Intel's Light Peak Technology - Optical Cabling For the Masses

Intel has unveiled Light Peak, an optical cabling technology that can transfer data between your computer and peripherals at 10 Gb/s, fast enough to transfer a full-length Blu-ray movie in less than 30 seconds. 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 at a price point that consumers and manufacturers will accept.

Fiber optics typically use a cigarette-box-sized optical transceiver, which contains tiny lasers and photo cells, to facilitate the connections. Intel miniaturized the box down to the dimensions of a wafer thin dime. Optical cables are already pretty tiny; each one is just 125 microns wide or about the width of a single human hair. The transceiver can deliver two channels of information over the fiber-optic cable—necessary since PCs need at least two ports.

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Intel states that the technology will eventually scale up to a blazing 100 Gb/s.

Inside each transceiver are two tiny lasers only 250 microns wide, or the width of two human hairs, that transmit the light over each channel. The industry name for the lasers is VCSELs which stands for Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Laser. Accompanying the lasers is a matching pair of photo detectors that receive laser light from the other end of the channels.

Another advantage of the optical cabling is that, unlike electrical cable, multiple protocols can be run over a single cable. Photons don't interfere with each other the way electrons do so multiple devices can share a single cable even if those devices are using different protocols. This will allow manufacturers to make even smaller yet more efficient components when building computer and electronic devices since they can use a single Light Peak component for connected devices. Light Peak's optical cabling will also allow for much longer cables since light does not degrade the same way electricity does over long distances.

Intel representatives explained that Light Peak could provide a better cabling solution to companies like 3ality. It makes a 3D video camera that transmits data at 8 Gb/s per second and currently uses bulky electrical cables.

Light Peak stands ready to replace the existing data transfer technologies of USB and FireWire and there is even speculation that Apple may skip over USB 3.0 and go straight to Light Peak. There are reports on the web that Light Peak is an outgrowth of Apple's desire to replace the multiple ports on their systems for a single port that could service all connected devices and that Apple's Steve Jobs might haves reached out to Intel's Paul Otellini for a fiber-optic solution.

Light Peak-based products could arrive as early as 2010.