Intel’s Light Peak high-speed optical interface technology might be arriving earlier than expected. Rumor has it that Apple may incorporate the new standard on Macs. Light Peak, is a method of transferring data that can perform at twice the speed of USB 3.0 and is “now on track to appear in products in the first half of 2011 – and likely earlier in the year than later,” according to Brooke Crothers at CNET. Apple has been an active part of the technology, especially since Steve Jobs made several comments dismissing USB 3.0. This leads many observers to speculate that Apple may be an early adopter of Light Peak. Currently, Intel Labs has been working on the fiber optic cable interface as a single universal replacement for current peripheral bus standards like USB, FireFire, PCI Express, HDMI, and SATA. The interface will be capable of transferring 10 gigabits per second full duplex, which is twice the transfer rate of USB 3.0. The cables are even capable of reaching up to a hundred meters long as opposed to USB 3.0′s three meter limitation. According to Intel, the standard will even support speeds up to 100 GBps by the end of the decade, which is very significant considering many industry observers are starting to believe that optical cables will be the only way to support larger HDTV and 3D displays. Engadget even published a claim last year that Apple designed the standard back in 2007 and decided to bring it to Intel. There has been no statement from either Apple or Intel about the situation, but industry sources have been disputing the assertion for quite some time.
This sheds some very serious issues of why any hospital would ever consider implementing WMTS, yet alone having a partner for broadband integration (DAS), that does not have a forward looking strategy for DAS, i.e. fiber based architecture. Several business models for coaxial based DAS to support all modalities such as WMTS and 802.11a/b/g/n architectures simply are not cost effective, yet alone future proof. Oh yes, just ask your DAS supplier when was the latest revolution from research and how this will keep up with requirements for LTE? How many implementations have been left dead ended? Research the marketing hype and formulate the correct overall strategic wireless business plan. This will allow for the correct investment protection plan.
