"Intel has provided the first hands-on demonstration of a laptop running its Light Peak technology, at the company's inaugural European research showcase here in Brussels. Light Peak is an optical interconnect that can transfer data at 10Gbits/sec in both directions. Intel hopes Light Peak will one day replace the host of other PC interconnects, including USB, DisplayPort and HDMI. The demonstration laptop was sending two separate HD video streams to a nearby television screen, without any visible lag."
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Member since:
2005-12-18
Now my video card will be shipped with a DVI, VGA, HDMI, DisplayPort and Light Peak on it! Great!
This "one day will replace" thing never happens in real life (actually it happens, after 20 years, and only partially... you can find with no effort mainboards still produced with PS2 connectors and RS232). What Light Peak aims to replace are these so called "good enough" solutions, that you can't get rid easily, no matter how old they are.
Member since:2010-01-21
As I see it, the big problem with "replace everything" connectors will always be future expandability... though, for the first time, I'm starting to doubt that video will be the stumbling point for any applications outside high-end academic/commercial. (I have trouble seeing how any geek, no matter how hardcore, could have both the space and the need for more than a 2x2 grid of 1920x1080 monitors and that's the upper limit of what a single DisplayPort cable can drive.)
...and keep in mind that the only reason I'm only running a dual-head 2560x1024 desktop is that I couldn't afford a brand new pair of LCDs at any higher resolution.
If the lanes between the video card(s) and the Light Peak hub are design with some leeway (two or three times that amount should do) or the Light Peak hubs are on the video card and the mobo treats video cards as internal Light Peak hubs, then I see no problems beyond the backwards-compatibility issue CapEnt mentioned and the potential royalties issue PoundSmack mentioned.
...however, I'll admit I think it's stupid to continue offering VGA on a card when they could just offer a free DVI-I to VGA adapter. (Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a value-level GeForce new enough to do VDPAU which also offers dual DVI ports and works with PCI-E 1.0's slightly buggy implementations? I'm still stuck on a 7600 because of that)
Member since:2005-07-11
And then, BOOM, along comes 3D video implemented as a 1920x1080x512 pixel scene.
Member since:2009-10-04
The nice thing about Light Peak is that there is no defined protocol. You could, for example, run USB over it. This should allow very cheap adapters for legacy devices.
Member since:2007-09-22
Member since:2010-01-21
Member since:
2005-07-13