Intel's Light Peak interconnect technology is ready

An Intel executive on Friday said that its Light Peak interconnect technology, designed to link PCs to devices like displays and external storage, is 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, said David Perlmutter, executive vice president and general manager of Intel's Architecture Group, in an interview with IDG News Service at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

"The copper came out very good, surprisingly better than what we thought," Perlmutter said. "Optical is always a new technology which is more expensive," he added.

Perlmutter declined to comment on when devices using Light Peak would reach store shelves, saying shipment depended on device makers. Intel has in the past said that devices with Light Peak technology would start shipping in late 2010 or early this year.

For the majority of user needs today, copper is good, Perlmutter said. But data transmission is much faster over fiber optics, which will increasingly be 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, but Perlmutter refused to be drawn into a debate on whether Light Peak would ultimately replace those technologies.

"USB 3.0 already has a traction in the market. I don't know if that will change," Perlmutter said.

There could be co-existence, with USB, display and networking protocols running on top of Light Peak.

"Look at [Light Peak] as a medium by which you can do things, not necessarily as one replacing the other," Perlmutter said.

Light Peak: 
Interesting Facts:

·  If you were using Light Peak at 10Gbps, you could transfer a full length Blu-Ray movie in less than 30 seconds.

·  If all the books in the Library of Congress were digitized, they would amount to over 20 terabytes of data (a 2 with 1 3 zeroes after it). If you used Light Peak technology operating at 1 0 Gb/s, you could transfer the whole library of congress in less than 35 minutes.

·  If you had an MP3 player with 64GB of storage, it would only take a minute to fill it up with music using Light Peak at 1 0Gbps.

·  The optical fibers used in Light Peak have a diameter of 1 25 microns, about the width of a human hair.

·  With Light Peak you could have thin, flexible optical cables that are up to 100 meters long. With Light Peak you could have a PC at one end of a football field talking to a device at the other end of the field.

·  With Light Peak at 1 0Gbps, one could transfer close to 10 million tweets in one second.

·  Light Peak can send and receive data at 1 0 billion bits per second. That is a 1 with ten zeros after it. If you had $10 billion dollars in single dollar bills and piled them on top of each other it would form a stack about 700 miles high.

·  Optical modules traditionally used for telecom and datacom are physically larger than the Light Peak optical module. For example, 1 20 Light Peak optical modules could fit in the area of a traditional telecom module.

·  The Light Peak optical module was designed to be lower cost than telecom optical modules through clever design and volume manufacturing. Telecom optical modules may cost more than 10 times more than Light Peak modules.

·  The first laser was invented in 1960 by Dr. Maiman. Some of his contemporaries commented that his invention was a solution looking for a problem. Today, lasers are everywhere including doctor’s offices, internet data centers and in factories for cutting thick sheets of steel. With Light Peak, you will have lasers in your everyday PC.

·  The lasers used in Light Peak are called VCSELs (Vertical Cavity, Surface Emitting Laser) and are a mere 250 microns by 250 microns in dimension. This is as wide as two human hairs.