Intel’s Light Peak OR USB 3.0?

After Intel’s Developer’s Forum last week, there is renewed interest in Light Peak. For those of you that don’t remember one of my first blog posts, Light Peak is an Intel-developed optical interconnect techonolgy that uses a new controller chip with LOMF and a 10G 850nm VCSEL-based module with a new optical interface connector that looks very similar to the one used in Avago Technologies MicroPOD transceiver. Light Peak is aimed at replacing all of your external connectors on your PC including USB, IEEE 1394, HDMI, DP, PCIe, etc. It is also targeted at other consumer electronic devices like smart phones and MP3 players.

Many in the industry think Light Peak is intended to replace USB 3.0 even before USB 3.0 is finished being standardized. I tend to disagree. USB 3.0 is a 5G data rate and to me, will bridge the gap between existing USB 2.0 (480 Mbps max) and the 10G that Light Peak can provide. Just because they are being developed at the same time, doesn’t mean they will make it to production simultaneously.

While Intel is now saying that 2011 will be the year for Light Peak to take off, I’m still skeptical. There may be some really high-end applications like video editing that may need this bandwidth, but your run-of-the-mill PC user isn’t going to want to pay the extra money for it when you probably won’t be able to actually detect the improvement. And, what might be more important – what kind of power consumption difference is there and how does this affect battery life?Or is this technology not meant for laptops?  I’m not sure these questions have been sufficiently answered yet.

Optical Engines

I was reviewing some research I recently conducted for the Optical Interconnect report I wrote for CIR and realized that I hadn’t yet “blogged” about what I would consider some exciting new product directions that many optical components suppliers are taking. We’ve been talking about optical integration for many years and some companies, like Infinera, have actually implemented it into their real-world products. But there are more cases of this than ever before and I think we’re on the brink of some true industry breakthroughs using what many have deemed “optical engines.”

Here is a summary of the component companies and their associated optical engine products:

• BinOptics – it uses its InP PICs to build "custom integrated microphotonics solutions" for its customers
• ColorChip – its silicon photonics is at the center of its 40G QSFP modules
• Lightwire – its Opto-electronic Application Specific Integrated Subsystem (OASIS) promises low power and higher density
• MergeOptics/FCI – OptoPack is at the center of its 10G and above transceiver designs
• Reflex Photonics – LightAble is the building block for its transceiver modules
• Santur – DFB/waveguide architecture has promise for not only tunable lasers, but many different optical interconnects

So what’s the big deal? In the past, optical integration was a science project looking for an application. Now, these companies are leveraging their research to create products such as QSFP modules or tunable transceivers that are selling today. So even though you could make these transceivers tiny, they package them in standard form factors in order to develop a revenue stream in hopes that the technology can truly be used for miniature devices in the near future. Pretty smart business plan I think – especially since we’ve already seen a glimpse of the miniaturization products with Avago’s MicroPOD, Intel’s Light Peak and Luxtera’s OptoPhy, which can also be considered optical engines. And, which are supposedly on the cusp of true adoption into active equipment.