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Light Peak vs USB 3.0 vs Everything?

USB 3.0 is not etherware, it's here now.
It hits the CPU a little harder, but it's not like we're running single core P3 800MHz processors anymore.

> USB 3.0 > Winner
 
Light Peak will eventually replace all connections on the desktop including, video, audio, mouse, keyboard, hard drives, ethernet, but it isn't going to be this year or even next year. The main reason is cost. Light peak right now is about $15 per port + about $10 for the cable so $25 per port to implement. You don't need a lot of ports though because light peak can use one port for video, audio, hard drive all at the same time as it can mix protocols on the same fiber. Limit right now is 10Gb/second scaling to 100Gb/second in the future so you can keep adding devices till that bandwidth is reached then you need another port.

Apple likes this because the light peak connectors are about the size of the mini usb connectors and can carry ethernet, video, desktop mouse/keyboard on one connector for things like iphone or ipad where usb would require multiple connectors to do the same thing which takes up space on the device. USB is also cable length limited, USB3 even more so. Light peak has a limit of over 100 meters.

Some have asked about what will happen with devices that power off USB ? Light peak cables are fiber at the center, a special kind of fiber called clear curve made by corning that makes it bendable, covered in a coating, then covered by copper mesh, covered by a rubber exterior. The copper mesh is there to keep people from nicking the center, not for shielding like in electrical cables. That same approach can be use for power since it doesn't interfere with the signal, it can carry more power than USB does now.

The reason companies are not going crazy over USB 3.0 is because many companies have no use for it. Their devices do not exceed the capabilities of USB 2.0 which is extremely cheap to add to devices, less than $1 . USB 3 cables also require up to 4 more wires per cable than usb2 making the cost for cabling more expensive . The main competitor to USB 3 is ESATA. People just don't need a mouse, keyboard, etc that uses USB 3.


Light peak or something like it is the future. Intel already makes a light peak to USB 3 adapter so I suspect it will slowly transition in that way where current usb/ethernet/DVI/HDMI devices will plug into some sort of box that converts them into light peak for early adopters.


USB 3.0 could never be used for everything because it is not protocol independent . To send video over USB requires you to convert it to another format. Light peak can send video as the same bits read off the disk.
 
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