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Intel promises ultra-fast consumer optical cable
Published 24 September, 2009, 18:09
Edited 14 October, 2009, 11:00
Soon a new type of interconnect will be pumping data between laptops, desktop computers and other gadgets at the astounding speed of 10-gigabits-per-second, Intel announced Wednesday.
Speaking at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) in San Francisco, Dadi Perlmutter, vice president of Intel's mobility group, revealed a new optical cable called Light Peak. The company says it will be affordable, slim and much faster than the multiple copper wires used routinely today.
Intel says it will be able to make Light Peak cables up to 100-meters long, and a single cable will be able to carry different types of data simultaneously. This opens ways for instance better video display signal transfer at distances impossible for electrical cables.
The cable is to hit shelves by 2010. At 10 gigabits per second speed it will be fast enough to transfer a Blu-ray movie from a computer to a portable player in half a minute. Currently, an average transfer via USB 2.0 at 0.5 gigabits-per-second would take around 10 minutes, meaning the new unit is around 20 times faster.
Light Peak will compete with formats like current USB or Firewire, but Intel says their product will complement the existing ones. The company is currently trying to make the technology into an industry standard and has already received support from Sony, Perlmutter announced.
As the product improves, it will reach 100-gigabits-per-second transfer rates and have its price slashed, says Technology Review. Initially Light Peak will rely on standard optical materials, but later versions will use Intel’s silicon-based optical chips, something the company has been investing heavily in for years. Silicon photonics is hoped to eventually be incorporated into integrated chips, skyrocketing computational speeds.
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