Light Peak: black hole or brilliant beacon?
Summary: It's a fight folks, between USB 3.0 and Intel's new Light Peak. USB 3.0 is already shipping and Light Peak has yet to be announced, but by late next year they'll be duking it out for the hearts and minds of consumers. And the winner is…
It's a fight folks, between USB 3.0 and Intel's new Light Peak. USB 3.0 is already shipping and Light Peak has yet to be announced, but by late next year they'll be duking it out for the hearts and minds of consumers. And the winner is…
Light Peak Light Peak is Intel's new 10 Gbit per second - scaling to 100 Gb/sec - fiber optic interconnect. Intel is taking direction from Apple and Sony, both strong with creative professionals, and whose bandwidth requirements are “more.”
The buzz is gathering buzz around Light Peak: the Intel demo at IDF; they're working with storage and display vendors; reports that Light Peak is due on the next generation of MacBook Pros this spring; and Steve Job's comment that he doesn't see USB 3.0 taking off.
Taken individually, none of these are conclusive. But taken as a whole they suggest a strategy that is quite a bit more sophisticated than Intel's past I/O marketing failures such as Infiniband.
Light Peak won't be the only 10 Gb per second interconnect shipping: 10 gigE ports will be down to $50 each by this time next year. But USB 3.0 will be the volume leader, thanks to its backwards compatibility with 1 billion+ USB 2.0 ports.
USB 3.0 But if USB 3.0 is already shipping and has a strong installed base of USB 2.0 devices to work with, how can Light Peak possibly succeed? It won't be a slamdunk, but Light Peak has a decent chance.
What are Light Peak's market advantages? In no particular order:
- High-end focus. Apple owns over 70% of the high-end PC market. Their customers can invest in the new technology.
- The everything interconnect. Light Peak implements the lowest two layers of the networking stack. You can run virtually any protocol stack-ethernet, FireWire, Infiniband andUSB-on top of it. Connect displays, storage, networks or virtual I/O systems at twice the speed of USB 3.0.
- Convenience. Optical cables are thin, light and long distance capable. Plastic is cheap for short distances. Glass is highly reliable for long runs. Many USB 2 printers limit cable lengths today, something USB 3.0 won't improve.
- Technical superiority. Not only is it fast, but fiber is immune to electromagnetic interference and crazy-making electrical problems like ground loops.
- A future. USB 3.0's performance is impressive, but it's half of Light Peak's and the end of the line. Light Peak is just beginning its lifecycle with a roadmap to 100 Gb/s.
Creative pros need a smarter I/O strategy today. The welter of interconnects - USB, FireWire, HDMI, digital audio, eSATA and SDI, to name a few - either have technical problems like noise and distance or cost and availability problems.
The Storage Bits take I wasn't optimistic a year ago about Light Peak, but I'm seeing more intelligent marketing than I'd expected. Light Peak won't replace the cheap and ubiquitous USB anytime soon, if ever. But it doesn't need to.
Today's notebooks often sport 3 or 4 USB ports, eSATA, DisplayPort, HDMI, VGA, Ethernet, FireWire and microphone and speaker jacks. It's almost as bad is the late 90s when PCs had PS/2 ports, parallel printer ports, SCSI, modems and VGA ports - and 2 floppies.
Remember SCSI-based scanners? I do, and it's not a happy memory.
Intel, Apple and Sony can easily fumble the Light Peak opportunity: excessive licensing fees (think FireWire); wonky DRM; cost-curve fails; insufficient vendor support.
But it can clearly be a big win for storage users: higher data integrity; greater bandwidth; longer distances; more convenient hardware; and the ability to integrate fast solid state storage wherever it make sense.
Let's hope they get this right.
Comments welcome, of course. Want to see more? Check out Intel's IDF demo. Update: Good discussion between NonZealot and DeusXMachina on how LP might be used and what it is and isn't deep in the comments. Keep clicking "View more comments" until you get to it. End update.
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Talkback
RE: Light Peak: black hole or brilliant beacon?
RE: Light Peak: black hole or brilliant beacon?
RE: Light Peak: black hole or brilliant beacon?
RE: Light Peak: black hole or brilliant beacon?
<nt>
Sounds great but quick question
Light Peak supplying power?
There was some discussion of a copper connection parallel to the fiber connections to allow for powering external devices however later discussions seem to have dropped that. If nothing else, anything much over 5m is going to need a separate power supply due to losses over the cabling and Light Peak supports up to a 100m cable so an external power supply is likely to be needed in many cases.
Then it won't replace USB
If Light Peak doesn't supply power to peripherals then it isn't a competitor to USB. It might replace eSATA, HDMI, and FireWire but not USB.
Err... why would it replace FireWire and not USB? [nt]
@olePigeon: all based on power
Unless I can plug my external hard drive or scanner into a Light Peak port without having to plug it into anything else to get power, Light Peak is not going to replace USB.
From the reading I've done, FireWire also provides power to peripherals but I've yet to see any consumer peripherals that actually took their power from a FireWire port. The only popular consumer peripheral I've ever seen that uses FireWire are video recorders but they have batteries. I also have a SATA HD dock that has a FireWire port on it but the dock needs to be plugged into an AC power source since neither USB nor FireWire can provide enough power to run a 3.5" HD.
But you tell me since I'll be the first to admit that I don't know that much about FireWire: what does FireWire offer, that is [b]actually[/b] used in consumer devices, that Light Peak can't offer? In other words, take any consumer device out there today and replace its FireWire port with a Light Peak port and then tell me what functionality that consumer device would lose. I've just outlined how removing the USB port on a scanner or HD and replacing it with Light Peak would radically reduce the convenience of the device. You would need to carry around an AC adapter with you and plug it into a wall every time you wanted to use it. That isn't good.
FireWire supplies up to 30v, more than enough power for a 3.5" drive...
FireWire supplies up to 30v, more than enough power for a 3.5" drive, versus the 5v for USB. Many external 3.5" FireWire enclosures include an AC adapter for use with USB, but will work fine with just the FireWire port plugged in (or include a USB Y-adapter.)
If you actually have FireWire ports on your computer, give it a try. Unplug the AC adapter on your SATA dock and just plug in the FireWire cable. If it still doesn't work, then the manufacturer was just lazy.
FireWire is popular with larger external drives. You can buy bus-powered 3.5" firewire enclosure and stick a 3TB HDD in there.
Your concerns, however, are not unwarranted. I still can't find any information regarding a power supply for Light Peak.
Personally, I'm a little confused why we're even bothering with Light Peak when Power over Ethernet would be just as fast and already solves the power problem.
Good to know
To be honest, I use the eSATA port on my dock anyway but good to know that FireWire allows for so much power. I also don't mean to knock FireWire at all since I understand it is extremely popular in professional circles, it just never made it big in the consumer marketplace, mostly due to the expense of the port itself, from my understanding.
But thanks for the info.
RE: Light Peak: black hole or brilliant beacon?
"FireWire supplies up to 30v, more than enough power for a 3.5" drive, versus the 5v for USB."
While I agree with this, I'd really like a link to a currently shipping 3.5" enclosure that is FireWire bus powered.
Thanks!
RE: Light Peak: black hole or brilliant beacon?
You could always BYO?
:)
(Laughs to all the people here who continually brag about "building" their own PCs, but would have no idea how to pull power off the FW bus pins to supply DC-in power to an externally powered enclosure.)
RE: Light Peak: black hole or brilliant beacon?
Yeah, I was thinking of the same drive. With these new green, lower power 3.5" drives out now, I was hoping that enclosure (or idea) would be resurrected, but of course I know this is just wishful thinking...
DeusXMachina, its not that people couldn't do it
Sure people could go out and purchase the connector, cable, crimp tool, electronic components, solder, PCB, ect and build whatever they need.
I've worked in the PCB/Electronics industry for 25 years, and I can tell you many have no real ineterest in building something like that when a standard 120V AC outlet is usually close by, the hardest part bending over to plug the AC adapter in! :)
Um, yes it is
Just to be clear here, I am not saying that doing so is a big deal or that inability to do so is some sort of scarlet letter. But the idea that piecing together some parts in an ATX case evinces some sort of technical expertise is laughable. And yet that is the context in which it is almost universally brought up.
@olepigeon
And thank YOU for playing!
[i]so he doesn't know that firewire can power external devices[/i]
Actually, I stated that I DID know this, only that I wasn't aware of any consumer peripherals that actually drew their power from FireWire, unlike USB consumer devices for which I can find hundreds of examples, like my iPhone!
[i]He also doesn't know that firewire is a peer-to-peer protocol and doesn't even need a computer involved in the chain.[/i]
Then this has exactly 0 relevance to the discussion at hand which is about computers.
Thanks for playing.
Not playin', jes' sayin': Thank YOU, actually.
P.S. Me, I '23,947th' the motion to add 'reply' to the 'reply' although there should be little doubt in this case who I am replying to. Hint: not 'frgough' :D