What is it?
Light Peak is an extremely fast data transfer technology developed by Intel. It's used by your computer, and potentially other electronics, to interact with peripherals like portable drives and displays-- much in the same way that USB is used today. Unlike USB, though, Light Peak is based on optical technology, which means it transfers data as light instead of electricity. Aside from giving the technology its name, light allows for transfer speeds much faster than those reachable by even the latest iterations of USB and FireWire. Light Peak cables can move data at up to 10 GB/s, and are scalable to reach 100 GB/s in the future. Intel says that means sending full-length Blu-Ray movies in less than 30 seconds.
Why the hype?
As computers act more and more as hubs for portable electronics, current ceilings on transfer and connectivity speeds become more and more of a burden. USB 3.0, the "superspeed" serial bus, gained traction on some devices last year, but has yet to be adopted widely. Apple could leap frog USB by co-opting the faster and potentially more versitile Light Peak for its MacBooks, similar to the way it used IEEE 1394, or FireWire, in the '90s.FireWire became popular with audio/visual equipment, but never achieved the kind of universality that USB did. Intel designed Light Peak to be truly universal, and if they're successful, you'll be able to use Light Peak, or "Thunderbolt," to connect virtually all of your peripherals at light speeds.
Winning the connectivity wars means Intel will have to find a lot of cooperative partners. The company is planning a press event in San Francisco for unveiling Light Peak tomorrow, and a concurrent roll-out at Apple's MacBook Pro announcement would be just the kind of high profile introduction the nascent technology needs.
We've been hearing extensive rumors about the new MacBook Pro update that's said to be releasing on Thursday, just in time for Steve Jobs' birthday.
Said to be included on the new MacBook Pro line is Intel's new Light Peak technology, which will be called Thunderbolt on Apple's computers, starting with their professional-grade notebook. Being that it's not in use by the general population yet, it's difficult to know exactly what to expect.
Still, we know that Light Peak has been in the works for some time, and Intel wants it to take off. If the rumors are indeed true, it seems that Apple believes the new format can do well, too. The photos we've seen so far show the new Thunderbolt port where the Mini DisplayPort normally is. It looks identical with the exception of having a lightning bolt picture next to the port. It's hard to say whether or not it's real, because an image like that is extremely easy to doctor with any basic photo editing program. It's also strange that if the port does use Light Peak, that Apple needs to include all those other ports. Then again, Apple probably knows better than to totally get rid of all the ports that people currently use. Man, it's hard to say at this point.
What is Thunderbolt?
Rethink I/O transfer
Enhancing performance with innovative design, Thunderbolt technology combines PCI Express* and DisplayPort* I/O protocols onto a single highly-efficient metaprotocol. Single cable transmission along with traffic routing management (supporting daisy chains and hot-plugging devices) and intelligent hardware controllers like PCIe* deliver off-the-shelf connectivity to nearly any technology imaginable. And DisplayPort meets industry needs by supporting multiple HD displays and up to eight channels of HD audio.
As the building block to Thunderbolt technology, Thunderbolt controllers
contain a high performance cross bar Thunderbolt protocol switch, a PCI
Express switch, and one or more Thunderbolt ports, DisplayPorts, and
PCI Express protocol adapter ports. By integrating all the features
necessary to implement Thunderbolt into a single chip, the host-side
controller enables system vendors to easily incorporate Thunderbolt
technology into their designs.
Changing the PC industry
Leveraging the I/O protocols on a single transport enables engineers to innovate new system design configurations, allowing for standalone performance expansion technologies that use existing native device drivers. Thunderbolt technology also enables the introduction of thinner and lighter laptops without sacrificing I/O performance, and extends to reach other I/O technologies by using PCIe-based adapters, making Gigabit Ethernet, FireWire, or eSATA easy to create.Get up to speed
Several innovative companies announced Thunderbolt-enabled products or plans to support Thunderbolt in upcoming products, including Apple Inc., Promise Technology, Inc., and LaCie. Intel works with the industry to enable a variety of Thunderbolt-based products, including computers, displays, high-speed data storage devices, audio and video devices, and more.Still, Intel is holding a special event tomorrow, which many say is likely to unveil this new Light Peak technology. We are interested in what may come of if, but let's take a look at what some of the pros and cons may be of a new format:
The Good
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, FireWire 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 FireWire, USB 2.0, FireWire 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. Three words: That's friggin' fast.3) Can Lead to Smaller, Thinner Notebooks, Tablets, Etc.
Laptop fans will like this. If 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.The Bad
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 we 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.3) There's Always the Possibility that It Will Never Hit
This is why people don't like to spend money on unproven technology. If you spend a few hundred dollars on hard drives and other external components for your machine, you want them to work with several computers. If it doesn't, it all feels like a waste of money, and those super-fast hard drives were just equipped with another technology that never took off.Power capabilities versus other interfaces
Thunderbolt was clearly intended as, and functions as, a unifying interface for mobile, laptop and desktop devices to prevent more proliferation of cables and connectors for displays and storage. Its power characteristics reflect this. The power, at 10 watts DC, improves on USB 3.0's 4.5 watts DC, but is not beyond the ability of a laptop or tablet to power. While it could not displace power over Ethernet (at 30 watts DC per port and up) due to this low wattage and short cables, its higher data rate may give it some advantages over 10 gigabit Ethernet in some applications until powered ports at 10 gigabits are more common.The origin and announced intent to continue work on a fiber optic interface reduces interest somewhat in a powered device market as the fibre cable could not carry power. The announced 4.5 watt DC USB 3.0 power level for the fibre cable would not be enough to run most existing 10-watt DC Thunderbolt devices. Accordingly there is risk of the market splitting (as it did with USB 2.0 and 3.0) into low-power devices (under 4.5 watts), two of which could be chained on a Thunderbolt port, mid-power devices (under 10 watts) which would monopolize the port, and higher-power devices (over 10 watts) which would require external sources of power to function.
Data centres are not a target market for Thunderbolt, and neither Intel nor Apple has announced any intention to displace buses like Infiniband or 10 or 100 gigabit Ethernet, though this would seem to be technically possible, if not for the power limitations.
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