Intel's Optical Tech May Arrive Next Year

[zachary k]

[citation][nom] Kevin Parrish[/nom]could combine current connectors such as USB, HDMI, and Ethernet using fiber optics.[/citation] we have fiber optic ethernet, its called FIBER. fiber uses the same protocol as the UTP cables that are so common today. having it go to your computer is just a matter of your computer having the correct (and expensive look here> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833105055) fiber nic card, and fiber running from you ISP to your house. no innovation needed here intel, aside from cheaper fiber cables and nics.

 

[jdog2076]

[citation][nom]mowston[/nom]So do these cables transfer power over the cable? If not, then how will my mouse, keyboard, etc be powered? That is one of the useful things about USB.[/citation]
That is a legitimate concern. My guess is they'll have a couple copper wires in addition to the fiber to transfer power to the device.

 

[jdog2076]

[citation][nom]wildwell[/nom]Awesome! What about cost? And, when can we get these speeds w/o ANY cables?[/citation]
Keep on dreaming. The simple face is, wireless bandwidth is way less plentiful than what can be achieved with fiber connections.

 

[Manos]

"can transfer a Blu-ray movie in less than 30 seconds"

Too bad that a Blu-Ray movie takes about that much to be read and started off of the drive itself...

 

[climber]

[citation][nom]supertrek32[/nom]New cables are great, but they aren't the bottleneck, so just changing the cable doesn't solve anything. Using current ethernet cables, you can transfer approx 128MB/s. (Mainstream) hard drives are just now scraping this transfer rate, and only for short periods of time.It's nice to know we've got room to improve, but if this is targeting mainstream consumers it's ahead of its time. Why would I pay more money for a cable if I can't notice any difference?[/citation]

The problem of 125MB/s over a gigabit cat6 Ethernet cable isn't the problem, the problem comes when users have external RAID systems which can delivery 3GB/s transfer speeds. LSI's newest 6Gb/s internal RAID cards can deliver this kind of bandwidth which Tom's has reported on through articles in the recent past. If we want to be able to achieve this kind of performance with external DAS RAID systems then we need 10Gb/s cabling capability to transfer what these storage systems can provide with their dedicated hardware based RAID controllers.

 

[jimmysmitty]

While this looks like cool tech to have for internal and external devices, I am still waiting to hear more about what Intel did with Fiber last time.

Last time they were able to embed fiber lines into silicon which were also able to sustain constant stream of light instead of pulsing the light which could mean light speed data transmissions between the CPU and PCIe like interfaces.

It would also help for this allowing us to actually be able to utilize say a 100Gb/s HDD interface since the CPU will be on par or faster.

Imagine a SSD using a 100Gb/s connection........

 

[billj214]

You can buy a optical toslink cable at monoprice.com for $4, its probably the same thing just a different connector. I am guessing the cable with come with whatever you buy that requires it.

 

[blackbeastofaaaaagh]

> And, when can we get these speeds w/o ANY cables?
For any communications channel you are always bound by a theoretical upper limit dependent on bandwidth (BW) and signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR). For uniform (Gaussian white) noise/interference, the upper limit is dictated by Shannon's formula:

Speed (Bits/sec) = BW (Hertz) * logbase2(1 + SNR)

There is now way around this. With current wireless technology and coding we are within 50% of that theoretical limit for a direct line-of sight (reflected channels are far more complicated with much improvement to be made) wireless connection.

Unfortunately, in the wireless world your BW and SNR are fixed. They only way to improve speed is to: buy/license more BW (not easy or cheap), improve SNR (use bigger, better, more complex antennas), transmit with more power (FCC will be on your case) or improve encoding/decoding modulation techniques (only improves if some genius thinks up a better mathematical formula).

 

[Supertrek32]

[citation][nom]climber[/nom]The problem of 125MB/s over a gigabit cat6 Ethernet cable isn't the problem, the problem comes when users have external RAID systems which can delivery 3GB/s transfer speeds. LSI's newest 6Gb/s internal RAID cards can deliver this kind of bandwidth which Tom's has reported on through articles in the recent past. If we want to be able to achieve this kind of performance with external DAS RAID systems then we need 10Gb/s cabling capability to transfer what these storage systems can provide with their dedicated hardware based RAID controllers.[/citation]
That's why I (repeatedly) specified that I was talking about mainstream consumers. There aren't many average-Joes with more than one HDD, let alone a RAID array. Like I said, if this is (as it certainly seems to be) targeting mainstream consumers, it's ahead of its time. Great cables for enthusists, overkill for mainstream.