14 DAY TRIAL // Rumors regarding Intel's plans of using copper for the first generation Light Peak interconnect technology have now become official as one company officially made it extremely clear in a recent interview.
As Xbit Labs reports, going with this approach greatly lowers the cost of Light Peak products, although performance is also affected.
David Perlmutter, executive vice president and general manager of Intel's architecture group, said that copper came out better than they initially thought, so the company decided to go with this technology instead of using an optical bus.
The first version of Light Peaks was supposed to deliver 10Gbit/s bandwidth with the potential to scale up to 100 Gbit/s by 2020.
However, using copper wires will most likely decrease the maximum transfer speed achieved by Light Peak, although Intel didn't say just by how much.
Light Peak is developed as a universal replacement for all the various computer ports, such as SCSI, SATA, USB, FireWire, and PCI Express.
Right now, the fastest interface available to external devices is USB 3.0 that is able to deliver up to 5Gbps.
The company official declined to say when the first Light Peak devices reach store shelves, but earlier rumors suggest that shipments are bound to start in 2011.
Whether such devices are launched in 2011 or not, Light Peak still has a though round in front of it as it’s uncertain if such high bandwidths are required right now.
External graphics cards would most certainly benefit from this technology, but these devices haven't proved to be as popular as initially thought.
Furthermore, the price of USB 3.0 peripherals has been decreasing while more and more computers come with such high speed ports, some users preferring to go with this technology instead of investing in Light Peak, especially if it can't deliver the 10Gbps bandwidth initially promised.