OpticalCable
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Alcatel-Lucent plants two flags in Latin American soil: LTE and 100Gb/s cable
Not content with newly arrived iTunes and Netflix, Latin America's growing population of web aficionados are seeing some major investment in high-speed internet services too. Alcatel-Lucent says it's won contracts to provide infrastructure for the region's first LTE network -- in Uruguay, to be precise -- as well as the first 100Gb/s optical cable network, which will soon be streaming telenovelas across Argentina. Welcome to the revolution, compañeros, and read on for the full PR.
Intel demonstrates Light Peak on a laptop, says 10Gbps speeds are only the beginning
Folks in Brussels for Intel's European research showcase got to get their hands on the company's Light Peak this week, with the first demonstration of the optical cable technology running on a laptop. Outfitted with a 12mm square chip that converts the optical signal into data the machine can read, two separate HD video streams were piped to a nearby TV, which displayed them with the help of a converter box -- a necessary evil until the Light Peak chips are developed for the display side of things. According to Justin Rattner, Intel's CTO, the current 10Gb / second speeds are just the beginning. "We expect to increase that speed dramatically. You'll see multiple displays being served by a single Light Peak connection. There's almost no limit to the bandwidth -- fibers can carry trillions of bits per second."
Intel says Light Peak coming next year, can and will coexist with USB 3.0
How do you sell a generation of hardware manufacturers on yet another standard? If you're Intel, you tell them that it'll transfer files at 10Gbps and is compatible with every major protocol that came before... and if that doesn't work, you simply fail to give your competitor hardware support. But PC World reports that while Intel is still dragging its feet regarding USB 3.0, it's planning to have Light Peak fiber optic devices in the market next year. Intel insists Light Peak isn't meant to replace USB, in so much as it can use the same ports and protocols (photographic evidence above), but at the same time it's not shying away from the possibility of obliterating its copper competition with beams of light. "In some sense we'd... like to build the last cable you'll ever need," said Intel's Kevin Kahn. Now, we're not going to rag on Light Peak, because we honestly love the idea of consolidated fiber optic connectivity. We just want to know now whether we should bother locking ourselves into a USB 3.0 ecosystem if better things are just around the corner.
