Intel demos Light Peak -- its USB 3.0 killer

Dan Warne
15 September 2010, 6:37 AM


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Intel says its all-optical, 10Gbit/s USB-killer connector will be in your notebook next year, and puts live demos on display to prove it.


Intel had demos of Light Peak running on the show floor at IDF 2010 over the last few days. Light Peak is Intel's big competitor to USB 3, and is a full optical standard, which provides 10Gbit/s data transfer rate on each Light Peak port.

The standard also allows daisy-chaining, unlike USB, so every device you connect with Light Peak becomes a hub for connection of other devices (which then become hubs as well.) The Light Peak ports and connector look practically identical to USB.

Intel demoed a computer streaming an uncompressed high definition 1080P video file over a light peak cable at an (barely fluctuating) speed of 769.6MB per second to a Samsung TV it had hacked Light Port into. Note, that is megabytes per second, not megabits.

Although Intel's mobility boss Dadi Perlmutter refused to rule either USB 3.0 or Light Peak in or out of the platforms that will support the company's new "Sandy Bridge" CPUs, other Intel staff on the show floor said they expected Light Peak to be shipping in volume next year.

There has been considerable speculation over whether Intel will build USB 3.0 into its next round of chipsets, with pundits speculating that the chipmaker's reticence to confirm either way is because it wants to give Light Peak a leg-up. Currently the only way PC makers can put USB 3.0 into a PC is with a relatively expensive third-party chip. It's expected USB 3.0 will really get its uptake boost when it is built into the basic chipset specification from Intel.

However, while USB 3.0 and Light Peak both have impressive tech specs (4.8Gbit/s and 10Gbit/s respectively), USB 3.0 has the advantage of being backwards compatible with the millions of USB 2.0 devices already out there. USB 3.0 also has the advantage of being able to pass power down the cable, whereas Light Peak, being a fully optical standard, obviously can't.

Intel says apart from its high bandwidth and daisy-chaining capabilities, the other big advantage of Light Peak is that you can run any protocol over it. For example, it can very quickly become a replacement for HDMI cables because you can simply run the HDMI protocol over it, alongside any other protocol like Ethernet, or DVI. It also says Light Peak will grow to support 100Gbit/s within the decade -- an unthinkably huge bandwidth for what is a local connectivity standard (but we're not going to be so foolish to predict that 100Gbit/s is enough for everyone... that predication might come back to bite us.)

Interestingly, the initial design of USB 3.0 reserved the capability in the connectors for optical cables -- though this has not been implemented in the shipping version of USB 3.0.

Dan Warne is attending IDF San Francisco as a guest of Intel.


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tl8 (New user):

The lack of power transmission will probably kill it.
That is why USB is so good, you can do alot with 500mA and 5V.

15 September 2010, 8:45 AM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

kaf (User):

It may take off for some applications. If apple adopts it, it will become the video editing standard. After all, there is no other competing cheap consumer grade optical standard out there (USB3 having ditched that idea) and the existing optical solutions for video editing are out of many peoples price range. I'd imaging video editors will want to adopt it for both its speed, and the fact that it maintains that speed at a pretty stable rate. Something that other standards like usb and firewire sometimes struggle with.
But for most consumer devices I cant see this beating usb3's backwards compatability and power transmission. So I see both of these standards complimenting each other in the future.

15 September 2010, 11:22 AM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

AlexF (New user):

So, how many years after fibre-channel, 10GBase and SPDIF?

15 September 2010, 5:50 PM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

Concord (New user):

With all my respect to Intel, if they are not going to launch their "light peak" technology quickly they will definitely gona loss the competition against USB 3.0.

Its a time & efficient manners here, Otherwise Intel should expect and plane for the long term win over USB 3.0(Lets say after 3-4 years from today), of course they need to but plans for another version of USB which is USB 4.0 may be :).

16 September 2010, 4:43 AM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

todd_h86 (New user):

I think light-peak and USB aren't really competitors, to me they do things different enough to differentiate between the two. USB 3 - data transfer to non powered devices (hard drives, printers etc), lightpeak - data transfer to powered devices (camera, TVs, PC 2 PC etc). I can see why people would put them against one another but to me its orange to mandarin, same same but different!

16 September 2010, 1:18 PM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

Tony Grooby (User):

They can always integrate power in to the connectors. but it i don't think wit will take off with Peripheral like mice and keyboard printers as they don't require high bandwidth.

18 September 2010, 2:27 PM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

kaf (User):

I think its pretty obvious to everyone that these are not directly competing technologies. Everyone including Dan Warne.
Picking an established tech like usb and putting the word "killer" after it in the title of the article is a cheap way to get people to click and read.

18 September 2010, 2:54 PM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

J876 (User):

The fact that Lightpeak doesn't transmit power through the connector and that it is just a fibre optic cable isn't a disadvantage at all.

It would be be great for the electricity industry and test laboratories for the inherant safety of the optic fibre itself.

A electrically isolated connector end-to-end increases safety (dangerous electric currents have a hard time travelling though optic fibre as opposed to Copper cable) and prevents ground loops and reduces EMI/RFI (interference, noise and coupling) between equipment.

Lightpeak definitletly will have a place in the electricity industry and research laboratories because of its high bandwidth and the optic fibre with no direct electrical link between connectors.

21 September 2010, 10:02 AM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

jijusr (New user):

Our buddy jesus from cupertino informed us he will fit this in his fruit starting 2011 so thats gonna be a industry standard in no time just like what he did with Wi-Fi N and HTML5 ;-)


Intel Insider

23 September 2010, 12:41 PM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

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