Light Peak—many people will wonder what it is. Simply put, it is a technology that allows peripherals to communicate with the computer at a speed of 10 Gbps (in both directions).
Behind this new technology is the chip manufacturer Intel, which announced Light Peak in 2009. This technology was originally conceived by Intel Labs.
Light Peak is the likely successor to, for example, USB, FireWire, HDMI, SATA, and PCI Express. The first integrations of this technology into products are expected later this year. For instance, there are already reports that Apple plans to skip USB3 technology—which can reach a maximum of 4.8 Gbps—and introduce Light Peak technology directly in their new series of Macs.
10Gbps?
The current technology used is USB2, which achieves a maximum of 480 Mbps. At 10 Gbps, Light Peak is therefore about 20 times faster than USB2.
Let's take a look at exactly how fast 10 Gbps is. With 10 Gbps you can:
- Transfer a full-length Blu-ray movie within 30 seconds,
- when you have an MP3 player with 64 GB of storage space, fill it with music within a minute,
- sending almost 10.000.000 tweets per second.
And to think that Intel has the potential to increase this speed to 100 Gbps within 10 years! With this, you could do all of the above in... Well, do the math!
Specifications
Some specifications of the Light Peak technology:
- Current achievable bandwidth: 10 GB/s (in both directions),
- Target bandwidth to be achieved within 10 years: 100 GB/s,
- Maximum cable length: 100 meters (fiber cable),
- Connecting to multiple devices at the same time,
- Hot pluggable (replacing components without having to turn off the computer).
(An example of the new Light Peak module. Source: http://techresearch.intel.com)