VIA Thinks Intel's Light Peak Won't Be Successful

While Intel is working on its Light peak standard, which it means to introduce as a sort of rival to USB, other companies do not see a very bright future ahead of the technology, VIA being one of them.

Apparently, the supposed change of plans regarding the composition of Light Peak is not all that has reached the news lately.

For those that do not yet know, it was just reported that the technology, or at least its first iteration, will use copper instead of fiber-optic cables.

Now, VIA technologies, during an interview with SemiAccurate, said that the standard would never be as popular as the universal serial bus (USB).

Apparently, even the fact that the first version of Light Peak will be twice as fast as USB 3.0 won't make much of a difference, at least as far as most peripherals go.

"We believe that Light Peak will not see wide-spread adoption, despite Intel’s or Apple’s best efforts. We see Light Peak more as a bus than a true interface, since it seems to be good way to piggyback multiple protocols through a single cable,” said Terrance Shih, a product manager at VIA Labs.

“Light Peak’s breakthrough application might be in the docking station segment, but it should be noted that in that particular use, Light Peak does not actually replace any ports. It basically moves them from the mobile device to the dock," Shih added.

"USB is the most successful interface in history and there are literally billions of devices in existence. In all likelihood, USB will become the longest-lived interface of all time,” he went on to say.

“The only way for Light Peak to gain significant traction as a USB replacement is if hordes of end-users suddenly decided to replace all of their USB peripheral devices with those that supported Light Peak, but this is of course very unlikely," Mr. Shih concluded.

Intel is supposedly planning to make the implementation of Light Peak cost about $2 per port, but the supposedly more likely outcome is for the price to range between $5 and $10, if not higher.