightPeak, we could see a future where everything could connect to a single LightPeak port on a MacBook.
Well like I said I work with RS232 devices on a daily basis. As to USB it is actually a good low speed port and I see no reason for it to go away anytime soon. Mice and keyboards for example will never have a need to high data rates.
Yeah. I agree that it's not wise to use Wikipedia as an authoritative source. My standard practice is to use it as a starting point, and then verify what's there against other sources.
Well I do wish that Wikipedia had a policy of some sort to label such sites as speculation pending release of detailed information. This is going from memory but some to the things in that article seemed to conflict with info Intel had detailed and then there seemed to be big jumps to conclusions that I'm not certain are valid.
If the article is in fact true and Lightpeak comes in early 2011 then we really don't need to worry to much longer about what the plan is.
I wouldn't go so far as to say wireless sucks, but certainly physical connections are faster and more reliable.
I've been in hotels where my dial up of 10 years ago was faster than the WiFi connections they where serving up. The big chains seem to be the worst examples.
However on a good note at Treasure Island in Vegas I plugged into their system and had the fastest wired connection I've ever had anywhere. Even there though no Wifi.
I use Airport all the time, because it means that I'm not "chained" to my desk. I can be anywhere in the house and have access to the internet and to my network drive. It's like magic!
Yes it can be great for that type of usage. Also remember you have control there, if it isn't right you can fix it in one way or another.
But I do experience the occasional, inexplicable signal loss, which can be really annoying if happens in the middle of a chat, during a download, or during large file transfers over my network.
In your home that is surprising. That is not generally what frustrates me about Wifi, rather it is what I run into while traveling. Honestly I was hoping for 3G in Apples new AIRs, as cellular networking is often more reliable. and that is not saying much. A 3G AIR would have made for a better than iPad device.
If you start there, you can get to some Intel blogs about the tech.
I like the dock idea, but Apple hasn't had a dock in years. Would monitors be a good choice? Yes, I know DisplayPort is still fresh, but a LightPeak connector to handle video, audio, & USB would seem like a no-brainer. How about a MacPro with Light Peak? Apple could move a bunch of connectors off the back of the cabinet up to the monitor.
From Intel's site above: "Light Peak module with four fibers each capable of carrying 10Gb of data per second." And another: "It does run bi-directionally at 10 gigabits per second, simultaneously carrying multiple existing protocols such as Display Port and PCIe."
Maybe Apple intends to skip over USB 3.0? All those connectors really do look like a headache. I'm looking forward to where this goes, and I hope Apple is at the forefront of it.
- Jasen.
Well, I'm really hoping we see LightPeak soon. Here's a link to Intel's site about it: http://techresearch.intel.com/Projec...ls.aspx?Id=143
If you start there, you can get to some Intel blogs about the tech.
The info is still thin to say the least. Further the blogs have questions but no answers. This is what causes all the speculation.
I like the dock idea, but Apple hasn't had a dock in years. Would monitors be a good choice? Yes, I know DisplayPort is still fresh, but a LightPeak connector to handle video, audio, & USB would seem like a no-brainer. How about a MacPro with Light Peak? Apple could move a bunch of connectors off the back of the cabinet up to the monitor.
Maybe in the future. The problem is selling the idea when the transition to Display Port is only a couple of years old. The problem is really political more than anything.
From Intel's site above: "Light Peak module with four fibers each capable of carrying 10Gb of data per second." And another: "It does run bi-directionally at 10 gigabits per second, simultaneously carrying multiple existing protocols such as Display Port and PCIe."
Nice isn't it?
The board mounted transceivers even have four fibers running out of them, that would lead to 40Gbps of bandwidths if the electronics can keep up. Oh an the electronics keeping up is a real concern as PCI-Express would barely handle the data rate. Interesting but they say they can do that over 100m. Also they say the connector will be one tenth the cost of datacom connectors but the problem is datacom connectors can go for $120 buck each.
You take all this information together and I think you have to realize that this is an entirely different class of port. That is one reason I don't see USB going anywhere soon.
Maybe Apple intends to skip over USB 3.0? All those connectors really do look like a headache. I'm looking forward to where this goes, and I hope Apple is at the forefront of it.
- Jasen.
Those connectors will still be there. At least the USB connectors will be. Light peak just provides Apple with the ability to put those connectors where people will use them.
Will we be seeing Lightpeak on iPhone and iPad and answer everyone who gripes about not having enough connectivity? Or is the silicon behind it still too immature and bulky? I would love to see the dock connector on the iPhone disappear. I would love to see a universal connector that has 10 Gbps transfer speeds. Alas probably a pipe dream as Lightpeak is probably voraciously power hungry. And its connector will probably be the size of an old RS232C connector.
I believe your fantasy is more likely than your nightmare. The demo videos I've seen show a very small connector. I believe Light Peak is very low power, but I haven't seen "low power" as one of the selling points.
Imagine an iPhone with a Light Peak connector instead of the dock connector, able to do HDMI, DisplayPort, USB, FireWire, Ethernet, eSATA, whatever - all at the same time. You'd just need the proper driver in the iPhone and the proper conversion hardware on the other end.
- Jasen.
It all depends upon just how successful Intel will be in lowering the cost of optical transceivers. Currently they are very expensive if you are talking data center quality cabling. Of course this isn't data center hardware but the fact remains it is new and initially anyways will be expensive.
There was a time when USB was new as well. Now the "U" might as well stand for "Ubiquitous".
In my work we still use RS232 ports extensively. USB likewise will be around for a very long time, we could be talking another 20 years of use. In any event the more I think about it the more I think that the intention is not to replace USB for low speed devices. Hopefully Intel and Apple will clear up their view on these issues early next year.
I'm gonna choose to respectfully disagree here—mostly just for the fun of speculation.
First, in terms of your RS232 use. Yes, I'm sure there are others who use legacy interface technologies as well. Are you in a scientific/engineering/research field? I understand that RS232 is used mostly for data acquisition/monitoring/remote control/etc. And if you're using RS232 on a Mac, you're definitely using an adapter of some kind. But science and research are highly specialized fields, and utilize hardware/software that is probably not used very often by the average home or business user. I don't mean to marginalize what you're doing, but customers who need RS232 make up a pretty small percentage of Apple's customer base, and even the overall PC customer base. My point was simply that in 10 years, if LightPeak becomes the de facto interface standard, people with legacy USB and possibly even RS232 devices won't necessarily be left in the lurch.
Second, more and more low-bandwidth peripherals (mice, keyboards, printers) are going the Bluetooth or Wifi route, which makes sense, as it reduces cable clutter. I can imagine a time comes when Bluetooth/Wifi replaces USB as a low bandwidth peripheral interface, and LightPeak becomes the de facto high bandwidth standard (displays, servers, scanners, photo, video, music production).
Again, this won't be a sudden switch: back when USB was new, many peripherals came with at least a couple interfaces: USB and Serial. Now, you'd be hard-pressed to find a new printer with serial port or a new scanner with a SCSI port. Even now, we're seeing more printers with Wifi and/or Bluetooth capability as well as USB. I would not be surprised if, in the next 5-10 years, it will be difficult to find a new low-bandwidth peripheral with a USB port. I can't find my crystal ball, so I can't say for sure whether this will happen, so I'm left with pure speculation. Sigh.
Nope, there is a good possibility that we will see a doubling in linear resolution in the near future
Oh, I don't doubt that the technology will get there—in fact, pixel pitch and size is here already in the form of EVFs in digital cameras and camcorders. But going from a 1 inch EVF up to a 50 inch home theatre system with the same pixel size and pitch, while technologically feasible, is currently prohibitively expensive. But I was making my point from the perspective of user experience rather than technological feasibility (I probably didn't make it clear in my original comment. Sigh). It would certainly be possible to cram 33 million pixels into a 27" or 30" display, but it would be overkill, because from a distance of 3-6 feet or more, our eyes would not be able to resolve individual pixels anyway.
We will see 8K projectors and giant screens within the next 10 years for sure, but I'm sure that today's DisplayPort doesn't even have the bandwidth to drive that. So, DisplayPort will have to be updated. But, I was simply thinking if LightPeak advances at the proper pace in the next 10 years, it will have the bandwidth to support not only an 8K projector, but a high-speed RAID system and other stuff as well, all daisy-chained together. And, using one protocol is cheaper than building ports (with the associated software and hardware required to support it) for different interfaces. A full 8K display would require nearly 30 Gbps of bandwidth—unsupportable by next year's reported 10 Gbps LightPeak protocol, but there's no reason that a 100 Gbps or higher LightPeak protocol could not handle that and then some, no?
Alas probably a pipe dream as Lightpeak is probably voraciously power hungry.
I might be wrong (and expect some science-geek here will correct me if I am), but I believe it takes less energy to push photons through a glass fiber than it does to push electrons through wire. That's why internet backbones are optical fiber rather than wire.
I might be wrong (and expect some science-geek here will correct me if I am), but I believe it takes less energy to push photons through a glass fiber than it does to push electrons through wire. That's why internet backbones are optical fiber rather than wire.
Maybe, but the main benefit is clear signal, to do many different things with the light wave form. Metal wire, signal gets messy. That's one reason power wires are not used for hispeed transfer, although people have tried.
Fuck this - release ONE version small enough for mobile devices and DO NOT BOTHER with a larger version. When are these people going to learn?
Oh, and make the internal connector the same as the external, instead of like the idiotic decision to make SATA and eSATA use slightly different, but ostensibly the same connecter. Just leave the locking tab off the internal connector but otherwise don't change the mating specs.
Gold star for you. I absolutely agree.
I might be wrong (and expect some science-geek here will correct me if I am), but I believe it takes less energy to push photons through a glass fiber than it does to push electrons through wire. That's why internet backbones are optical fiber rather than wire.
Fiber optic cables for connection have been around for years. I remember when I was in college back in the 80's that the talk was connecting cables were all going to be fiber optic. That was great for signal clarity but they were expensive, fragile and you needed an adapter at each terminal to convert to fiber, so they never caught on except in audio where audiophiles will pay whatever if it means better sound. The energy is in the conversion from electrons (digital) to photons (optical) and then back. Anytime you convert from one energy to another there is loss( and yes I know Newton's laws but I mean in practical application). I was merely speculating, but I have learned if something sounds too good to be true it usually is and that means a tradeoff especially in a brand new technology.
Brian