Intel's Optical Tech May Arrive Next Year

Awesome! What about cost?

And, when can we get these speeds w/o ANY cables?

Bring it on

I'm surprised Sony is using standard connections and not trying to create some new technology that would surely suck.

Hm. I understand why they wanted to go with USB but I think it will get pretty confusing for customers. We'll have USB 2.0, USB 3.0, and Intel Light Peak that all look the exact same.

7000 disconnects and reconnects isn't that much!!! for monitors it's OK
For USB devices like mice and other peripherals on laptops the number would be top low.

This looks cool , but it also means I have to buy a bunch of new shit... again.

they aren't Monster brand cables...

I don't see how this could replace USB, it seems kind of expensive and USB works just fine. Could be useful for network cables and A/V signals.

@Zingam
Just keep your usb devices for that.

Maybe they'll one day replace pci express O_o

It would take you 6 years to reach that number if you disconnected and reconnected 3 times a day. Nineteen years if you only disconnected and reconnected once.

What I don't understand is why can't they use standard ethernet cables (RJ-45) as a kind of universal standard for connecting devices like monitors, mice, printers and other peripherals. I don't know much about the standard but it RJ-45 cables have plenty of bandwidth, low latency, and are already being mass produced and has seen wide spread adoption over the years. All that would need to happen is for some standards body to create some kind of Universal protocol over RJ-45.

I think someone posted about this the last time these cables were discussed in an article, but these could be a great way to get an external graphics card solution for laptops.

At least 7,000? Unacceptable.

I demand OVER 9000!!!

New cables are great, but they aren't the bottleneck, so just changing the cable doesn't solve anything. Using current ethernet cables, you can transfer approx 128MB/s. (Mainstream) hard drives are just now scraping this transfer rate, and only for short periods of time.

It's nice to know we've got room to improve, but if this is targeting mainstream consumers it's ahead of its time. Why would I pay more money for a cable if I can't notice any difference?

@phatboe : Power. USB cables carry up to 5v (500mA). That's why cables are usually 6 to 15 feet long (the maximum without losing signal being around 30 feet). Cat-5 cables aren't powered but can carry a 100mhz signal up to 328 feets. Different need, different cables.

PS, that 128MB/s is based solely off gigabit network speeds. Wish I'd remembered to write that... also wish there was an edit button...

External video cards huh? Might not be such a bad idea, at the rate they're growing in size.

I can't wait to see what the guy at Best Buy tells me to get me to buy the Monster Cables version.

"The gold plated optical fiber helps reflect the light in the cable so that the signal is a higher strength."

Future vision: close to fully optical computers like the ones in the movie 'virtuosity', or the computers Superman's native people were using.

That's it, I'm gonna patent the above idea! Yes, I know movies have already shown that, but those were movies, science fiction (call superman science, ha ha), I have a true idea about this at work. I am just sorry big evil corporations will rob me of my ideas before I have implemented anything. But I'll wait a few years and sue them all!

So do these cables transfer power over the cable? If not, then how will my mouse, keyboard, etc be powered? That is one of the useful things about USB.

What's the bet they will release USB to LightPeak adaptors for those less PC literate that think it will work better?

It seems to be a bit ahead of its time. However, I hope that it does become widely adopted, as I'll take 10GB/s any day.

Standard fiber optic cable is currently less than a dollar a foot. It's very comparable to standard crossover cable.

we have fiber optic ethernet, its called FIBER. fiber uses the same protocol as the UTP cables that are so common today. having it go to your computer is just a matter of your computer having the correct (and expensive look here> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 833105055) fiber nic card, and fiber running from you ISP to your house. no innovation needed here intel, aside from cheaper fiber cables and nics.

That is a legitimate concern. My guess is they'll have a couple copper wires in addition to the fiber to transfer power to the device.

Keep on dreaming. The simple face is, wireless bandwidth is way less plentiful than what can be achieved with fiber connections.

"can transfer a Blu-ray movie in less than 30 seconds"

Too bad that a Blu-Ray movie takes about that much to be read and started off of the drive itself...

The problem of 125MB/s over a gigabit cat6 Ethernet cable isn't the problem, the problem comes when users have external RAID systems which can delivery 3GB/s transfer speeds. LSI's newest 6Gb/s internal RAID cards can deliver this kind of bandwidth which Tom's has reported on through articles in the recent past. If we want to be able to achieve this kind of performance with external DAS RAID systems then we need 10Gb/s cabling capability to transfer what these storage systems can provide with their dedicated hardware based RAID controllers.

While this looks like cool tech to have for internal and external devices, I am still waiting to hear more about what Intel did with Fiber last time.

Last time they were able to embed fiber lines into silicon which were also able to sustain constant stream of light instead of pulsing the light which could mean light speed data transmissions between the CPU and PCIe like interfaces.

It would also help for this allowing us to actually be able to utilize say a 100Gb/s HDD interface since the CPU will be on par or faster.

Imagine a SSD using a 100Gb/s connection........