Intel's Light Peak Technology - Optical Cabling For the Masse
Intel has unveiled Light Peak, an optical cabling technology that can transfer data between your computer and peripherals at 10 Gb/s, fast enough to transfer a full-length Blu-ray movie in less than 30 seconds. Fiber-optic cabling is not new, but Intel executives believe Light Peak will make it cheap enough and small enough to be incorporated into consumer electronics at a price point that consumers and manufacturers will accept.
Fiber optics typically use a cigarette-box-sized optical transceiver, which contains tiny lasers and photo cells, to facilitate the connections. Intel miniaturized the box down to the dimensions of a wafer thin dime. Optical cables are already pretty tiny; each one is just 125 microns wide or about the width of a single human hair. The transceiver can deliver two channels of information over the fiber-optic cable—necessary since PCs need at least two ports.
