Storage Bits

Robin Harris
Home / News & Blogs / Storage Bits

Light Peak power patent

By | November 30, 2010, 7:35am PST

Intel and Apple are betting on Light Peak, a 10 GB/s fiber optic I/O system. But glass is a lousy conductor and it’s handy if the I/O bus can carry power too. A newly published Apple patent application shows how they could do it.

The patent
“Power Adapters For Powering And/Or Charging Peripheral Devices” was filed in July and published this month.

Written in dense, conceals-more-than-it-reveals legalese of high-priced patent lawyers, it requires digging to see how it applies to Light Peak. There are literally dozens of possible “embodiments” suggested by the patent, most of which are obvious prior art.

Key points
Here are the key points from the patent, edited for clarity and bolding added:

The present invention relates to apparatus and methods for powering peripheral devices. More particularly, the present invention relates to improved techniques for powering and/or charging peripheral devices through a data transmission line.

Simple enough.

The invention pertains to power adapters that allow a user to power and/or charge a peripheral device . . . without requiring any additional cables or connectors. The invention also pertains to a connection method for powering a peripheral without requiring a host, peripheral or hub to remain powered on. The connection method allows peripherals to operate on buses that do not supply power.

“[B]uses that do not supply power” sums up optical rather nicely.

The Look
What might such a beast look like? No surprise here:

The power/data plug is on the bottom of Apple’s standard white power adapter. Maybe we’ll finally be able to replace the cable without buying the whole adapter.

The Storage Bits take
Fiber optics are a wonderful data transmission medium: fast; robust; lightweight; and scalable through Wave Division Multiplexing (using several colors to move data in parallel). But consumers - Apple’s main market - love the convenience of bus-powered peripherals.

Most peripherals - storage arrays, displays, most audio systems, scanner/copiers, printers and routers - are wall-powered and will stay that way. A simple fiber attach meets the need.

But there are many devices - most of them storage - that do rely on host power. Portable disk drives, flash drives, portable scanners, hubs, card readers and small audio devices have bus-powered versions available today.

And as power-saving technologies improve, there will be more devices that could be bus-powered, if there is power on the bus. Apple has 2 alternatives:

  1. Light Peak as a dock link, enabling powerful notebooks to morph into desktops through a single optical connector.
  2. Light Peak as a general-purpose high performance I/O channel for notebook computers.

Either is a big improvement over today’s welter of slow and incompatible links. But Light Peak as a dock-enabler isn’t very sexy. Even Steve’s Reality Distortion Field won’t put that over on the True Believers.

The second, more attractive, option requires power on the bus. What this patent shows is that Apple engineers, at least, are working to make that happen.

Comments welcome, of course.

Kick off your day with ZDNet's daily e-mail newsletter. It's the freshest tech news and opinion, served hot. Get it.

More from “Storage Bits”

Topics

Patent, Adapter, Peripheral, Apple Inc., Connection Method, Robin Harris

Robin Harris has been messing with computers for over 30 years and selling and marketing data storage for over 20 in companies large and small.

Disclosure

Robin Harris

Robin Harris is a president of TechnoQWAN, a consulting and analyst firm in northern Arizona. He also writes StorageMojo.com, a blog which accepts advertising from companies in the storage industry, and has a 25 year history with IT vendors. He has many industry contacts, many of whom are friends and all of whom he has opinions about. Robin has relationships with many companies in the technology industry. Every company he writes about may have sought to influence his opinion through carefully-crafted marketing messages and self-serving white papers, gifts ranging from desk calendars, t-shirts, lunches and trips as well as analyst or consulting assignments. He also invests in some technology companies. He may accept payment for services in stock as well. Robin discloses financial investments in or client relationships with companies named in Storage Bits. To help readers sort out the gold from the dross in his writings, Robin tries to communicate his reasons as clearly as he can. If you agree, you are intelligent and discerning. If you disagree, well, you disagree. In all cases, Robin encourages readers to subject everything they read, see or hear on the internet or from politicians to some simple questions: * What assumptions are implicit in the world view and judgments of the author? * What, if any, is the factual basis for the opinions the author expresses? * Is it reasonable, logical and clear? Your critical faculties: use ‘em or lose ‘em!

Biography

Robin Harris

Harris has been messing with computers for over 30 years and selling and marketing data storage for over 20 in companies large and small. He introduced a couple of multi-billion dollar storage products (DLT, the first Fibre Channel array) to market, as well as a many smaller ones. Earlier he spent 10 years marketing servers and networks. After leaving corporate life he founded TechnoQWAN, a consulting and analyst firm. He also developed StorageMojo into one of the top storage industry blogs.

Robin writes, consults, coaches and lives among the mountains of northern Arizona.

25
Comments
Add Your Opinion

Join the conversation!

Just In

RE: Light Peak power patent
FAULKNE 13th Oct
Good day to confirm this comment I would appreciate T h e b e s t o f Z D N e t d e l i v e r e d your website very nice to everyone Yes, Oracle is the only one with shared-disk architecture, but that is there advantage. It means you can add or remove nodes and the database lives on. In a shared nothing architecture, if you lose a node, you lose the system. I'm sure Oracle appreciates EMC highlighting their advantage.I also desire to signal in your RSS feeds. Thank you as soon as once again and maintain up the great operate Awesome post! Thank you very much || thanks for nice content this is really benefit to me.
View in thread
0 Votes
+ -
Cant see how any of this is non obvious in any way...
Johnny Vegas 30th Nov 2010
Please uspto, do the right thing and laugh this out of there...
0 Votes
+ -
Did I miss something?
NonZealot 30th Nov 2010
powering and/or charging peripheral devices through a data transmission line

Okay, this I get. Sounds cool. Sure, we are doing that today but I'm sure that Apple will have a better name for a process that is exactly the same as what everyone else has been doing for years.

So why does the picture have AC prongs? You plug this thing into the wall and it then charges your device through the same port that the device uses for data? Isn't that called... USB? Seriously, other than the shape of the data/power port on the bottom of the diagram, I have power adapters that look exactly like this: AC prongs and a USB port.

I must be missing something.
0 Votes
+ -
Yes, evidentially you did.
Snooki_smoosh_smoosh Updated - 30th Nov 2010
@NonZealot... It is basically a powered Optical connection. Basically you have fiber paired with some copper to the device. Think of it like POE (Power over Ethernet) with a fiber cable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_Peak

Edit: Or yes a new type of USB that uses an Optic connection for highspeed data transfer that has a pair of copper leads for power.
0 Votes
+ -
That I get
NonZealot Updated - 30th Nov 2010
@Snooki_smoosh_smoosh
Why the AC prongs though? It makes no sense.

Or are the AC prongs optional, exactly like USB right now? If you want to connect your device to the computer, you use your LP port. If you aren't by your computer, you can use the exact same port to charge the device?

In other words, this is exactly the way USB works today except that underneath the protective tubing of the cord, you have optical for data and copper for power instead of all copper for data + power? When your device is plugged into an AC socket, the optical part of the cord goes unused?

If so, I suppose that patents have been granted for dumber things. it isn't like the data transfer mechanism (optical cable) is actually being used to power the device. Powering the device is still happening with copper wiring, it just happens to run alongside an optical cable in the same cord.

If Apple figured out a way of transferring power over an optical cable, that would be neat. If this is just running copper alongside optical, this is dumb. Edit: and when I say dumb, I don't mean powered Light Peak. That's great. Dumb refers to the patent. The power aspect of powered Light Peak isn't happening in a new way, it is happening in exactly the same way that every single other powered connector has worked.
0 Votes
+ -
Reply to edit: thanks
NonZealot 30th Nov 2010
@Snooki_smoosh_smoosh
Like I said, patents have been granted for dumber things but this doesn't truly sound like a new way of doing things.
0 Votes
+ -
Optional, likely or necessary for Consumer
Snooki_smoosh_smoosh 30th Nov 2010
@NZ. Not many consumer routers, if any, use POE, so my guess would be that would act like a Power Injector, like one would use to send to a WAP where there may not be a local power source nearby, and the organization doesn't have a POE switch.

It will likely be several years before we see fiber replacing copper in the home though. Fast, but expensive.
0 Votes
+ -
RE: Light Peak power patent
wdbarrett 2nd Dec 2010
@NonZealot
You did not miss anything. I downloaded the patent. This is an update to a patent that was originally filed in 2001. It is the basic iPod charger. It has absolutely nothing to do with Light Peak.
0 Votes
+ -
RE: Light Peak power patent
vanax 30th Nov 2010
Where are the studies on more and more exposure of radio frequencies of various intensities and cumulative effects on human tissue?
0 Votes
+ -
Wear a tin foil hat.
Snooki_smoosh_smoosh 30th Nov 2010
@vanax
0 Votes
+ -
RE: Light Peak power patent
Robin Harris 30th Nov 2010
@vanax Funding drives research. No funding, no research. Wireless services are a $250 billion industry. Why upset the applecart?
0 Votes
+ -
RE: Light Peak power patent
tonymcs@... 30th Nov 2010
@vanax

They've been done. Look up ionising radiation and try and understand why it's not wireless frequencies.

Or wear the tin-foil hat, it helps to identify you wink
0 Votes
+ -
You can't back up your assertion.
vanax 1st Dec 2010
@tonymcs@... If you could, you would provide the link, and to one that's an authoritative study. I guess you fold.
0 Votes
+ -
USB3 hybrid LP cables
t0mt0m 30th Nov 2010
Seems like they're skirting the USB3 /LP cables seen in previous demos, but they're not outright talking about it yet (as its not a legitimate USB authorised product or standard yet).
See the cables shown for CES, IDF in 2010, the LP demos Intel has done etc - the connections have been USB cables with LP in the plastic rectangle divider.

So for this USB3/LP cable:
WIth a power plug connection to the mains - you'd get power from using it with a standard Apple power plug - just that the connector could take the slightly different USB3 end.

Plugged into a USB3 capable computer - you'd get USB3 capability, power from the bus if the device was on, and LP if the computer had LP.

Doesn't an iPad, using a USB connector that can't give enough power, meet the definition of a peripheral that can

"operate on buses that do not supply power."

I'd say LP is a shoe in - Apple needs updates on the patents regarding USB cables, USB docks, USB connector power plugs, iDevices and Macs and Light Peak, if LP is added and integrated into USB connection.

The patent itself tells you, or you could tell by looking, the figure on this page shows a FireWire connection.

I think what's more interesting - is that you could use a "dumb" power plug socket to basically be a linker/daisychain product between LP enabled products. It could act as a hub that the LP data goes through, but that also charges the devices.
Will read the whole patent - but that's whats striking from the other drawings on first glance.

Is this Apple gearing up to patent having LP hub built into their power plugs? They could also potentially daisy chain power via the USB cable - ie a hub doesn't need to be on to pass on the power via a star or daisychain configuration...
0 Votes
+ -
I can see the headlines now...
Scubajrr 30th Nov 2010
"APPLE PATENTS COPPER WIRE: Brings lawsuit against all manfactures of electrical equipment for patent infringment!! Apple brought a lawsuit before the Cupertino district courts today claiming they had a patent on power adaptors that provide power to devices via a single conductive cable. "The invention pertains to power adapters that allow a user to power and/or charge a peripheral device . . . without requiring any additional cables or connectors." (film at 11:00)

This patent application is laughable. Basically what it says is "We want to patent the idea of power running parallel to data"
0 Votes
+ -
Thant is want to get
smithjones100 30th Nov 2010
So Apple, Intel want to have a USB3/LP hybrid cable, but they'd need to pass it to USB folks to authorise it.
The possibilities of being able to daisychain or pass through power and data, even via devices that aren't turned on would be great - That you could have your TV hooked up to your camcorder & Mac. With the TV off, but the PC and camcorder on, you could potentially still send at least data, if not power too.

If Apple uses a hybrid USB3/LP cable - they'll need to update their power plugs, USB sockets, cables etc - and so they'd need patent updates on all those. Intel has flipflopped on LP timings (see what they said at IDF/CES 2010, and what they said after). But you'd expect that -Intel might want to blab, but I'd imagine Apple would like to be schtum about it till they could launch product - early or late 2011.
$5 extra on a Mac Pro? No problem.
$5 extra on a MBP? No problem for a BTO

Apple al
If Apple can get LP into every USB3 port they supply (and they'll be supplying USB3 v. soon) then they increase the potential userbase very quickly - at the very least, the Light Peak userbase is every new Mac user.
Mortgage Calculator Uk
0 Votes
+ -
OUCH... FULL FAIL ZDNET!
lin2log Updated - 1st Dec 2010
Next patent will probably show who killed Kennedy, eh??!

This patent shows nothing more than THE POWER ADAPTER FOR THE FIRST IPOD WHICH HAS EXISTED FOR AROUND NINE YEARS!!! Duuuuuuh...

So much for your super-duper tech-expertise, huh? I guess the truth (and actual basic RESEARCH) just ain't cool enough anymore...

Here a small peek into to your amazing, mysterious future... http://s3.directupload.net/file/d/2360/66lt4kbj_jpg.htm
... oooooooooh...

*facepalm*
0 Votes
+ -
Sorry
BennoBenzol Updated - 2nd Dec 2010
Sorry guys,
my old iPod charger with the firewire connector looks just like that picture...
http://s3.directupload.net/file/d/2360/66lt4kbj_jpg.htm

I just made two picture of it.
WOW! That guy above me was faster in linking my very own picture than i was... Amazing!

And here is the other image: http://s10.directupload.net/file/d/2361/6dvzj6e4_jpg.htm

Bye
0 Votes
+ -
RE: Light Peak power patent
MACKENZI 11th Sep
I also desire to signal in your RSS feeds. Thank you as soon as once again and maintain up the great operate! nccma cooler
0 Votes
+ -
RE: Light Peak power patent
PEARLINEI 12th Sep
I used to be more than happy to seek out this internet-site.I wanted to thanks in your time for this glorious read!! I positively enjoying each little bit of it and I have you bookmarked to check out new stuff you weblog post. this thread is amazing i like your work and i appreciate you that you have share a useful stuff thanks for sharing the i shop abatwa
0 Votes
+ -
RE: Light Peak power patent
RHIANNONA 13th Sep
I used to be more than happy to seek out this internet-site.I wanted to thanks in your time for this glorious read!! I positively enjoying each little bit of it and I have you bookmarked to check out new stuff you weblog post.Bookmarking now thanks please consider a follow up post. power sa shop
0 Votes
+ -
RE: Light Peak power patent
SATURNINA 14th Sep
I think the representation of this article is actually superb one. This is my first visit to your site. Thanks a lot and keep sharing the information. Keep updating the information for all of us. Thanks ZDNet Government was launched as the brand's first industry vertical, with a mission to cater to IT professionals in the public secto I agree with your post. However, do you have any sources I can cite for my paper wheel car com bury
0 Votes
+ -
RE: Light Peak power patent
TOCCAR 25th Sep
Well welcome, hopefully you can become a vital member of the community and really help to push far ahead of google. Which Im sure the development team would love. This will of course earn you alot points too and get you on the leaders board. z d n e t t h a n k Im not sure i come to an agreement with you on every level, howevor it absolutely was a good posting, many thanks for taking the time to put up your ideas.
0 Votes
+ -
RE: Light Peak power patent
MCKNIGH 26th Sep
Thanks nice info z d n e t I really liked your current article write more..let me add you to its favorite The articles you have on zdnet s i t e are always so enjoyable to read. Good work and I bookmarked it.
0 Votes
+ -
RE: Light Peak power patent
MEJIAHA 30th Sep
Fantastic news about the new release.I positively enjoying each little bit of it and I have you b o o k m a r k e d to check out new stuff you weblog post.Im not sure i come to an agreement with you on every level, howevor it absolutely was a good posting, many thanks for taking the time to put up your ideas
0 Votes
+ -
RE: Light Peak power patent
FAULKNE 13th Oct
Good day to confirm this comment I would appreciate T h e b e s t o f Z D N e t d e l i v e r e d your website very nice to everyone Yes, Oracle is the only one with shared-disk architecture, but that is there advantage. It means you can add or remove nodes and the database lives on. In a shared nothing architecture, if you lose a node, you lose the system. I'm sure Oracle appreciates EMC highlighting their advantage.I also desire to signal in your RSS feeds. Thank you as soon as once again and maintain up the great operate Awesome post! Thank you very much || thanks for nice content this is really benefit to me.

Join the conversation!

Formatting +
BB Codes - Note: HTML is not supported in forums
  • [b] Bold [/b]
  • [i] Italic [/i]
  • [u] Underline [/u]
  • [s] Strikethrough [/s]
  • [q] "Quote" [/q]
  • [ol][*] 1. Ordered List [/ol]
  • [ul][*] · Unordered List [/ul]
  • [pre] Preformat [/pre]
  • [quote] "Blockquote" [/quote]
ie8 fix

The best of ZDNet, delivered

ZDNet Newsletters

Get the best of ZDNet delivered straight to your inbox

Facebook Activity

Blog Roll

Blog Archive

White Papers, Webcasts, & Resources
ie8 fix