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Intel's fastest connector to date uses light to transfer data at 1.6Tbps

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Re: Intel's fastest connector to date uses light to transfer data at 1.6Tbps

#11

Post by XorNot »

ddalex wrote: post #9
DiabloD3 wrote: post #5

Why does Intel even discuss these things? Can I buy this? Can I go out and buy products that use this standard? Can I buy PCs that use AMD CPUs that use this? What about ARMs? What about Infiniband-like networks? It makes me angry that a large corporation set out on a Tuesday morning with the sole purpose to waste people's time like this. If it is not going to be on store shelves within the next few months and if it…

If ^this^ is not FUD, I don't know what FUD is. Textbook example. Seriously, all this post is about is: let's add a layer of confusion and fear on a technological advance. "waste people's time" - haha, nobody forced you to spent time on this. "not being on AMD CPUs, only on Intel Macbooks " - This is a press release about something working in the lab, let's not have anybody announce anything they got in the lab becau…

He's right though.

Unless this is going to result in Intel products which actually have some broad market acceptance, who cares?

Because nobody cares about Thunderbolt. We were promised "fast enough to use external graphics cards" - you know, if you can accept max 4x PCI-e, and are willing to pay as much as a new GPU and computer to drive it for a suitable enclosure.

High speed data over fibre has been in the lab for years, and at these speeds and higher. Implementing it in a lab is easy. Getting it into a product people can use, and expect to use with others, is evidently harder.

Re: Intel's fastest connector to date uses light to transfer data at 1.6Tbps

#12

Post by AlisdairO »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #5

Why does Intel even discuss these things? Can I buy this? Can I go out and buy products that use this standard? Can I buy PCs that use AMD CPUs that use this? What about ARMs? What about Infiniband-like networks? It makes me angry that a large corporation set out on a Tuesday morning with the sole purpose to waste people's time like this. If it is not going to be on store shelves within the next few months and if it…

This is a replacement for something like infiniband. It's not likely to be consumer-level tech.

Re: Intel's fastest connector to date uses light to transfer data at 1.6Tbps

#13

Post by bigd »

shalmanese wrote: post #6
davidad_ wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Naïvely, glass is made from sand and copper is mined. And I can already recycle glass from my house, but not copper. So it looks like an environmental win to me. There may be something I'm missing.

Copper is pretty trivially recyclable, which is why you get reports of drug addicts stealing copper piping from people's houses to sell on the black market.

And bridges!!! http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/30/bridge-stolen-in-cz...

Re: Intel's fastest connector to date uses light to transfer data at 1.6Tbps

#14

Post by mariusz79 »

roeme wrote: post #2

I presume that over the next decade(s), Cu may be phased out and replaced by Fibre on a large scale for information transfer purposes. I do wonder about the effects on our environment though, namely wether making copper (metal) or Fibre cables (plastics) produces more waste, uses more or less energy and which one's easier to recycle, and to what degree.

Copper wires are usually isolated with plastic :)

Re: Intel's fastest connector to date uses light to transfer data at 1.6Tbps

#15

Post by userbinator »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #5

Why does Intel even discuss these things? Can I buy this? Can I go out and buy products that use this standard? Can I buy PCs that use AMD CPUs that use this? What about ARMs? What about Infiniband-like networks? It makes me angry that a large corporation set out on a Tuesday morning with the sole purpose to waste people's time like this. If it is not going to be on store shelves within the next few months and if it…

> because Intel refuses to license and standardize Thunderbolt.

Openness is definitely a big issue, and technical advantages may not be able to overcome proprietariness and cost. It's similar to what happened with Firewire (1394) and USB. The former has many technical advantages, but the official standards are not free. The latter is simpler and slower, with freely available standards, and as a result it has become ubiquitous.

Re: Intel's fastest connector to date uses light to transfer data at 1.6Tbps

#16

Post by DiabloD3 »

ghshephard wrote: post #3
roeme wrote: post #2

I presume that over the next decade(s), Cu may be phased out and replaced by Fibre on a large scale for information transfer purposes. I do wonder about the effects on our environment though, namely wether making copper (metal) or Fibre cables (plastics) produces more waste, uses more or less energy and which one's easier to recycle, and to what degree.

Most of the high speed connection (10GigE+) for the last 3+ years have already been fiber, and anything longer than 100m is always fiber - it's pretty rare to see copper used for anything faster than 1 Gig connections.

They still use copper on 10gbit in some places for rack-local connections through both cat6 and passive sfp+ cables

Re: Intel's fastest connector to date uses light to transfer data at 1.6Tbps

#17

Post by rosser »

kabdib wrote: post #7
davidad_ wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Naïvely, glass is made from sand and copper is mined. And I can already recycle glass from my house, but not copper. So it looks like an environmental win to me. There may be something I'm missing.

Don't get hung up on the "green" characteristics of just the active component. You have to look at the whole picture, including packaging and manufacturing. It's not like the choice is between melting a little sand or an old bottle and digging a big hole in the ground to extract copper. - There's a lot of plastic involved, for either medium - optical stuff is pretty exacting to manufacture. It's easily possible that…

While it's definitely exacting, AFAIK, they still use plain ol' gravity to draw the individual glass fibers.

Re: Intel's fastest connector to date uses light to transfer data at 1.6Tbps

#18

Post by jws »

First, the headline number comes from 64 25gbps fibers in parallel.

I found more interesting this little bit buried in the bottom quarter of the article…

Intel is proposing an Optical PCI-Express (OPCI) protocol for use on optical wires.

I cant find this protocol, or any clarification if it is an open protocol. The article kind of feels like it is protocol intended for widespread adoption.

Cost effective, space effective optical connections would be nice. (No pricing in article. Not terribly encouraging hints.) A clean, open, PCIe protocol for fiber would be huge.

Re: Intel's fastest connector to date uses light to transfer data at 1.6Tbps

#19

Post by ghshephard »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #16
ghshephard wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the high speed connection (10GigE+) for the last 3+ years have already been fiber, and anything longer than 100m is always fiber - it's pretty rare to see copper used for anything faster than 1 Gig connections.

They still use copper on 10gbit in some places for rack-local connections through both cat6 and passive sfp+ cables

Yup, and, ironically, my last 10Gig deployment (2009) was 100% copper from the server to the switches - but it was a pain in the butt trying to get it to work, and I don't think I would ever try doing anything but fiber between my network elements for 10 Gig.

Re: Intel's fastest connector to date uses light to transfer data at 1.6Tbps

#20

Post by ddalex »

XorNot wrote: post #11
ddalex wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If ^this^ is not FUD, I don't know what FUD is. Textbook example. Seriously, all this post is about is: let's add a layer of confusion and fear on a technological advance. "waste people's time" - haha, nobody forced you to spent time on this. "not being on AMD CPUs, only on Intel Macbooks " - This is a press release about something working in the lab, let's not have anybody announce anything they got in the lab becau…

He's right though. Unless this is going to result in Intel products which actually have some broad market acceptance, who cares? Because nobody cares about Thunderbolt. We were promised "fast enough to use external graphics cards" - you know, if you can accept max 4x PCI-e, and are willing to pay as much as a new GPU and computer to drive it for a suitable enclosure. High speed data over fibre has been in the lab for…

Actually, if any would've been bothered to read the article, this is not consumer-grade technology. This is targeted at very special uses inside datacenters.

So we're talking apples and oranges here.

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