[Matsu]

http://www.9to5mac.com/light-peak-hackintosh

http://techresearch.intel.com/articles/None/1813.htm

We're nearing the end of the life cycle for USB2, and while subsequent versions of both USB and FW are now ready for consumer introduction in early 2010, this looks absolutely fascinating, and it may be an Apple technology! Look closely, it's running on a Mac unit of some kind...

The details:

- Consumer grade optical fiber based technology
- small
- supports multiple I/O protocols simultaneously on the same connection
- FAST 10Gb/s 1.2GB/s
- Bi-directional 10Gb up and down

- Due in products in 2010 ?

[Robo]

Engadget has very heavily implied that Light Peak is an Apple technology and that their sources suggest that we might see it significantly earlier than the "Late 2010" estimates. If only Apple was rumored to be introducing a breakthrough mobile device in Q1 that could use such a connector...

Prediction: the 30-pin dock connector is on its last legs, and within two years we'll see a new connector introduced across the iPod/iPhone/iFrame (?) market. One that Apple controls even more tightly, of course.

I'm not expecting Apple to be an early adopter of USB 3. I think all the people expecting it on yesterday's iMacs were cwazy. Cwazy!

[PB PM]

I think Apple will accept USB3, simply because that is where the market is going. For a few reasons, everyone has at least 5-10 or more USB devices and cutting them off would turn a way a lot of first time buyers. I can see Apple using Light Peak, to replace Firewire, but replace USB, I think not.

[Matsu]

Oh no doubt this is Intel's baby, but it looks interesting to me that they demo it on Apple hardware that doesn't exist yet (in commercial form) ...

Changing the dock connector without backwards compatibility would make for a nice F U to all the peripherals makers/customers in the "ecosystem"...

USB3 is coming, what's interesting about this Light Peak is that it seems designed that the plugs could terminate in any number of standard I/O formats and the protocols could all run on the same bus. So Apple gives you a new lightpeak I/O with USB2 dongles tomorrow, but upgrades them to USB 3 with a new dongle and a firmware upgrade later... depending on how powerful the host controller is...

[hmurchison]

Light Peak sounds fascinating but I've yet to read an article about how they really intend for LP to co-exist with legacy ports.

The easiest scenario that I can see for LP is the ability to run just a few cables through your home and then have some sort of hub at the end where your USB, Ethernet, Firewire devices plug into.

Optical, being a great technology for speed and immunity to RF, would be ideal and there's no "rip and replace" as the specification gets faster as the pipe is good to what 100Gbps?

It's all going to depend on how quickly Intel and Apple can get working product to market.

[Robo]

Originally Posted by PB PM I think Apple will accept USB3, simply because that is where the market is going. For a few reasons, everyone has at least 5-10 or more USB devices and cutting them off would turn a way a lot of first time buyers. I can see Apple using Light Peak, to replace Firewire, but replace USB, I think not.

I never said that Apple wouldn't ever adopt USB3, just that they wouldn't be an early adopter. They weren't with USB2, IIRC - and to be honest I think if it weren't for the iPod they would have been even slower in adopting it.

The market is moving toward USB3? I'm not really seeing that, yet. Apple's in a completely different position than they were a decade ago - I think they could really make Light Peak a commonplace standard, unlike, say, FireWire. They have a lot more "weight," I guess. The market has far from embraced USB3 over anything else yet.

[hmurchison]

As USB keeps getting faster the need for it diminishes.

USB first generation was great for input devices and small peripherals.

USB 2 was good for general purpose devices including scanners, printers and storage devices.

USB 3 is pretty much going to benefit storage devices mainly.

I'd like to know more about the protocols that LP is going to support. I see the future as mainly being a bunch of networked
computers leveraging other electronics throughout the home. Network storage could be placed anywhere in the home and over
a 10Gb fiber optic connection it would be just as fast as USB/FW attached storage.

I'd love to see LP enable IP video for security cams and alarm systems. As long as it's extensible via protocol support and hubs that provide
low cost but reliable conversions at the end it'll become clear very soon why you want to wire your home with Light Peak cable. No more structured
wiring needed.

[Matsu]

Did you see how small that electro-optical terminal was? It basically fits inside the plug end of any number of consumer I/O connectors... While it make s a lot of sense for what you describe, 'mucrh, it is also capable of basically providing a universal solution to changing/upgrading I/O protocols. Neat.

[hmurchison]

Originally Posted by Matsu Did you see how small that electro-optical terminal was? It basically fits inside the plug end of any number of consumer I/O connectors... While it make s a lot of sense for what you describe, 'mucrh, it is also capable of basically providing a universal solution to changing/upgrading I/O protocols. Neat.

Yes...being a Fibre Channel fan and seeing the size of the ASIC and SFPs makes it somewhat understood why the protocol is so expensive. Light Peak's terminal is so small it's amazing and when couple with Corning's ClearCurve cables that can withstand multiple 90 degree bends I see why the time is right for Fiber installation in the home at an affordable level.

Here's an impressive video showing ClearCurve in action.

http://www.corning.com/uploadedFiles...Curve_300k.wmv

Seeing is believing.

[billybobsky]

I feel the urge to strangle someone now after watching that video. The presenter needs to be replaced with someone who is dynamic. It's as if they are selling cheese sandwiches.

[Maciej]

Originally Posted by billybobsky I feel the urge to strangle someone now after watching that video. The presenter needs to be replaced with someone who is dynamic. It's as if they are selling cheese sandwiches.

Yeah. I should have put that video at x1.5 speed to make it watchable.

[hmurchison]

Originally Posted by Matsu Did you see how small that electro-optical terminal was? It basically fits inside the plug end of any number of consumer I/O connectors... While it make s a lot of sense for what you describe, 'mucrh, it is also capable of basically providing a universal solution to changing/upgrading I/O protocols. Neat.

That's great because LP is gonna have to support a lot of protocols since it has such good bandwidth potential. I'm guessing that the next step beyond 10Gbps bidirectional will be 25Gbps bidirectional. That's insane bandwidth. I can't wait to see the software layer for this technology and how the QoS and everything fits together.

[Maciej]

Do you guys think they could offer a Light Peak adapter through the express card slot?

[Wyatt]

Originally Posted by Maciej Do you guys think they could offer a Light Peak adapter through the express card slot?

Apple probably won't, but I'd imagine somebody will.

[Robo]

They should name it something catchier, like LightSpeed. Take that, SuperSpeed USB! You can't get faster than light.

(Until they come out with the successor, a decade on. WarpSpeed?)

[Wyatt]

Originally Posted by Roboman They should name it something catchier, like LightSpeed. Take that, SuperSpeed USB! You can't get faster than light. (Until they come out with the successor, a decade on. WarpSpeed?)

Yes, but only as a half-step on the way to...

[Baron Munchausen]

As mentioned by others, if LP is so cheap (it appears it will be), then it can replace everything at the CPU end and if you want a USB3 device, you use a LP->USB3 cable. Simples.

The beauty is that laptop or whathaveyou has an array of (tiny) LP ports and you connect whatever you desire.

The Macbook Air already shows how lumpy connectors are getting compared to what Apple wants to do. LP will be so neat on phones and pods and make external SSDs very sexy.

USB will soon seem like an RS232 D25.


There is only one snag...power. Firewire power grunt is very good for simple HDD connections. I bet we will see an LP variant that can carry enough power for items up to and including SSDs. I suppose it will have to, as Apple will have one to connect and charge the iPhone/Pod.

[bassplayinMacFiend]

Maybe some kind of co-axial type cable where the inside is the fiber optic and the outside is the power transmitter?

[Kickaha]

And the ground is... where in that scheme?

Seriously though, I can see a modified MagSafe-esque plug - power, ground, and LP, all in one plug that you can stick an LP/power breakout box on, or LP -> whatevva adapters, or... yeah. Lots of possibilities. (Also, IIRC, LP is daisy-chainable, ala FW and DisplayPort... which means that if devices have dual ports, the number of ports you need on the CPU host drops dramatically.)

A laptop with a MagSafe power, a mini-DP, and a powered LP port? Heck, you can fit those on an iPhone.

[chucker]

Originally Posted by Kickaha A laptop with a MagSafe power, a mini-DP, and a powered LP port? Heck, you can fit those on an iPhone.

*drools*

[bassplayinMacFiend]

Originally Posted by Kickaha And the ground is... where in that scheme?

Hence my use of "co-axial type". *cue handwaving* Stereo headphones have two signals and a common ground built into a single prong. This type of setup (in my imaginary world) could be modified for power delivery.

[rampancy]

What about wireless peripheral connections, though? A few years ago people were talking up emerging standards like wireless USB and wireless FireWire. I can understand the need for a high-speed wire interface like LightPeak, but I'd expect Apple to also be exploring technologies which would eliminate wired connections altogether (even if it means a trade-off in speeds from a standard like LightPeak).

[Kickaha]

The nice thing about wireless tech is that it tends to be flat-packable in the unit body. Ports take up the edges of the device, and necessarily add thickness in many designs. (Think about an MBP, with an SSD drive, but with the drive *NOT* constrained by the usual have-to-fit-in-a-std-hard-drive-space needs. Now the ports become the limiting thickness.)

[rollercoaster375]

Originally Posted by Kickaha A laptop with a MagSafe power, a mini-DP, and a powered LP port? Heck, you can fit those on an iPhone.

I believe the idea is to use LP to connect to DP devices. One LP port does it all.

[Maciej]

What I don't get is this octopus effect. If its just one port is it going to spawn a bunch of different connectors at the end, like an octopus has 8 legs, or what? How does one port do it all if on one end i've got the LP port, and the other end I've got DP and USB and FW? Do three distinct cables come out of the LP port?

[Kickaha]

Back in the mists of time, there were laptop docks. The PowerBook 2400 used this - a proprietary connector hooked what was essentially a subnotebook into a dock that had all of the normal ports, which the 2400c itself didn't have.

That proprietary connector would be replaced with a LP port.

Imagine a USB hub, except two are USB ports, one is FW800, one is Ethernet, one is miniDP, etc. Now that has one cable that connects to the LP. That's a little portable dock. Maybe this is instead a desktop module that the laptop (or iPhone, or iTablet) simply snaps into. When you're ready to go, just pop it out and go. Don't even need to put it to sleep.

Or, if you only need a USB port, you can take that adapter, and so on.

Yeah, it'd spawn a huge market for adapters, and we would have to buy them, but OTOH you only have to buy what you need, and save space/weight on the main thing you haul around.

I'm sure it would be no end of consternation and arguing if it happened. For a MBP, perhaps, it doesn't make as much sense - but imagine having the *option* of all of those ports from a device the size of an iPhone, if you wanted.

[Kickaha]

Originally Posted by rollercoaster375 I believe the idea is to use LP to connect to DP devices. One LP port does it all.

Yeah, I was thinking of a miniDP on there as a most-commonly-used port, but that's not really true, is it? Agreed, if they're going to go this route, may as well go all the way.

[Robo]

Originally Posted by Kickaha For a MBP, perhaps, it doesn't make as much sense - but imagine having the *option* of all of those ports from a device the size of an iPhone, if you wanted.

I've said it before, but: In the not-so-distant future, phones will be our primary computing platforms. We'll plug them into keyboards and displays when we're at our desks and run a full-screen OS on the phone's CPU (using the touchscreen as a trackpad?). I mean, phones are shipping with gigahertz processors now. Some have more RAM than the base Mac mini (OK, so that might not be true any more)

[billybobsky]

i disagree. phones are abused. they do not, on average, last more than about a year or two. why would your primary computing needs be served by something that you regularly use in conditions most actual computers wouldn't survive?

[Kickaha]

Originally Posted by billybobsky i disagree. phones are abused. they do not, on average, last more than about a year or two. why would your primary computing needs be served by something that you regularly use in conditions most actual computers wouldn't survive?

Because they cost 1/3 as much, are always with you, and offer 'enough' horsepower for most basic tasks?

Besides, who said it has to be your only computer... always-on networking in a handheld to gain access back to files on another system (Back to my Mac) or in the cloud, and the portable device doesn't need to be that kickass.

Just convenient.