i'm sure people will run out to buy $100 keyboards and mice just because the have this cool fiber optic wire coming out
The keyboard will come with their new computers so they won't have to run out a buy one. How many are still using PS/2 keyboards? Not many. Is that because everyone "ran out" and bought a new USB keyboard just because they could?
One bus, one connector, virtually unlimited bandwidth. The Holy Grail, if it happens.
Problem is that writing is always slower than reading, sometimes significantly. Beside high-end (and price) units, most consumer flash cards are still writing slower than HDD.
Would be interesting to know what read/write speed iPhone flash has....
Good question. I 've been wondering that for a long time as I consider it a major bottleneck, and like you said it's curious what with the 3gs coming out that they publish every other spec except the flash speeds, I 've come to the conclusion that they must be pretty shitty to not get published otherwise they d be yaping on our brains all day about the new pinnacle of tec. the flash rom. It's not the case it seems, I would reason that they just preload most things into ram so they don't get that much of a knock from the flash.
As much as the tec pundits yap though about ssds hds have made some surprising (considering all that yapping for ssds) advances and our now much faster than never, and with new tec (which I was too lazy to ingest properly so I can recount it here) on the read/write head they 've almost minimized the impact of the moving head. What is more they've gotten so dense these days that the head doesn't move that much, imagine that a few years ago the head had to move in the same form factor for a 250gb capacity and now i has to do so for a 2tb. Not many people realize that but this is staggering, it means the distance required to access the same bytes has (very roughly) gone down 800%.
Hds are here to stay for a long time, I don't know what the projection for a 2tb ssd is (pundits are notoriously hush hush about real data) but it will be a long time when such a thing becomes mainstream and at a decent price, I would say a good two three years for sure.
I was planning to buy a Mac Pro in November for video editing. Is it worth it to wait another year?
As far as tech goes, there's one simple rule: If you need it, get it.
If you wait for the perfect technology, you'll be waiting forever, since there's always something "better" to be released soon!
Besides, it will take quite some time for Light Peak to be put into general use. What good is a new port if there's nothing to connect to it? Remember when USB and FireWire made their Mac debuts? Same thing here.
A neat idea, but for this to work at all, you'd have to see it appear on all of Apple's gear at once - and hopefully some 3rd parties would follow along. Other than reducing clutter, a 10GB connection for a scanner, printer, iPod... whatever... is a bit of overkill. But, the next generation of flash-based storage might need something like this to keep moving...
Interesting stuff...
Good points. I am really not that interested in fiber optics for periferals. Wifi n handles most (not camcorders of course) data connections just fine. For me the real issue is to make a universal powering standard first. I really couldn't care less about fibers unless they are bundled with a small UNIVERSAL power port/adapter, dock. I don't care if they use copper to transfer my scanner or phone or camera's data, they might as well use clay for all I care, what I do care about is that they finally get a universal power connector (and even better a dock - a capacitance charger comes to mind like the touchstone)
Give me a universal touchstone where I can throw everything at it without connecting and disconnecting and figuring out where the ports are, and let the rest be handled by wifi. That's uncluttering and comfort for me.
And someone tell the intel guy that not many people care about a 30 m fiber optic cable. Sure it's a nice option, but it's a year 2000 option, not a 2010 one. It's great, but that's not a strong point to sell this standard, if I have to throw a fishing line sized 30 m cable around the house it's probably time I reconsider my set up. In some case it will be great, but it's not that impressive.
Like I said, give us a touchstone to throw everything at it keyboards, mice, tablets, phones, cameras and then think about overkill fiber optic speeds.
Because even if the fiber optic can tranfer a gazionth bytes per sec I ll still have to look for a port plug and unplug, which is pretty much what we 've been doing all along. Not really that innovative.
Good points. I am really not that interested in fiber optics for periferals. Wifi n handles most (not camcorders of course) data connections just fine. For me the real issue is to make a universal powering standard first. I really couldn't care less about fibers unless they are bundled with a small UNIVERSAL power port/adapter, dock. I don't care if they use copper to transfer my scanner or phone or camera's data, they might as well use clay for all I care, what I do care about is that they finally get a universal power connector (and even better a dock - a capacitance charger comes to mind like the touchstone)
Give me a universal touchstone where I can throw everything at it without connecting and disconnecting and figuring out where the ports are, and let the rest be handled by wifi. That's uncluttering and comfort for me.
And someone tell the intel guy that not many people care about a 30 m fiber optic cable. Sure it's a nice option, but it's a year 2000 option, not a 2010 one. It's great, but that's not a strong point to sell this standard, if I have to throw a fishing line sized 30 m cable around the house it's probably time I reconsider my set up. In some case it will be great, but it's not that impressive.
Like I said, give us a touchstone to throw everything at it keyboards, mice, tablets, phones, cameras and then think about overkill fiber optic speeds.
Because even if the fiber optic can tranfer a gazionth bytes per sec I ll still have to look for a port plug and unplug, which is pretty much what we 've been doing all along. Not really that innovative.
Are you alone in the world?
That billion dollar server farm that Apple is building, super computers, video production studios, TV broadcast studios, diagnostic labs, electronic medical records repositories, etc., just to name a few.
You may not want it in your house, but you will be pleased as punch when all the above services could be cabled into your neighborhood and a thousand computers running off it with nary a glitch from either end.
WiFi is nice. But it is not going to be able to handle the massive amount of data that will be coming in the future, instantaneously.
Why the hell would you throw a 30 m cable around your house? Or even think that somebody would suggest it?
The last thing said in the video accompanying AI's article was, "We expect to see Light Peak ingredient components ready to ship in the markets by next year, 2010,"
I would suggest that right now, Apple is planning a new interface for a Light Peak/Power cable to be used to replace every external communication connection on ever Mac of the future. And the first one may even be the Mac Tablet.
It is even stated on Intel's Web Site:
"Intel is working with the optical component manufacturers to make Light Peak components ready to ship in 2010, and will work with the industry to determine the best way to make this new technology a standard to accelerate its adoption on a plethora of devices including PCs, handheld devices, workstations, consumer electronic devices and more. Light Peak is complementary to existing I/O technologies, as it enables them to run together on a single cable at higher speeds. The Light Peak initiative builds on Intel?s commitment in working with the industry on existing I/O standards, and provides a path to continued progress into the future." Intel Light Peak Technology. http://techresearch.intel.com/articles/None/1813.htm
All they would have to do is provide a Light Peak Power Hub that would inerconnect the Mac to all legacy systems. And that should be a minor issue is at all.
And since it appears to be Apple's idea in the first place, the first iteration will be for a while available only thru Apple.
When you think about it, A Apple Light Peak Power/Legacy Interconnect hubs could connect a Mac Tablet to virtually every (electronic) product that Apple or anybody else has every or will ever introduce. Now that would set the world on fire.
Heck, even a new Airport 'Light Peak' Extreme is a possibility. (I understand the limitations of wireless)
+1 - I was going to write the exact same post... thanks for saving me the typing
This is some nice technology and all, but lets think for a moment- what we are going to actually connect these Light Peak cables to? Think of how many ethernet ports there are out there. Of how many HDMI/DVI/VGA ports there are out there. Of how many USB ports there are out there. Those don't just go away. Apple may be able to do it on Apple designed hardware going forward, but how do you connect to all the current devices out there? Not to be cynical, but do we then have to purchase an assortment of Light Peak-to-____ connectors from Apple to connect existing devices?
Think of a central hub (we'll call it time machine extreme) in a central place. This hub has a USB/Firewire/ethernet/power outlet. You connect everything you got to this hub. From there runs ONE sole cable to your new all aluminum iMac.
The last thing said in the video accompanying AI's article was, "We expect to see Light Peak ingredient components ready to ship in the markets by next year, 2010,"
I would suggest that right now, Apple is planning a new interface for a Light Peak/Power cable to be used to replace every external communication connection on ever Mac of the future. And the first one may even be the Mac Tablet.
It is even stated on Intel's Web Site:
"Intel is working with the optical component manufacturers to make Light Peak components ready to ship in 2010, and will work with the industry to determine the best way to make this new technology a standard to accelerate its adoption on a plethora of devices including PCs, handheld devices, workstations, consumer electronic devices and more. Light Peak is complementary to existing I/O technologies, as it enables them to run together on a single cable at higher speeds. The Light Peak initiative builds on Intel?s commitment in working with the industry on existing I/O standards, and provides a path to continued progress into the future." Intel Light Peak Technology. http://techresearch.intel.com/articles/None/1813.htm
All they would have to do is provide a Light Peak Power Hub that would inerconnect the Mac to all legacy systems. And that should be a minor issue is at all.
And since it appears to be Apple's idea in the first place, the first iteration will be for a while available only thru Apple.
When you think about it, A Apple Light Peak Power/Legacy Interconnect hubs could connect a Mac Tablet to virtually every (electronic) product that Apple or anybody else has every or will ever introduce. Now that would set the world on fire.
Heck, even a new Airport 'Light Peak' Extreme is a possibility. (I understand the limitations of wireless)
The problem there is only available through Apple= a lot less incentive to make native devices. Things that are exclusive usually end up killing the adoption rate.
That billion dollar server farm that Apple is building, super computers, video production studios, TV broadcast studios, diagnostic labs, electronic medical records repositories, etc., just to name a few.
You may not want it in your house, but you will be pleased as punch when all the above services could be cabled into your neighborhood and a thousand computers running off it with nary a glitch from either end.
WiFi is nice. But it is not going to be able to handle the massive amount of data that will be coming in the future, instantaneously.
Why the hell would you throw a 30 m cable around your house? Or even think that somebody would suggest it?
I clarified that my post referred to connecting peripherals to the computer only. And seeing as the intel guy touted the cable by suggesting connecting a camera with it, his 30 m cable comments were moronic and did not refer to say server farms. His comments were irrelevant because they were misapplied. Read and watch more carefully please.
Btw, I don't see you actually replying to the actual point of importance I made, that of the necessity of a capacitance charging device, a touchstone like device that you can throw anything at it (all the multitude of myriad of things we use that need charging and power: keyboads, mice, trackpads, scanners, phones, pdas, cameras, ipods etc.) instead of another port to keep plugging in and out to charge and operate. The problem is plugging devices in and out of the computer all the time and not so much the speed for them, which whilst important on its own it's secondary. I guess you focused to much on being a wiseass at what I wrote to miss this. You can thank me later for re-writing it for your benefit.
Think of a central hub (we'll call it time machine extreme) in a central place. This hub has a USB/Firewire/ethernet/power outlet. You connect everything you got to this hub. From there runs ONE sole cable to your new all aluminum iMac.
Sounds cool
But why is that better than running USB/Firewire/ethernet/power from my iMac? Surely the iMac itself qualifies as a "central place"? Plus, now I have an additional cable and an additional piece of hardware.
I guess there might be some advantage if you could scale the hub to match whatever peripherals you might have, so we wouldn't have to worry about having enough USB ports on the machine and could just buy the appropriate hub with the right mix of ports, but if this an Apple initiative they'd likely be the ones making the hub and they're just as likely to piss off people with lots of peripherals as they do now by winnowing the number of ports on their computers.
I still think the real advantage would be in docking schemes for portables. A single slender cable that gives me access to my big monitor, storage, printer, etc. would be pretty nice, for an iPhone, tablet or laptop.
If I understand Light Peak correctly, Apple and other PC manufacturers can phase out all kinds of different ports and only put multiple Light Peak ports in their computers, while consumers can make use of all the ports with their devices rather than only a couple of them. You don't need different kinds of connectors because it's what Light Peak all about.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Outsider
I think this port will be gradually folded into the port compliment of Macs (and PCs).
Add a port or two to the laptops, along with the regular compliment of other ports. Over the next year, as peripherals come out with these ports, subsequent revisions of the hardware will see normal USB and Firewire ports replaced by LP. There is a lot of RJ-45 infrastructure out there, so I don't see that physical port going anywhere soon. Same for the audio ports.
The desktops have more space to work with so they could always give a majority of its port real estate to LP (eventually), and keep legacy USB and Firewire in the back for older peripherals. Video ports would be dictated by the video card manufacturers, they will likely offer DP, DVI, alongside LP if it really takes off in the graphics market.
This is all speculation but if LP lives up to the hype, it can change computing dramatically. I'm thinking of external graphics cards for laptops, single-port port replicators, easier clustering, and more.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pascal007
LightPeak is not incompatible with all the other standards: you can have a LightPeak connector at one end and any other connector at the other end, be it another LP, or simple USB3, FW, ethernet, HDMI or DP connectors. All you need is an optic fiber, 2 metal wires* and some converter at the connector end.
* one for power and one for grounding. These wires have to be there anyway to protect the optical fiber from over-bending.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr Millmoss
You mean, like Firewire? Even SCSI didn't require a hub, and that's ancient tech now. Hubs are an artifact of USB. Something that replaces USB should improve on it, not duplicate its deficiencies, yes?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr Millmoss
I suppose ideally you get both options. Is that possible with optical? I'm wondering whether something less bulky like a splitter would be feasible.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Snafu
Both hubs and daisychaining are valid ways to interconnect and group devices, logically and/or physically. Actually, a SCSI hub would have been a very nice thing to have back in the days.
Quote:
Originally Posted by addabox
When Apple dropped legacy i/o port support in favor of USB on the iMac, it didn't take very long for a great many peripherals to become available. There was some short term confusion and inconvenience (I remember a brief outcry that the iMac "couldn't use a printer" because it had no serial port).
Of course, that was an industry wide transition that had Intel putting their full weight behind USB, introduced into a market that really needed it. Whether or not Light Peak would follow a similar path or not is hard to say, but it wouldn't be unprecedented.
I could see the tech being initially introduced a couple of ways: First, as a docking solution for notebooks, requiring a single slender cable from a multi-port breakout box. Using a single port for multiple devices is always going to require some kind of a breakout box (or, as Dr. Millmoss suggests, a splitter) anyway, and multiple cables from multiple ports are no more elegant or compact, so such a set-up wouldn't really be a big kludge compared to what people are doing now. Of course, even better would be an array of devices that use the Light Peak standard and either a hub or a daisy chain (can't remember, has anything referenced whether or not this spec daisy chains?), but either way you still have to get discreet cables from the computer to discreet devices, at some point, no matter how capable your interconnect.
Secondly I could really see this as a great phone/palmtop docking solution. Basically the same deal as a laptop dock, but bringing vastly more functionality to your iPhone/Touch. With the rapid improvements in hardware, it surely won't be very long before your "phone" could serve as the the brains of a perfectly capable desktop/mobile system, as long as you had easy access to full sized peripherals-- keyboard, monitor and storage and power.
Basically, it sounds as if Light Peak could enable an über-dock that would make your iPhone/Touch an actual laptop/desktop replacement.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gazoobee
But in Apple's world, the "hub" is the monitor.
I would expect the firs use of this technology will simply be to replace all the ports on a MacBook with the single Light Peak cable which leads to the Apple Cinema Display that has a bunch of ports on the back as usual. Either that, or the single cable that leads from the monitor to the power brick will put the ports on the power brick.
Ergo: buyers of all-Apple gear will have their single cable "dock" solution and anyone who buys anything else will have to connect it to the back of the monitor or onto the brick under the desk.
Quote:
Originally Posted by addabox
But I think that "single cable" thing is a bit misleading, in that it conjures up visions of, well, a single cable.
Once past the case of your computer, that single cable still needs to physically connect with all the devices that used to use the various interconnect standards.
Now if it became a ubiquitous standard, and all of my devices had the same interconnect so that I only had to worry about keeping one kind of cable around, or perhaps one kind of cable and one kind of hub/splitter/router, then terrific. But I'm still going to have single cable to hub to many cables, or many ports to many cables, and in the case of infrastructure type connects such as ethernet, it's not even clear why that's an improvement.
High speed data transfer is nice, of course, but the more I think about it the more I thing single cable to some kind of distribution thing which stays connected to your peripherals is the payoff.
Quote:
Originally Posted by addabox
I guess, but as I think about it seems like "cable clutter" is really a function of lots of devices plugged into one place. You can move that place around, you can make the cables thinner, but you basically have the same topography. Only wireless actually reduces cabling. Although, as I say, as the cabling for a docking system for a laptop or palmtop, it would be great.
Not that I wouldn't welcome a thin, ubiquitous, high bandwidth do everything cabling standard that can go 100m without signal degradation-- that would be plenty upside for me. Although I kind of have to wonder what a 100m optical cable would actually cost.
At the very least, its a chance for Monster to put "Pure optical digital extreme hi mega" on there packages and charge $300 for a 6' cable.
I get it, but I don't get it. People are talking about multiple Light Path ports in the thread (plus legacy ports), when the whole idea (as stated in the article) seems to be that mobile computing devices can take on new, svelte, Jobsian form factors when we can eliminate all but one (an"über-port" that connects to all of the above-mentioned - including the "über-dock").
In the future everything looks good - problems all solved. In the present we still have to figure out how to get signals out of our computers into everything we have and everything that's coming.
Which does require the signal to be split at some point in some way, or daisy-chained (which could be inconvenient and vexing and laborious depending on where things live and how often their config changes).
Leading to plenty of speculation about splitters, break-out boxes, optical docks with legacy and light ports, etc., etc. I'm assuming that at least over short distances signal degredation and capacity are not issues, so you could split a number of times without worrying. Adding devices and complexity (and costs) to the act of a normal human hooking up a computer system.
But what will the "other end" of a Light Peak cable be? Can they really simply plug into extant USB, Firewire, monitors, by ending in the existing connectors for these? Otherwise how do you keep all legacy equipment from becoming useless, or keep having to have Light Path as a new extra port on PC's rather than "a port to replace them all"? And if there are many types of expensive LP-FW, LP-USB, LP-whatever cables, and splitters, won't you pay more to connect to some of your legacy devices than it would cost to replace them?
A whole new set of cabling to go along with the drawer full of now more useless cables too expensive to throw away just yet?? (Mine's already several drawers of super-annuated connectors and cables, including computing, phone, audio-video and other equipment.)
Will there be a standard LIght Peak input port on all devices? That last's a job that would take awhile to ramp up infrastructure for. As in a looong while. Will there be hydra-headed LP cables with a variety of connectors? Will devices to split the signal be cheap and passive? If there is a "standard" LP cable, and it can support existing in-ports for devices we have, will there just be caps that can be put on the standard cable to make them FW, USB, etc.?
Maybe I'm just being dense, but this simplification concept is seeming really pretty complex to me. Enough so that I expect before the whole transition can be made we'll already be dealing with LightPeak 2.0 or everything will, as one poster suggested, go wireless. Which is the superior convenience solution by far, if not the most secure.
So, Johnny, I have too many things on my plate to really cogitate this out more than this, so how dense am I here??
Blimey. When they say "the building covers the area of five football pitches", do you wonder why they've put football pitches in there?!
They already told us exactly how many bytes of data it can handle, the reference to the movie size to me suggested possible uses. But I could be wrong.
Even someone as ignorant as myself in exactly what or how large a football pitch is, would probably not expect to find five of them inside a building.
This is the new fibre channel, for high performance interconnect. And it will have intrinsic networking support, like firewire currently has. Also, it's a couple years out.
Comments
i'm sure people will run out to buy $100 keyboards and mice just because the have this cool fiber optic wire coming out
The keyboard will come with their new computers so they won't have to run out a buy one. How many are still using PS/2 keyboards? Not many. Is that because everyone "ran out" and bought a new USB keyboard just because they could?
One bus, one connector, virtually unlimited bandwidth. The Holy Grail, if it happens.
Problem is that writing is always slower than reading, sometimes significantly. Beside high-end (and price) units, most consumer flash cards are still writing slower than HDD.
Would be interesting to know what read/write speed iPhone flash has....
Good question. I 've been wondering that for a long time as I consider it a major bottleneck, and like you said it's curious what with the 3gs coming out that they publish every other spec except the flash speeds, I 've come to the conclusion that they must be pretty shitty to not get published otherwise they d be yaping on our brains all day about the new pinnacle of tec. the flash rom. It's not the case it seems, I would reason that they just preload most things into ram so they don't get that much of a knock from the flash.
As much as the tec pundits yap though about ssds hds have made some surprising (considering all that yapping for ssds) advances and our now much faster than never, and with new tec (which I was too lazy to ingest properly so I can recount it here) on the read/write head they 've almost minimized the impact of the moving head. What is more they've gotten so dense these days that the head doesn't move that much, imagine that a few years ago the head had to move in the same form factor for a 250gb capacity and now i has to do so for a 2tb. Not many people realize that but this is staggering, it means the distance required to access the same bytes has (very roughly) gone down 800%.
Hds are here to stay for a long time, I don't know what the projection for a 2tb ssd is (pundits are notoriously hush hush about real data) but it will be a long time when such a thing becomes mainstream and at a decent price, I would say a good two three years for sure.
I was planning to buy a Mac Pro in November for video editing. Is it worth it to wait another year?
As far as tech goes, there's one simple rule: If you need it, get it.
If you wait for the perfect technology, you'll be waiting forever, since there's always something "better" to be released soon!
Besides, it will take quite some time for Light Peak to be put into general use. What good is a new port if there's nothing to connect to it? Remember when USB and FireWire made their Mac debuts? Same thing here.
A neat idea, but for this to work at all, you'd have to see it appear on all of Apple's gear at once - and hopefully some 3rd parties would follow along. Other than reducing clutter, a 10GB connection for a scanner, printer, iPod... whatever... is a bit of overkill. But, the next generation of flash-based storage might need something like this to keep moving...
Interesting stuff...
Good points. I am really not that interested in fiber optics for periferals. Wifi n handles most (not camcorders of course) data connections just fine. For me the real issue is to make a universal powering standard first. I really couldn't care less about fibers unless they are bundled with a small UNIVERSAL power port/adapter, dock. I don't care if they use copper to transfer my scanner or phone or camera's data, they might as well use clay for all I care, what I do care about is that they finally get a universal power connector (and even better a dock - a capacitance charger comes to mind like the touchstone)
Give me a universal touchstone where I can throw everything at it without connecting and disconnecting and figuring out where the ports are, and let the rest be handled by wifi. That's uncluttering and comfort for me.
And someone tell the intel guy that not many people care about a 30 m fiber optic cable. Sure it's a nice option, but it's a year 2000 option, not a 2010 one. It's great, but that's not a strong point to sell this standard, if I have to throw a fishing line sized 30 m cable around the house it's probably time I reconsider my set up. In some case it will be great, but it's not that impressive.
Like I said, give us a touchstone to throw everything at it keyboards, mice, tablets, phones, cameras and then think about overkill fiber optic speeds.
Because even if the fiber optic can tranfer a gazionth bytes per sec I ll still have to look for a port plug and unplug, which is pretty much what we 've been doing all along. Not really that innovative.
Good points. I am really not that interested in fiber optics for periferals. Wifi n handles most (not camcorders of course) data connections just fine. For me the real issue is to make a universal powering standard first. I really couldn't care less about fibers unless they are bundled with a small UNIVERSAL power port/adapter, dock. I don't care if they use copper to transfer my scanner or phone or camera's data, they might as well use clay for all I care, what I do care about is that they finally get a universal power connector (and even better a dock - a capacitance charger comes to mind like the touchstone)
Give me a universal touchstone where I can throw everything at it without connecting and disconnecting and figuring out where the ports are, and let the rest be handled by wifi. That's uncluttering and comfort for me.
And someone tell the intel guy that not many people care about a 30 m fiber optic cable. Sure it's a nice option, but it's a year 2000 option, not a 2010 one. It's great, but that's not a strong point to sell this standard, if I have to throw a fishing line sized 30 m cable around the house it's probably time I reconsider my set up. In some case it will be great, but it's not that impressive.
Like I said, give us a touchstone to throw everything at it keyboards, mice, tablets, phones, cameras and then think about overkill fiber optic speeds.
Because even if the fiber optic can tranfer a gazionth bytes per sec I ll still have to look for a port plug and unplug, which is pretty much what we 've been doing all along. Not really that innovative.
Are you alone in the world?
That billion dollar server farm that Apple is building, super computers, video production studios, TV broadcast studios, diagnostic labs, electronic medical records repositories, etc., just to name a few.
You may not want it in your house, but you will be pleased as punch when all the above services could be cabled into your neighborhood and a thousand computers running off it with nary a glitch from either end.
WiFi is nice. But it is not going to be able to handle the massive amount of data that will be coming in the future, instantaneously.
Why the hell would you throw a 30 m cable around your house? Or even think that somebody would suggest it?
The last thing said in the video accompanying AI's article was, "We expect to see Light Peak ingredient components ready to ship in the markets by next year, 2010,"
I would suggest that right now, Apple is planning a new interface for a Light Peak/Power cable to be used to replace every external communication connection on ever Mac of the future. And the first one may even be the Mac Tablet.
It is even stated on Intel's Web Site:
"Intel is working with the optical component manufacturers to make Light Peak components ready to ship in 2010, and will work with the industry to determine the best way to make this new technology a standard to accelerate its adoption on a plethora of devices including PCs, handheld devices, workstations, consumer electronic devices and more. Light Peak is complementary to existing I/O technologies, as it enables them to run together on a single cable at higher speeds. The Light Peak initiative builds on Intel?s commitment in working with the industry on existing I/O standards, and provides a path to continued progress into the future." Intel Light Peak Technology. http://techresearch.intel.com/articles/None/1813.htm
All they would have to do is provide a Light Peak Power Hub that would inerconnect the Mac to all legacy systems. And that should be a minor issue is at all.
And since it appears to be Apple's idea in the first place, the first iteration will be for a while available only thru Apple.
When you think about it, A Apple Light Peak Power/Legacy Interconnect hubs could connect a Mac Tablet to virtually every (electronic) product that Apple or anybody else has every or will ever introduce. Now that would set the world on fire.
Heck, even a new Airport 'Light Peak' Extreme is a possibility. (I understand the limitations of wireless)
+1 - I was going to write the exact same post... thanks for saving me the typing
This is some nice technology and all, but lets think for a moment- what we are going to actually connect these Light Peak cables to? Think of how many ethernet ports there are out there. Of how many HDMI/DVI/VGA ports there are out there. Of how many USB ports there are out there. Those don't just go away. Apple may be able to do it on Apple designed hardware going forward, but how do you connect to all the current devices out there? Not to be cynical, but do we then have to purchase an assortment of Light Peak-to-____ connectors from Apple to connect existing devices?
Think of a central hub (we'll call it time machine extreme) in a central place. This hub has a USB/Firewire/ethernet/power outlet. You connect everything you got to this hub. From there runs ONE sole cable to your new all aluminum iMac.
Sounds cool
The last thing said in the video accompanying AI's article was, "We expect to see Light Peak ingredient components ready to ship in the markets by next year, 2010,"
I would suggest that right now, Apple is planning a new interface for a Light Peak/Power cable to be used to replace every external communication connection on ever Mac of the future. And the first one may even be the Mac Tablet.
It is even stated on Intel's Web Site:
"Intel is working with the optical component manufacturers to make Light Peak components ready to ship in 2010, and will work with the industry to determine the best way to make this new technology a standard to accelerate its adoption on a plethora of devices including PCs, handheld devices, workstations, consumer electronic devices and more. Light Peak is complementary to existing I/O technologies, as it enables them to run together on a single cable at higher speeds. The Light Peak initiative builds on Intel?s commitment in working with the industry on existing I/O standards, and provides a path to continued progress into the future." Intel Light Peak Technology. http://techresearch.intel.com/articles/None/1813.htm
All they would have to do is provide a Light Peak Power Hub that would inerconnect the Mac to all legacy systems. And that should be a minor issue is at all.
And since it appears to be Apple's idea in the first place, the first iteration will be for a while available only thru Apple.
When you think about it, A Apple Light Peak Power/Legacy Interconnect hubs could connect a Mac Tablet to virtually every (electronic) product that Apple or anybody else has every or will ever introduce. Now that would set the world on fire.
Heck, even a new Airport 'Light Peak' Extreme is a possibility. (I understand the limitations of wireless)
The problem there is only available through Apple= a lot less incentive to make native devices. Things that are exclusive usually end up killing the adoption rate.
Are you alone in the world?
That billion dollar server farm that Apple is building, super computers, video production studios, TV broadcast studios, diagnostic labs, electronic medical records repositories, etc., just to name a few.
You may not want it in your house, but you will be pleased as punch when all the above services could be cabled into your neighborhood and a thousand computers running off it with nary a glitch from either end.
WiFi is nice. But it is not going to be able to handle the massive amount of data that will be coming in the future, instantaneously.
Why the hell would you throw a 30 m cable around your house? Or even think that somebody would suggest it?
I clarified that my post referred to connecting peripherals to the computer only. And seeing as the intel guy touted the cable by suggesting connecting a camera with it, his 30 m cable comments were moronic and did not refer to say server farms. His comments were irrelevant because they were misapplied. Read and watch more carefully please.
Btw, I don't see you actually replying to the actual point of importance I made, that of the necessity of a capacitance charging device, a touchstone like device that you can throw anything at it (all the multitude of myriad of things we use that need charging and power: keyboads, mice, trackpads, scanners, phones, pdas, cameras, ipods etc.) instead of another port to keep plugging in and out to charge and operate. The problem is plugging devices in and out of the computer all the time and not so much the speed for them, which whilst important on its own it's secondary. I guess you focused to much on being a wiseass at what I wrote to miss this. You can thank me later for re-writing it for your benefit.
Think of a central hub (we'll call it time machine extreme) in a central place. This hub has a USB/Firewire/ethernet/power outlet. You connect everything you got to this hub. From there runs ONE sole cable to your new all aluminum iMac.
Sounds cool
But why is that better than running USB/Firewire/ethernet/power from my iMac? Surely the iMac itself qualifies as a "central place"? Plus, now I have an additional cable and an additional piece of hardware.
I guess there might be some advantage if you could scale the hub to match whatever peripherals you might have, so we wouldn't have to worry about having enough USB ports on the machine and could just buy the appropriate hub with the right mix of ports, but if this an Apple initiative they'd likely be the ones making the hub and they're just as likely to piss off people with lots of peripherals as they do now by winnowing the number of ports on their computers.
I still think the real advantage would be in docking schemes for portables. A single slender cable that gives me access to my big monitor, storage, printer, etc. would be pretty nice, for an iPhone, tablet or laptop.
If I understand Light Peak correctly, Apple and other PC manufacturers can phase out all kinds of different ports and only put multiple Light Peak ports in their computers, while consumers can make use of all the ports with their devices rather than only a couple of them. You don't need different kinds of connectors because it's what Light Peak all about.
I think this port will be gradually folded into the port compliment of Macs (and PCs).
Add a port or two to the laptops, along with the regular compliment of other ports. Over the next year, as peripherals come out with these ports, subsequent revisions of the hardware will see normal USB and Firewire ports replaced by LP. There is a lot of RJ-45 infrastructure out there, so I don't see that physical port going anywhere soon. Same for the audio ports.
The desktops have more space to work with so they could always give a majority of its port real estate to LP (eventually), and keep legacy USB and Firewire in the back for older peripherals. Video ports would be dictated by the video card manufacturers, they will likely offer DP, DVI, alongside LP if it really takes off in the graphics market.
This is all speculation but if LP lives up to the hype, it can change computing dramatically. I'm thinking of external graphics cards for laptops, single-port port replicators, easier clustering, and more.
LightPeak is not incompatible with all the other standards: you can have a LightPeak connector at one end and any other connector at the other end, be it another LP, or simple USB3, FW, ethernet, HDMI or DP connectors. All you need is an optic fiber, 2 metal wires* and some converter at the connector end.
* one for power and one for grounding. These wires have to be there anyway to protect the optical fiber from over-bending.
You mean, like Firewire? Even SCSI didn't require a hub, and that's ancient tech now. Hubs are an artifact of USB. Something that replaces USB should improve on it, not duplicate its deficiencies, yes?
I suppose ideally you get both options. Is that possible with optical? I'm wondering whether something less bulky like a splitter would be feasible.
Both hubs and daisychaining are valid ways to interconnect and group devices, logically and/or physically. Actually, a SCSI hub would have been a very nice thing to have back in the days.
When Apple dropped legacy i/o port support in favor of USB on the iMac, it didn't take very long for a great many peripherals to become available. There was some short term confusion and inconvenience (I remember a brief outcry that the iMac "couldn't use a printer" because it had no serial port).
Of course, that was an industry wide transition that had Intel putting their full weight behind USB, introduced into a market that really needed it. Whether or not Light Peak would follow a similar path or not is hard to say, but it wouldn't be unprecedented.
I could see the tech being initially introduced a couple of ways: First, as a docking solution for notebooks, requiring a single slender cable from a multi-port breakout box. Using a single port for multiple devices is always going to require some kind of a breakout box (or, as Dr. Millmoss suggests, a splitter) anyway, and multiple cables from multiple ports are no more elegant or compact, so such a set-up wouldn't really be a big kludge compared to what people are doing now. Of course, even better would be an array of devices that use the Light Peak standard and either a hub or a daisy chain (can't remember, has anything referenced whether or not this spec daisy chains?), but either way you still have to get discreet cables from the computer to discreet devices, at some point, no matter how capable your interconnect.
Secondly I could really see this as a great phone/palmtop docking solution. Basically the same deal as a laptop dock, but bringing vastly more functionality to your iPhone/Touch. With the rapid improvements in hardware, it surely won't be very long before your "phone" could serve as the the brains of a perfectly capable desktop/mobile system, as long as you had easy access to full sized peripherals-- keyboard, monitor and storage and power.
Basically, it sounds as if Light Peak could enable an über-dock that would make your iPhone/Touch an actual laptop/desktop replacement.
But in Apple's world, the "hub" is the monitor.
I would expect the firs use of this technology will simply be to replace all the ports on a MacBook with the single Light Peak cable which leads to the Apple Cinema Display that has a bunch of ports on the back as usual. Either that, or the single cable that leads from the monitor to the power brick will put the ports on the power brick.
Ergo: buyers of all-Apple gear will have their single cable "dock" solution and anyone who buys anything else will have to connect it to the back of the monitor or onto the brick under the desk.
But I think that "single cable" thing is a bit misleading, in that it conjures up visions of, well, a single cable.
Once past the case of your computer, that single cable still needs to physically connect with all the devices that used to use the various interconnect standards.
Now if it became a ubiquitous standard, and all of my devices had the same interconnect so that I only had to worry about keeping one kind of cable around, or perhaps one kind of cable and one kind of hub/splitter/router, then terrific. But I'm still going to have single cable to hub to many cables, or many ports to many cables, and in the case of infrastructure type connects such as ethernet, it's not even clear why that's an improvement.
High speed data transfer is nice, of course, but the more I think about it the more I thing single cable to some kind of distribution thing which stays connected to your peripherals is the payoff.
I guess, but as I think about it seems like "cable clutter" is really a function of lots of devices plugged into one place. You can move that place around, you can make the cables thinner, but you basically have the same topography. Only wireless actually reduces cabling. Although, as I say, as the cabling for a docking system for a laptop or palmtop, it would be great.
Not that I wouldn't welcome a thin, ubiquitous, high bandwidth do everything cabling standard that can go 100m without signal degradation-- that would be plenty upside for me. Although I kind of have to wonder what a 100m optical cable would actually cost.
At the very least, its a chance for Monster to put "Pure optical digital extreme hi mega" on there packages and charge $300 for a 6' cable.
I get it, but I don't get it. People are talking about multiple Light Path ports in the thread (plus legacy ports), when the whole idea (as stated in the article) seems to be that mobile computing devices can take on new, svelte, Jobsian form factors when we can eliminate all but one (an"über-port" that connects to all of the above-mentioned - including the "über-dock").
In the future everything looks good - problems all solved. In the present we still have to figure out how to get signals out of our computers into everything we have and everything that's coming.
Which does require the signal to be split at some point in some way, or daisy-chained (which could be inconvenient and vexing and laborious depending on where things live and how often their config changes).
Leading to plenty of speculation about splitters, break-out boxes, optical docks with legacy and light ports, etc., etc. I'm assuming that at least over short distances signal degredation and capacity are not issues, so you could split a number of times without worrying. Adding devices and complexity (and costs) to the act of a normal human hooking up a computer system.
But what will the "other end" of a Light Peak cable be? Can they really simply plug into extant USB, Firewire, monitors, by ending in the existing connectors for these? Otherwise how do you keep all legacy equipment from becoming useless, or keep having to have Light Path as a new extra port on PC's rather than "a port to replace them all"? And if there are many types of expensive LP-FW, LP-USB, LP-whatever cables, and splitters, won't you pay more to connect to some of your legacy devices than it would cost to replace them?
A whole new set of cabling to go along with the drawer full of now more useless cables too expensive to throw away just yet?? (Mine's already several drawers of super-annuated connectors and cables, including computing, phone, audio-video and other equipment.)
Will there be a standard LIght Peak input port on all devices? That last's a job that would take awhile to ramp up infrastructure for. As in a looong while. Will there be hydra-headed LP cables with a variety of connectors? Will devices to split the signal be cheap and passive? If there is a "standard" LP cable, and it can support existing in-ports for devices we have, will there just be caps that can be put on the standard cable to make them FW, USB, etc.?
Maybe I'm just being dense, but this simplification concept is seeming really pretty complex to me. Enough so that I expect before the whole transition can be made we'll already be dealing with LightPeak 2.0 or everything will, as one poster suggested, go wireless. Which is the superior convenience solution by far, if not the most secure.
So, Johnny, I have too many things on my plate to really cogitate this out more than this, so how dense am I here??
It's not like more speed is a bad thing, but really how much of an advantage is being able to move a full length HD movie in 3 minutes
Blimey. When they say "the building covers the area of five football pitches", do you wonder why they've put football pitches in there?!
Blimey. When they say "the building covers the area of five football pitches", do you wonder why they've put football pitches in there?!
They already told us exactly how many bytes of data it can handle, the reference to the movie size to me suggested possible uses. But I could be wrong.
Even someone as ignorant as myself in exactly what or how large a football pitch is, would probably not expect to find five of them inside a building.
Even someone as ignorant as myself in exactly what or how large a football pitch is, would probably not expect to find five of them inside a building.
Yes, but have you looked?
Wasn't this optical interface supposed to be part of the USB 3.0 standard? There are numerous articles that can be googled about just this subject.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-9780794-1.html
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/09...b_3_announced/
If this is indeed true and not just rumor, I wonder why the new buzzword?
You should try Binging some articles.
This is the new fibre channel, for high performance interconnect. And it will have intrinsic networking support, like firewire currently has. Also, it's a couple years out.