Intel Shows Light Peak Laptop Pushing 2 HD Videos

Sweet, optic boards are becoming reality

Dang, no vid?

Video or GTFO.

(actually this news is quite depressing because I'm about to buy a laptop.)

When will you give me optical integrated circuits?

I'm always amazed at what these companies are doing in R&D. I know everyone seems to bash Intel, but it's great that they have capital to invest in this research.

Light Peak needs to provide power before it can replace USB...silly Intel

Video or GTFO.

(actually this news is quite depressing because I'm about to buy a laptop.)
powerofpi 05/06/2010 6:15 PM

No worries, it will probably be another 5 to 10 years before the consumers will be able to afford it.

after it becomes mainstream, intel will release the cap on lanes on mobos to reach 64 lanes and maybe 128... thus killin the chance of USB3.0 gaining market...
i'll hold my next build until their so called light peak is out

First 64 and 128 lanes is much higher then the 16 lanes on the core i3-i7's so that would make it better for USB 3 secondly USB is intel's brain child also and thirdly they're working on this tech with apple so it will appear on their machines before we have to worry about it.

I'm really looking forward to light peak it seems to be what usb should have been... Universal!

I didn't even think of that. So all this is good for is self powered devices. You can't even use a thumb drive with it? I'm a bit less optimistic about this now.

Yeppers. BTW, what's with the thumb downs over pointing out a major flaw of Light Peak?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light [...] cteristics

While this is nice and all I'd much rather have USB 3.0 available _right now_ than a potentially useful, non-compatible technology X years down the line.

How about it Intel?

Because there will be power

awesomefeed bro! ^ ^

Probably because everyone either doesn't understand the need for power or is assuming that they'll fix the power issue by the time it reaches market... I still voted you up though for the fact that atm you are completely correct about that flaw in it's design. Either that or people are again assuming(assuming being my word for the day) that USB won't be thrown out when light peak is instituted even though from the wiki article it looks like it might be designed so that it's compatible with existing usb techs...

I can see Monster selling a 5 feet Light Peak cables for 200$

Special gold plated optic fiber for a crystal clear signal !

It's a pretty exciting technology though, it open the door to alot of previously scifi stuff.

I wonder how much does lightpeak have to do with Intel not natively supporting SATA3 or USB3.

I'm confused about the comments that mention the need for power.

I thought Light Peak was about using some sort of optic fiber cable to send and received data. The example given is multiple LCD monitors connected to a PC via a Light Peak cable. Both LCD monitors and video cards are powered. Internal hard drives and motherboards are also powered. What am I missing?

My guess is that the current USB3.0 will be modified for the addition of the optic cable. Lightpeak will provide the same power as USB3.0. Lightpeak is NOT the same stand alone optical cable you see on your audio equipment.

Intel's goal is to replace every port on a computer with LP ports. Mice, keyboards, flash drives, 2.5" hdds, etc. all are powered by the computer, typically through the same USB connection that their data is going through. It seems a bit overkill for a mouse, but the abbility to daisy chain will probably make it work. The monitor plugs into the computer with a nonpowered LP cable. The keyboard then plugs into the monitor with a powered LP cable and the mouse plugs into the keyboard. Unless they're wireless, then there's no need.

im waiting for amd illuminated gaze

AAAAAHHHHH! Never thought about keyboard or mouse. Now the comments make sense.

just in time..
hope they could make a good design and produce a standard immediately, so that we could have one standard cable to use which could last longer than USB.

nice screenshot up there. i see, so usb 3.0 will use this light peak tech. much for my comment above.

victomofreality, read all the posts, not just the ones you comment on. The integration of a power wire has been known about for a while. http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-10360047-264.html

Mmm, well hopefully if this DOES become the absolute universal standard that would abolish the proprietary cables. There is nothing that pisses me off more than having to deal with just one cable and if you loose it you have to pay a shitload of cash for a USB cable that just looks a slight bit different one one end and has a brand name on it.

I don't hold anything much against Intel save for their wallet raping figures but I would like it if this does come to pass. The only problem is that while there is massive potential for it, there are multiple bottlenecks that people seem not to think about or turn a blind eye to:

1) The bottle neck caused by the hardware component in the case of data transferring. Let's face it, a 5400 RPM HDD can't make use of USB 3.0 max 5Gb/s transfer rate and SSD's are still developing but the rape on your wallet is something that average Joe's or tight budget people aren't going to touch for a few years now.

2) There's the motherboard southbridge, it has to stay transferring the data at it's max speed so to make full use of it, you have to get a high priced motherboard. Sure the tech will improve but even today, USB 2.0's 48MB/s (Take into consideration the large B for BYTE not BIT) max transfer rate end up being more in the low 20's and high 10's (In MB/s) on your typical 5400RPM external HDD and there's the southbridge bus speed that you'd have to take into account.

So essentially, even if you have a USB 3.0 external HDD. For it to be of any actual use you'd have to get a 7200RPM first off, secondly the motherboard would have to be able to have some decent bus speed. So I think that the 10Gb/s rate (1280MB/s or 1.25GB/s) transfer rate is something that's a bit away in the future. Even modern high end SSD's only seem to reach about 100MB/s in contrast to those massive rates I've said a bit above.

S'cuse me, I meant about 200MB/s for the SSD part

Why not just put a little solar cell on the device and mix a strong, steady light of a frequency not being used for the data?
Yes, I'm kidding.