Apple, Sony, and Intel are supposed to be releasing a new method of data transfer in the upcoming months. The technology itself has been in development for over the last two years but is only now coming to light…no pun intended… Light Peak technology which is said to have data transfer rates as high as 10 Gb/s and can transfer an entire blue ray movie (30 gigabytes on average) in less than 30 seconds! Normally transferring this kind of data with today’s current technology (USB 2.0) which runs at 480 Mb/s would take over an hour to transfer. USB 3.0 is also just starting to be implemented on some devices but its transfer rate is only 4.8 Gb/s only half that of Intel’s new technology.
Intel did not say specifically that they do not yet have an actual protocol developed to handle the transfer rates, but did say that Protocols already exist for streaming video up to 20 Gb/s. They have not released any information to the public yet as to whether they will be using an existing protocol but it is likely they will have to create their own as a data transfer protocol does not yet exist to support such high data transfer rates.
Intel did not put an actual release date on the technology yet however only saying that it would initially be rolled out using copper instead of the light based fiber optic technology originally planned. Yet another exciting new technology to look forward to…