Intel to debut Light Peak alongside Apple's new MacBook Pros Thursday
On the same day Apple is expected to unwrap its new MacBook Pros, Intel said it will be briefing the press on "a new technology that is about to appear on the market."
Intel's new technology to be unveiled will be Light Peak, according to a report by CNET, which attributed the news to an industry source familiar with the details of Intel's event.
Intel's announcement will also be made in San Francisco, strengthening the connection between its news and Apple's expected release of new MacBook Pros and potentially other products, on the same day that happens to coincide with Steve Jobs' birthday, and which falls one day after Apple's shareholder meeting.
A report by the French MacGeneration said that upcoming MacBook Pros would premier an unknown "new technology," describing Light Peak as a possible candidate.
It also confirmed an earlier report by AppleInsider pertaining to sealed package deliveries of new inventory that were not to be opened, saying it could verify that French retailers had received new stock they could not open before Thursday, 1:30 PM Paris time.
AppleInsider sources have reported that new MacBook Pros will sport significant feature enhancements outside of the expected move to Intel's Sandy Bridge CPU and chipset architecture. The inclusion of Light Peak could also explain an earlier report that claimed the new notebooks would sport minor modifications to their chassis design.
Apple and Intel have been publicly working together to deploy Light Peak for years, with Intel first demonstrating the technology on a Mac desktop system. Apple reportedly asked Intel to develop a new cabling standard with the ability to handle "massive amounts of data," and serve as a replacement for a variety of ports now in use, including USB, Ethernet, FireWire, and DisplayPort.
Intel has aimed the technology at achieving 100Gbps throughput via light using fibre optic strands, reflected in the technology's moniker. But Apple is rumored to be using an electrical variant using copper wire that can achieve 10Gbps, and has filed patents that describe lower powered mobile versions suitable for devices like iPad.
One Apple patent depicted fibre optics and electrical conduits joined in a MagSafe connector, suggesting a universal port that could provide a variety of functions from supplying peripheral power to supporting very high speed data.
Intel's new technology to be unveiled will be Light Peak, according to a report by CNET, which attributed the news to an industry source familiar with the details of Intel's event.
Intel's announcement will also be made in San Francisco, strengthening the connection between its news and Apple's expected release of new MacBook Pros and potentially other products, on the same day that happens to coincide with Steve Jobs' birthday, and which falls one day after Apple's shareholder meeting.
A report by the French MacGeneration said that upcoming MacBook Pros would premier an unknown "new technology," describing Light Peak as a possible candidate.
It also confirmed an earlier report by AppleInsider pertaining to sealed package deliveries of new inventory that were not to be opened, saying it could verify that French retailers had received new stock they could not open before Thursday, 1:30 PM Paris time.
AppleInsider sources have reported that new MacBook Pros will sport significant feature enhancements outside of the expected move to Intel's Sandy Bridge CPU and chipset architecture. The inclusion of Light Peak could also explain an earlier report that claimed the new notebooks would sport minor modifications to their chassis design.
Apple and Intel have been publicly working together to deploy Light Peak for years, with Intel first demonstrating the technology on a Mac desktop system. Apple reportedly asked Intel to develop a new cabling standard with the ability to handle "massive amounts of data," and serve as a replacement for a variety of ports now in use, including USB, Ethernet, FireWire, and DisplayPort.
Intel has aimed the technology at achieving 100Gbps throughput via light using fibre optic strands, reflected in the technology's moniker. But Apple is rumored to be using an electrical variant using copper wire that can achieve 10Gbps, and has filed patents that describe lower powered mobile versions suitable for devices like iPad.
One Apple patent depicted fibre optics and electrical conduits joined in a MagSafe connector, suggesting a universal port that could provide a variety of functions from supplying peripheral power to supporting very high speed data.
Comments
A prototype connector for LP was USB hybrid. That would be a good transition.
Magsafe is designed to disconnect at the slightest bump (a good thing.) USB drives that are in the middle of being written to do not like to be disconnected. You get a warning from OS X every time you disconnect. Wonder how they'll resolve this one?
using magsafe for a few years now, never really had it accidentally disconnect.
Also the magsafe/Light Peak cable you see will probably be used for connecting between machines (macbook) and monitor (Cinema display/iMac).
Isn't that like 530a in CA?
So.. No event, just store.apple goes down at midnight Wednesday and then Thursday morning we get new MBPs?
One Apple patent depicted fibre optics and electrical conduits joined in a MagSafe connector, suggesting a universal port that could provide a variety of functions from supplying peripheral power to supporting very high speed data.
I'm not tracking this ... are they saying high speed networking will be supplied through high volt power cables along with the power to supply computers? Or will the power wire have another wire attached to it somehow that handles the data?
Doesn't that report say they can open the crates at 130p, Paris Time?
Isn't that like 530a in CA?
So.. No event, just store.apple goes down at midnight Wednesday and then Thursday morning we get new MBPs?
That assumes the shipment is product and not some big window to do.
And if it is product it is not new ipads
Apple and Intel have been publicly working together to deploy Light Peak for years, with Intel first demonstrating the technology on a Mac desktop system.
This reminds me of the days before FireWire when it seemed like it was being talked about for years before it finally showed up first on Apple.
Magsafe is designed to disconnect at the slightest bump (a good thing.) USB drives that are in the middle of being written to do not like to be disconnected. You get a warning from OS X every time you disconnect. Wonder how they'll resolve this one?
using magsafe for a few years now, never really had it accidentally disconnect.
Also the magsafe/Light Peak cable you see will probably be used for connecting between machines (macbook) and monitor (Cinema display/iMac).
I have tripped over and disconnected the wire several times. I think ihxo may be right that the patent plug we saw was probably just for power and video, not data. But if data also then Intel and Apple must have worked out some kind of buffer or failsafe to avoid data corruption in the event of a disconnect. My guess is that data connections will not be magnetic. Especially since Magsafe is proprietary and I don't think others will want to license it.
FiNALLY!
One connection type to RULE! Please catch on and make our lives easier!!!!!!!!!! Die, die, die, hurry up and die: USB, Firewire (i still love you), 30pin connector, Display port, HDMI,etc!
Please!!!
lol I still love firewire too.
I have tripped over and disconnected the wire several times.
yeah but you really need to kick it in order to get it off.
If the force is big enough to yank off a magsafe cable, it should be good enough to yank off a USB plug. The question is do you just want your data to die, or you want your USB port to go with it?
I'm not tracking this ... are they saying high speed networking will be supplied through high volt power cables along with the power to supply computers? Or will the power wire have another wire attached to it somehow that handles the data?
I'll try a wild guess. Power brick has new magsafeLP connector. Laptop has *only* a magsafeLP connector. Power brick now has USB and FW jacks on it (possibly audio as well). Old magsafe bricks will still work, but would only power the laptop.
If I'm right (a very big if) than would suggest that currently unimplemented connector types (e.g. eSATA) would only require a new brick, and a driver on the MBP.
Pipe dreams, lets see what happens on Thursday,
What happened to Ultra-Wideband?
How 20th century!
What happened to Ultra-Wideband?
There are many good reasons to prefer a wired or optical connection. Security, reliability and freedom from interference come to mind. Not to mention the higher frequency networking standards are extremely limited by the physical world we live in.
In a nutshell wired or optical solutions won't go away anytime soon.
Doesn't that report say they can open the crates at 130p, Paris Time?
Isn't that like 530a in CA?
So.. No event, just store.apple goes down at midnight Wednesday and then Thursday morning we get new MBPs?
What the hell is "130p" and "530a" ? Are we seriously supposed to start describing time that way now?
First we lost "noon" and "midnight," then it was all the "rds" and "ths" from dates, now we are too lazy to even write PM and AM? Maybe we should all start chewing on lead paint and forget how to read and write altogether.
I have tripped over and disconnected the wire several times. I think ihxo may be right that the patent plug we saw was probably just for power and video, not data. But if data also then Intel and Apple must have worked out some kind of buffer or failsafe to avoid data corruption in the event of a disconnect. My guess is that data connections will not be magnetic. Especially since Magsafe is proprietary and I don't think others will want to license it.
I love the idea that they might be extending magsafe connections to data though. Apple invents so many fantastic things and patents them all but for the most part they get screwed over and copied. The magsafe connection is so unique, no one else will be able to (legally) do it and it will be nice to see Apple get ahead on it's own IP and to not have it's ideas stolen for a change. I hope they *don't* licence it to anyone at all.
Does anyone know the affect that Light Peak will have on present USB and Firewire equipment, e.g., printers, external drives, speakers, electronic piano, flash drives. Or an external monitor? Thanks. Rick
So uh, what 3rd party accessories are ready to plug into it if is released with new laptops? It's great that a new high-speed connection is ready, but rather useless unless the ecosystem is healthy. But leave it to Apple, always a strong pioneer in new emerging standards.
I believe the talk around here is that the mag safe would have a brick that acted as a hub for your standard connections. The mag safe would be the only wire plugged into the laptop. Your peripherals would plug into the hub.
<<Monitor and drive ports
The HDMI and DisplayPort connectors require more than twice the 10 Gbit/s that Light Peak was proposed to include in its higher-end implementations ? very much higher than what commentators expect Copper Peak to be capable of. Given announcements that Intel would support DisplayPort 1.2 and HDMI 1.4a exclusively, it seems unlikely that Light Peak will compete with them in the near future:
In December 2010 it was announced that Intel and AMD, with backing from various computer vendors, would stop supporting DVI-I, DVI-A, VGA and LVDS-LCD technologies from 2013/15[15]. ?IDC's figures show DisplayPort was on 5.1 percent of commercial desktops in 2009, but that figure will grow to 89.5 percent of them in 2014. In commercial notebooks, DisplayPort's penetration will increase from 2.1 percent in 2009 to 95 percent in 2014. Only 24.5 million of the 427 million laptops in users' hands in 2014 will be VGA-enabled, Daoud stated. Another 279 million will use HDMI, while 167 million will use DisplayPort.? The vendors' joint announcement (to which Intel also consented) did not mention Light Peak at all:
Legacy interfaces such as VGA, DVI and LVDS have not kept pace, and newer standards such as DisplayPort and HDMI clearly provide the best connectivity options moving forward. In our opinion, DisplayPort 1.2 is the future interface for PC monitors, along with HDMI 1.4a for TV connectivity.
? AMD, Dell, Intel Corporation, Lenovo, Samsung Electronics and LG[16] >>
Magsafe is designed to disconnect at the slightest bump (a good thing.) USB drives that are in the middle of being written to do not like to be disconnected. You get a warning from OS X every time you disconnect. Wonder how they'll resolve this one?
Are you Einstein? :-)