IDF 2010: Intel sheds some light on Light Peak

Light Peak technology uses fibre optics to transfer data at a speed of 10 Gbit/s and will eventually evolve towards 100 Gbit/s. Very versatile, it will support any transfer protocol: USB, HDMI, SATA and so on. And it works! As the Intel demo at IDF showed.

On the occasion of the Intel Developer Forum 2010, we were expecting more detailed information on the Light Peak technology. In spite of the cancellation of a conference - which didn't augur well - there was all the same an area given over to Light Peak.


Intel was showing several interconnected prototypes. Western Digital, LaCie, Compal and Avid are all on board.
The demos presented processing of multimedia content in real time from an external hard drive. Even more impressively, we witnessed the transfer of an HD video flow from a LaCie peripheral, equipped with a RAID of four hard drives and two Light Peak ports, towards a Samsung TV specially modified for the occasion with a large graphics card. In this second example, transfer speeds touched on 770 MB/s!

Unfortunately none of the devices on show had got beyond prototype and we shouldn't expect anything to be on sale before next year, or even 2012. Let's hope that Intel will rapidly introduce Light Peak into computers, through partnerships with certain manufacturers. Apple is reported to be on board, which would explain why USB 3.0 hasn't been introduced into its current generation of machines.

Nevertheless Light Peak would seem to be ready to come on stream!

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