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Intel unfurls copper-killing optical cables

Intel plans to replace your LAN, storage, and HD video cables with a single high-speed optical cable based on a technology it calls Light Peak. Announced Wednesday morning at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, the 10Gbps interconnect uses a optical cable that can span up to 100 meters, according to Dadi Perlmutter, EVP …

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Anonymous Coward
Megaphone

Woo-Hoo! Monster Cables!

$1,995 per 6ft GOLD-PLATED optical cable! Because GOLD PLATING makes the electr-, er, photons travel more efficiently.

Henry Wertz 1

Sounds cool, but...

Sounds cool, but...

What really is the market for it?

Servers and such would be good for it, but they tend to go in their own direction (Fibre Channel, SAS, etc.)

Laptops and such? USB2 already supports HD video (if it's MPEG2 or MPEG4 encoded), LAN (with a ethernet adaptor, or USB<->USB adaptor), and storage. I just can't see a good case for notebooks and handhelds having Light Peak; the connector is smaller, but USB3 having copper still means it can power devices. It's fast enough for HD, it's fast enough for storage, without myself having to either recharge my devices or find somewhere to plug them in. And LAN? I figure either still on-board ethernet, or nothing (i.e. all wireless), with a USB3->Ethernet adaptor for people who want ethernet.

Busted
WTF?

10Gbps Copper Ethernet

Hasn't this been out for a few years now?

Antidisestablishmentarianist
Heart

More

From another news source:

"The Light Peak technology handles multiple communication protocols at the same time, with quality-of-service provisions to ensure high-priority traffic such as video get preferred treatment, he said."

"You can tie a knot in it and it'll still work."

"can carry data at 10 gigabits per second in both directions simultaneously"

Hopefully this means you can still pipe USB1/2/3, FireWire, ethernet etc etc down it, with the relevant translators on each end. One cable to rule them all?

Wireless sucks*, Cables - oh I mean 'this' cable rocks!

* Because it's not 100% guaranteed to work all the time everytime everywhere

Sarah Davis
Coat

YAWN !

this idea was suggested years and years ago. They could also replace Sata and USB with much faster optical interfaces.

phht

(mine the one with the really old optical audio lead in the pock)

Anonymous Coward
FAIL

New cable! transfer porn in under 30s!

"a user could transfer a full-length Blu-ray movie in less than 30 seconds." no wonder Sony is so interested.

what are they saying? It will teleport your disc from one place to the next or that circumventing the Blu Rays copy protection it totally acceptable selling point, since, well...how else are you going to send a bluray movie and test the result without being able to watch it on the other end?

..you can transfer a copy of a blu ray in 30 seconds...

Did i miss the small print icon? i did find this...

Will Blu-ray support mandatory managed copy?

Yes, mandatory managed copy (MMC) will be part of the Blu-ray format. This feature will enable consumers to make legal copies of their Blu-ray movies that can be transferred over a home network. Please note that "mandatory" refers to the movies having to offer this capability, while it will be up to each hardware manufacturer to decide if they want to support this feature.

and apparently it won't support all things Apple. I don't really care but i do think it's misleading.

Dale 3

Universal cable

My dream cable would be this optical one, with at least two copper wires incorporated to enable it to transfer power at the same time, and with the ability to attach a splitter or combiner at each end so that you could replace several cables with one. It could use different coloured lasers so each stream would remain completely independent and get the full 10Gb. I'd love to have one cable that I plug into my laptop at home, which further down the cable fans out into an ethernet connection to the router, audio connection to the sound system, USB hub to drive the mouse and other legacy bits I don't care to replace right now, and HDMI to the TV. And supplies power to the laptop. Starting to sound like a docking station.

Anonymous Coward
Flame

just say NO to DRM

If Sony has their hand up the arse of this project there has to be some new DRM scheme attached to it some how. They can burn.

Matt Bradley
Thumb Up

@Henry Wertz 1

> What really is the market for it?

Erm... How long is a piece of string?

What about portable / compact iphone style devices with very limited internal storage, but access to huge high speed storage arrays via a single cable?

Or connecting direct from your motherboard to an external monitor with its own internal / standalone high speed video card (unlimited monitors off a single machine)?

How about adding extra CPUs to a low power device as external USB dongle style devices?

Or recording 32 track live audio in real time on a netbook sized machine using multiple external audio interfaces and highspeed external drives?

Or recording multiple live HD video streams direct from external video cameras to external HDD and bluray (see above).

People don't just use personal computers for games and spreadsheets. ;)

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