Daniel Eran Dilger
Intel's new technology to be unveiled will be Light Peak, according to a report by CNET, which attributed the news to an industry source familiar with the details of Intel's event.
Intel's announcement will also be made in San Francisco, strengthening the connection between its news and Apple's expected release of new MacBook Pros and potentially other products, on the same day that happens to coincide with Steve Jobs' birthday, and which falls one day after Apple's shareholder meeting.
A report by the French MacGeneration said that upcoming MacBook Pros would premier an unknown "new technology," describing Light Peak as a possible candidate.
It also confirmed an earlier report by AppleInsider pertaining to sealed package deliveries of new inventory that were not to be opened, saying it could verify that French retailers had received new stock they could not open before Thursday, 1:30 PM Paris time.
AppleInsider sources have reported that new MacBook Pros will sport significant feature enhancements outside of the expected move to Intel's Sandy Bridge CPU and chipset architecture. The inclusion of Light Peak could also explain an earlier report that claimed the new notebooks would sport minor modifications to their chassis design.
Apple and Intel have been publicly working together to deploy Light Peak for years, with Intel first demonstrating the technology on a Mac desktop system. Apple reportedly asked Intel to develop a new cabling standard with the ability to handle "massive amounts of data," and serve as a replacement for a variety of ports now in use, including USB, Ethernet, FireWire, and DisplayPort.
Intel has aimed the technology at achieving 100Gbps throughput via light using fibre optic strands, reflected in the technology's moniker. But Apple is rumored to be using an electrical variant using copper wire that can achieve 10Gbps, and has filed patents that describe lower powered mobile versions suitable for devices like iPad.
One Apple patent depicted fibre optics and electrical conduits joined in a MagSafe connector, suggesting a universal port that could provide a variety of functions from supplying peripheral power to supporting very high speed data.
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William Gallagher
Christine McKee
Stephen Silver
Charles Martin
49 Comments
Pleeeeeeaaaaaase let this be true.
A prototype connector for LP was USB hybrid. That would be a good transition.
Magsafe is designed to disconnect at the slightest bump (a good thing.) USB drives that are in the middle of being written to do not like to be disconnected. You get a warning from OS X every time you disconnect. Wonder how they'll resolve this one?
Magsafe is designed to disconnect at the slightest bump (a good thing.) USB drives that are in the middle of being written to do not like to be disconnected. You get a warning from OS X every time you disconnect. Wonder how they'll resolve this one?
using magsafe for a few years now, never really had it accidentally disconnect.
Also the magsafe/Light Peak cable you see will probably be used for connecting between machines (macbook) and monitor (Cinema display/iMac).
Doesn't that report say they can open the crates at 130p, Paris Time?
Isn't that like 530a in CA?
So.. No event, just store.apple goes down at midnight Wednesday and then Thursday morning we get new MBPs?
I'm not tracking this ... are they saying high speed networking will be supplied through high volt power cables along with the power to supply computers? Or will the power wire have another wire attached to it somehow that handles the data?