Intel: Apple-Inspired Light Peak Standard Will Replace USB 3.0 In Only A Few Years

John Brownlee (8:28 am PDT, Apr 15 2010)

This week’s MacBook Pros were pretty much cutting-edge all over, but they were missing one major upgrade: USB 3.0 ports. After all, the transition is already under way, and the newest version of USB can move over 5GBps, over ten times faster than USB 2.0 and about six and a half times faster than Firewire 800.

Still, maybe Cupertino’s waiting to see how USB 3.0 now that Intel’s Light Peak standard (which is rumored to be Apple-inspired) is making its way to market. Intel Light Peak pundit Kevin Kahn has gone on record saying that he believes that the standard will be available in computers and laptops by 2011, and totally replace USB 3.0 over the course of the next few years.

“We view this as a logical future successor to USB 3.0,” Kahn said. “In some sense[s] we’d… like to build the last cable you’ll ever need.”

A noble goal. Considering USB 3.0 has barely been adopted yet, and given that Light Peak is twice as fast, it may very well behoove Apple to wait until 2011… then start shipping Light Peak capable machines that sync even the largest iTunes libraries in mere seconds.

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9 comments »

BoxMac
Oh, man ….
ONCE AGAIN Apple is ahead of a curve no one even knows exists.
GO APPLE !
Tomt
The rate limiting step for many, would be the hard drive once Light Peak arrives – So unless you’re packing SSD, or RAID Hard drives, it’ll still take some time, but luckily less time, to sync. You might get an updated 6GB/s interface, but that’s not going to help the maximum read write speed of the internal drive.
Barbarossa
Light Peak is not just for hard drives. It’s designed to also connect your monitor, digital audio, printer & scanner, router and any thing else that uses
digital information. Really, “the last cable you’ll ever need.”
One cable to rule them all, and in the brightness bind them …
Nathan
oh great. So everyone should delay all hardware purchases until after 2011.
mick
@Tomt, what a great idea! I hope my next computer has SSD & Light Peak.
Vopat
This still does not explain why the USB 3.0 was not included in the latest MBP update. Apple does not want to incorporate USB 3.0 because of a maybe?
Jayness
Light Peak sounds great – but what is not mentioned is it doesnt (at this time) supply power. Without power how will it work most devices that we plug into the USB port? Sure some of them have external power but thats not really reducing cables now is it – and not really useful for a laptop either.
imajoebob
The 500 lb Gorilla nobody talks about with USB 3.0 is power. I don’t know squat about the real figures, but I suspect that USB 3 has to suck a lot of CPU resources to move that much data that fast. And if it’s beating the snot out of your processor, your processor is putting just as big a beat-down on your battery. It sounds like a real lose-lose for notebooks: won’t USB 3.0 will slow your system AND drain your battery? No wonder Apple skipped it.
Please feel free to better inform me (but be polite).
george
think, intel does not support usb3.0 on it’s chipset..so apple would have had to add in another chipset to their board for the usb3.0 controllers. weigh the things the way apple would. cram another chipset in there and sacrifice space and battery life for other things such as discreet graphics, for usb3 or sacrifice usb3 which hasn’t really been adopted by many yet, for the better graphics and battery life.

About the author

John Brownlee is news editor here at Cult of Mac, and has also written about a lot of things for a lot of different places, including Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, Gizmodo, Kotaku, Lifehacker, AMC, Geek and the Consumerist. He lives in Cambridge with his charming inamorata and a tiny budgerigar punningly christened after Nabokov's most famous pervert. You can follow him here on Twitter.

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