[citation][nom]esrever[/nom]do consumers really need these speeds right now?[/citation]
I am assuming you are kidding, but we absolutely need these types of connection speeds.
1) Power users NEED as much speed as possible. Everyone complains that Intel's new CPUs do not improve much on performance, and AMD is sadly the usual scapegoat on that front. But the real issue is that other components are playing catchup right now, and Intel is more concerned with fighting off the horde (a beautiful horde by the way) of ARM processors creeping into Intel's desktop and server territory.
Anywho, the point is that in modern systems your CPU speed is entirely second in importance to the performance to your HDD and GPU capabilities, and in more and more systems these duties are being taken over by external devices. As these more periphrial components are catching up in performance, and more and more of them are being used externally, we need connectivity capabilities that do not continue to choke them. Put another way; For what most people do (namely media consumption, office work, and internet), a late gen P4HT has more than enough processing power. Combine it with a cheap modern GPU and a SSD and most people would never know the difference between it and a brand new system. Granted, the newer systems do the same work on 10% of the power and with more integrated parts, but the processor itself is 'adequate' for what most people do. Now, if that ancient tech can still keep up with most user demands 6-8 years down the road, then what is the lifespan of modern PentiumG and i3 processors going to be? Much less bigger processors like i5 and i7s. Yes, power users will always need an upgrade, but for the masses whose most processing intensive task is watching HD video, a current gen i3 is going to have a 10+ year life of usefulness (unless something drastically changes). When you have these types of lifespans, combined with changes for the interfaces of internal components, it becomes very important to have an easy standardized highspeed external interface to ensure that these devices can use future hardware with minimal difficulty.
2) People prefer external storage for a variety of reasons. Some like the 'security' of being able to keep their data with them, others like being able to work on projects in multiple locations, others are on laptops that simply do not have space for extra drives, and still others (like myself) want options to get mechanical storage into another room so that we have a truly silent working environment. In a world where gigabit Ethernet is the limit of what is available for consumer use, we need much faster external storage options.
3) I know it is getting old to hear about, but the fact of the matter is that while traditional desktop computers are not dead, their death is coming. Personally I think that the desktop form factor will still be around for quite a while yet, but I will be truly surprised if my son ever has a traditional ATX desktop when he is ready for his own personal computer some 5 years from now. No doubt he will have tons of tech in his life, but I think it is going to be in the form of more specialized components. He will have a box for storage, a box for graphics power (probably integrated into the display), a box (or array of boxes) for extra processing power, and it will all be controlled by a central 'dockable' (wired or wireless) phone or tablet device which stores his personal documents and all of his software (or at least the licences for his software). Point is that as we slowly move away from PC architecture we will need high speed wired and wireless connectivity options which will tie what use to be internal devices into a mesh of external devices that may need to serve multiple users simultaneously.
4) 1GB/s is not as fast as it use to be. Sure, it may take a large array of HDDs to have that kind of saturation, but it only takes 2 SSDs to hit that kind of throughput. On my own rig I have a raid0 of 1 SSDs and I get a peak throughout of 1GB/s, and an average throughput of nearly 600MB/s, and I do not have high end SSDs, these are just mid-grade Agility 3 drives. The next gen of drives coming out late this year are going to bring the read/write speed of uncompressible data much closer to the speed of compressible data, which means that drives will get a true 500+MB/s of throughput per drive no matter what type of data you throw at it. So a little box with 2 SSDs in it will be able to push 1GB/s of throughput to whatever device you hook it up to, and once again we will be at the point where connectivity is the bottleneck of the system for the foreseeable future.
5) Lastly, we need something like this for an entirely different reason: Lightpeak was designed to be 'one cable to rule them all'. You were supposed to use a single daisy chain of fiber optic cable in order to connect your PC to external storage, your display, Ethernet, and even have adapters to go to things like USB or firewire devices, because Lightpeak was supposed to be a protocol agnostic connectivity standard where you could mix and match different types of devices all on one string. Obviously Thunderbolt has fallen far short of the hope that lightpeak heald, but it is still the first step towards that goal. You may not 'need' 1GB/s throughput for your HDDs... but you do need 1GB/s if you intend to run 3 displays, plus an external storage array all over a single cable. In fact, you need a lot more throughput by the time the tech catches on and we are using 4K displays and SSD arrays.
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