Lightpeak (Possible release announcement tomorrow?)

For those who haven't heard of Lightpeak yet, it's Intel's project to create a single universal replacement for the current SCSI, SATA, USB, Firewire, PCI-E and HDMI interfaces. What they're working on is essentially using a version of fiber optics instead of the traditional materials used by all of those connections.

So far, it appears that this technology will mean absolutely huge increases in speed for any data transfer purposes, including such things as external hard drives and flash drives. The base standard is 10 Gbit/s, which is already twice as fast as the new USB 3.0. Intel also claims that it has the potential to scale up to 100 Gbit/s over the next decade. While I can't say whether that will be impressive then, it certainly sounds incredible now. Then again, look at the massive increases we've had in speed over the last 10 years

Intel has some kind of special event planned for tomorrow about a new technology about to appear on the market which seems to make it very likely that it will be the announcement for a Lightpeak release.

For those interested, information about Lightpeak can be found here and here.

Fiber optics are the future! I'm not sure how many of you have access to fiber optic television or internet but its great! Our city recently adopted it and we 'apparently' have the fastest internet connection in the world. Or something like that...

reply to post by warbird03


Hm. Makes me think about the stock market..........Intel has made a lot of people very rich.

Not so sure about you having the fastest in the world but fiber optic internet is faster than coaxial cable internet. I used to work in the cable industry and also did jobs for verizon so I have a decent amount of experience with both. The reason you don't have the fastest is for one unless you live right by the hub someone is faster and also many cities have fiber optic internet. It's been in Richmond and Va Beach for like 3 years.

Now what I'd like to add is that I remember hearing a while back German scientist had developed or were developing a way to connect you to the internet through your electricity. So when you plug in the power cord it connects you to the internet. What's faster than electricity? If anyone knows more about this link me up.

Well it looks like the fiber optics are better at least from what I got out of this BPL

reply to post by RickyD


Fiber Optics are indeed faster because it's, you know... light.

reply to post by RickyD


Fastest in the U.S. I originally heard 2nd in the world.
www.pcmag.com...

Now imagine the 1Gbit you can get from that fiber optics connection multiplied by 10. That's how fast lightpeak will be to begin with for it's initial release. Now they just need to figure out how to scale it up distance-wise

Well crap. I just ordered a new 160GB internal hard drive for one of my laptops. Maybe I should have waited.... Seriously though, this is the first I have heard about Lightpeak. What exciting news! S&F It truly is remarkable how quickly processing and storage have advanced. I guess you could say they are moving ahead at the speed of light.

When I lived a few miles up the road, I had fiber optic internets. It was great, sometimes it was over 10 times faster than the cable internet I am able to get now.

What is messed up, is that the infrastructure is here - this part of town could have fiber optic internet if not for the monopolistic hold the cable company has on this city. I blame everyone.

reply to post by warbird03


And electricity isn't well travelling at the speed of light...when you flip the switch in your house do you have to wait or is it instant? I guess what sets them apart is the resistance in the medium it flows through...

reply to post by CoincidenceX


WOW guys moving up in the world lol I did not know that...

reply to post by RickyD


Amazon.com is moving their headquarters here and VW produces their only American made cars here. We've grown a ton and if you haven't visited within the past 10 years, you ought to... its absolutely insane!

Reply to post by RickyD

To us electricity does appear instant, but it really moves much slower than light. Electricity travels through copper most of the time, which is also what is widely used in the current technologies that lightpeak will be replacing.


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Another update, Intel is launching Lightpeak with the name Thunderbolt.

I was thinking about this and thought up another use with it's higher bandwidth than PCI-E currently offers. We could potentially see the dawn of external video cards using this technology. Imagine, you could buy a relatively cheap laptop with a weak integrated GPU, but while you're home or somewhere else where you wouldn't have to move it around much, just plug in your high end GPU through the Thunderbolt port and you've instantly got some video horsepower.

I hate to break it to you people but Cable internet for most systems in the US does go over fiber and has for a long time. Coax can support over 100 mb downloads it just depends on what your system will allow for you.

This sounds like a cool breakthrough that I had not read much about. I wonder how it will interface with current hardware.

reply to post by whoshotJR



It will go through fiber in the ISP's facilities most likely, but it is delivered to you through the coax cable. That means the cable will be a bottleneck and you can't go any faster than that. Sure, coax could potentially support up to 100MB/s, but fiber optics can handle far more than that. Granted, it's not practical or necessary for most people especially since you'll still be limited by the other side's bandwidth.

Originally posted by warbird03
reply to post by whoshotJR

 

It will go through fiber in the ISP's facilities most likely, but it is delivered to you through the coax cable. That means the cable will be a bottleneck and you can't go any faster than that. Sure, coax could potentially support up to 100MB/s, but fiber optics can handle far more than that. Granted, it's not practical or necessary for most people especially since you'll still be limited by the other side's bandwidth.

Exactly, but most people don't realize how fiber is bottlenecked also but hardware.

So what was the announcement?

reply to post by whoshotJR


www.intel.com...

There's also links to documents on the right side of that page with a press release about it.