Light Peak Technology

Introduction

       We are living in an age of connectivity. Think of any sort of information, and it can be transferred to us within no time; be it audio, video or any other form of data. when we are talking about transferring data between our computer and the other peripherals, the first and foremost standard comes to our mind is Universal Serial Bus (USB). It is a medium speed serial data addressable bus system which carry large amount of data to a relatively short distance (up to 5m).The present version USB 3.0 promises to provide theoretical speed of up to 5Gbps.
Is that enough for out tech savy generation????





    Intel has unveiled a new inter-operable standard called LIGHT PEAK. This technology can transfer data between computers and the peripherals at the speed of 10Gbps in both the directions with maximum range of 100m (much higher than USB or any other standard). They also have the potential to scale its speed high up to 100Gbps in near future. Light Peak is the code name for a new high-speed optical cable technology designed to connect electronic devices to each other. Light Peak is basically an optical cable interface designed to connect devices in peripheral bus. It is being developed as a single universal replacement for the current buses such as SCSI, SATA, USB, FireWire, PCI express, and HDMI etc in an attempt to reduce the proliferation of ports on computers. Fiber-optic cabling is not new, but Intel executives believe Light Peak will make it cheap enough and small enough to be incorporated into consumer electronics.

    With light peak, the bandwidth would tremendously increase, multiple protocols could be run over single longer and thinner cable. The prototype system featured two motherboard controllers that both supported two bidirectional buses at the same time, wired to four external connectors. Intel has stated that Light Peak has the performance to drive everything from storage to displays to networking, and it can maintain those speeds over 100 meter runs.

Why is it required?

     Over the years we've used different ports for peripherals in computers. Older computers have special ports just for accessories like keyboards, mice, printers and monitors. With older computers, we have to install a special computer card on the motherboard if wanted to add other peripherals like joysticks and game-pads.While USB (Universal Serial Bus) didn't eliminate all special ports, it did cut down their number. Today, peripherals like keyboards, mice, printers and webcams are available as USB accessories. The ports are hot-pluggable, meaning you can connect or disconnect them at any time. They're also interchangeable in that you don't always have to plug each device into a specific USB port. But USB has its limitations.One of those limitations is speed. The USB 2.0 standard transmits data at 480 megabits per second (Mbps). That's fast enough for accessories like keyboards and mice to work smoothly but not fast enough for high-bandwidth accessories like computer monitors. The USB 3.0 standard increases the speed to 4.8 gigabits per second (Gbps), which is 10 times faster than USB 2.0, but the computer industry has been slow to adopt USB 3.0.Intel's its own answer to transferring data at high speeds using a standardized format is called Light Peak. Intel representatives say it has the potential to transmit data at more than 20 times the speed of USB 3.0. And as the name suggests, it will do this through the medium of light.


     In the near future, people would be using more and more electrical devices such as HD devices, MIDs and many more and user experience would depend on the huge volume of data capturing, transfer, storage, and reconstruction. But existing electrical cable technology is approaching the practical limit for higher bandwidth and longer distance, due to the signal degradation caused by electro-magnetic interference (EMI) and signal integrity issues.Higher bandwidth can be achieved by sending the signals down with more wires, but apparently this approach increases cost, power and difficulty of PCB layout, which explains why serial links such as SATA, SAS, and USB are becoming the mainstream. However optical communications do not create EMI because there communication is done with the help of photons rather than electrons, thus allowing higher bandwidth and longer distances. Besides, optical technology also allows for small form factors and longer, thinner cables.





Where We Reached?

    Is it ready for implementation!!!!Light Peak, announced in 2009, was originally designed to use fiber optics to transmit data among systems and devices, but the initial builds will be based on copper.For the majority of application today, copper is good, But data transmission is much faster over fiber optics, which will increasingly used by vendors in Light Peak implementations.Intel has said Light Peak technology would use light to speed up data transmission between mobile devices and products including storage, networking and audio devices. It would transfer data at bandwidths starting at 10 gigabits per second over distances of up to 100 meters.But with copper wires, the speed and range of data transmission may not be as great.PCs today are linked to external devices using connectors like USB,USB 3.0 already has a traction in the market.There could be co-existence, with USB, display and networking protocols running on top of Light Peak.



Merits

1) One Port to Rule Them All
The idea behind a technology like Light Peak is that it's going to replace all the formats we currently use such as USB, Fire Wire and all the other stuff you've ever at one time connected to your computer. This is all in hopes of cutting down the number of ports needed on your computer, and hopefully to create a new standard that external drives and other devices can use to connect.
 

2) Unbelievably Fast Transfer
USB is pretty much the format used for device connections. Then there is Fire Wire, USB 2.0, Fire Wire 800, USB 3.0 … you get the idea. The reason this happened was increased bandwidth needs. More technologies came, and pretty soon there was a mess of this cable and that cable for each particular device we wanted to connect to our computers. Light Peak is offering high bandwidth at 10Gbps, and can possibly be taken up to 100Gbps over the next decade, according to Intel's website. They also say that it can transfer a full-length Blu-Ray movie in under 30 seconds.
 

3) Can Lead to Smaller, Thinner Notebooks, Tablets, Etc.
This single port is as small as the rumored Apple port, it will reduce the size of many of the devices we use today. This technology can offer high enough bandwidth to transfer data to various devices without breaking a sweat. Even with two or three of these ports, it would take up less space than two USB ports, FireWire, Ethernet, etc. Of course we would probably need some sort of splitter to connect our various devices, but even that may just be part of the transition phase as manufacturers adopt the technology.

Areas of Improvement

1) Adoption Rate May Be Slow
This is always a bit of a concern for those who buy early. What if people are slow to pick up a new format? If consumers don't bite, manufacturers don't use it. If manufacturers don't use it, consumers don't want it. That vicious cycle. USB 1.1 was released in 1998, but even that seemed to take a while to become a household name. Of course having a computer in the 90s didn't almost seem like a requirement.

2) New Plugs, New Peripherals, New This, New That
This is also part of that transition phase mentioned above. While the result over the course of a few years may be a single does-it-all connection, it will take a while before all devices and peripherals start using it regularly. That's going to be the not-so-fun part. Most of us don't like spending money, especially on unproven technology.