First Light Peak laptop showed off by Intel

At the Intel’s inaugural European research in Brussels, it has given the first hands-on demonstration of a laptop that runs the Light Peak technology.

Light Peak technology is an optical interconnect that can transmit data in both the directions. It is expected that this Light Peak will replace the PC interconnects such as HDMI, Displayports and USB.

Light Peak is fitted in to the USB cable, which has optical cables running along the electrical cabling. A visual demonstration of how data is passed through the cable was done by showing the torch light through one end with two little dots of light visible to the naked eye on the other end.

During the demonstration, the laptop was sending two HD video streams separately to a television screen nearby without any visible lag. The laptop comes with 12mm square chip that converts the optical light in to computer understandable electrical data. The technology is yet to be integrated in to the screen.

Justin Rattner, Intel’s chief technology officer said that the afforded bandwidth of the optical technology is practically unlimited. According to Rattner, Light Peak starts at 10Gbits/sec in both the directions simultaneously. That speed can be increased dramatically. A single Light Peak connection serves multiple displays. Fibres come with limitless bandwidth and come with the capacity to carry trillions of bits per second.

According to Rattner, this technology will be applied in almost everything from home PCs to server farms. The Light Peak hardware is expected to be available to the manufacturers by this year end.