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The latest rumor making the rounds is that Intel will officially roll out its Light Peak high-speed connection technology on Thursday. The speculation comes from Intel telling the media that it will "host a...press briefing to discuss a new technology that is about to appear on the market," and according to "an industry source familiar with the details of the event," CNet says it will indeed be Light Peak. Could this have anything to do with the launch of new MacBook Pros on Thursday?
Rumors dating back to late 2010 suggest that Apple may incorporate Light Peak into its 2011 MacBook Pro models, and more recently we've seen leaked spec sheets and product photos of a 13-inch MacBook Pro that would back this up, assuming nothing's been doctored. If it hasn't, then it appears Apple plans to rename it "Thunderbolt," though it's unclear if Intel will adopt this nomenclature as well.
Light Peak, Thunderbolt, or whatever you want to call it, is a single interface designed to replace the SCSI, SATA, USB, FireWire, and PCI Express ports on a computer. The copper-based technology purportedly delivers 10Gbps bi-directional data transfers, and is the reason some have speculated Intel has been so slow to adopt native USB 3.0 support on its motherboards, a claim Intel has refuted.
Comments are closed on this article
KCooper
February 24, 2011 at 12:20am
I hereby suggest a new name: iBolt.
It's also in keeping with Apple's convention... :)
And - there might be a marketing opportunity to connect this new tech, with the world's fastest 100 meter man - Usain Bolt...
*** Think Fast, write slow...
Biceps
February 23, 2011 at 9:52am
There is no way that Apple would re-name anything without putting the self-centered and self-important 'i' at the beginning. Stop your shenannigans!
praetor_alpha
February 23, 2011 at 10:48am
Once upon a time, Apple took the IEEE 1394 standard and called it 'FireWire'. I'm sure they would have called it iSomething, but Sony already trademarked iLink and was using it for 1394 ports.
Neufeldt2002
February 23, 2011 at 9:47am
Correct me if I am wrong, but I thought the whole idea of light peak was to use fiberoptics? Hence the name.
ditchbeast
February 23, 2011 at 10:27am
I can't see them only offering LightPeak, it would require new connectors and cable standards? There will likely be a mix to support backwords compatibility (In the beggining anyway). there may be some way of using the standard USB port design for LightPeak however im not sure of the theoretical bandwidth of the copper connectors, but im pretty confident it would slow this down. Short answer - expect both.
bling581
February 23, 2011 at 10:47am
I'm sure it will be just like any new PC technology for motherboards. When PCI-Express first came out there was only one or two slots and the rest were traditional PCI/AGP slots. Fast forward to today and everything is PCI Express.
someuid
February 23, 2011 at 1:22pm
Good reference article explaining why, although I did find it interesting that copper LightPeak will max out at around 2GB/sec where optical LightPeak would be up to 10GB/sec.
I wish Intel had just committed to USB 3.0, then worked to bring out optical Light Peak so we could all move to fiber optic in a nice, smooth flow. Putting LightPeak on copper really feels like a let down and a half-baked solution to what we really need - a single cabling and connector standard with enough bandwidth for anything from a mouse to 6 monitors to 3D TV to direct attached storage.
perryra1968
February 23, 2011 at 9:07am
Wow! A new interface coming soon. Sounds exciting. Technology change at its best.
