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Light Peak
Anybody think this is going to blow the doors off of 10G Ethernet? Product should be appearing in the next few months, and sounds like the first implementation will be copper, 10G, with relatively short cable runs. Seems like it will support daisy chain as well as switched networks. Pricing should be a small fraction of 10G Ethernet, and should enable enough bandwidth to the client to support uncompressed HD and digital cinema formats.
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8 Replies
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[Eric Jurgenson] “Anybody think this is going to blow the doors off of 10G Ethernet? Product should be appearing in the next few months, and sounds like the first implementation will be copper, 10G, with relatively short cable runs. Seems like it will support daisy chain as well as switched networks. Pricing should be a small fraction of 10G Ethernet, and should enable enough bandwidth to the client to support uncompressed HD and digital cinema formats.”
I think it’ll be more like firewire in terms of the Niche it fills. I imagine it will be a better storage medium than 10Gb for local attach, but we’ll have to see if it can stand up to 100Gb. Are you ready for that? Specs done, hardware is coming.
Steve Modica
CTO, Small Tree Communications -
The other issue is cabling. What is it using? If we already have Cat6 in all the walls what is it going to take to install light peak cables and how much does it cost (and what kind of cable/HBA combo are we talking about for that matter). I’m interested, but there doesn’t seem to be a lot of info out yet for out niche regarding LightPeak.
Instead of 100GB ethernet I’d rather 10GB (which has been around for a while) takes off and becomes affordable.
-Greg
Greg Leuenberger
CEO
Sabertooth Productions, Inc.
http://www.sabpro.com -
Hi Greg –
this is in response to your 10Gig /CAT 6 comments. Currently, CAT6 will only support 10Gig transmission to 55 meters (150 ‘ about), and this requires a $15,000 10Gig switch that works with RJ45 connectors. More common 10Gig schemes currently use LC-LC Fibre cables (just like in Fibre channel systems). Some shorter run 10Ggi systems use CX4 or Twinax cable. So the ONLY way you will get to use your CAT 6 cable is with a $15,000 switch. Are you ready to spend that ?Bob Zelin
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Keep in mind that Gigabit and 10Gb are like plumbing. You need bigger pipes to feed the smaller ones. Up til now, everyone has been 1Gb and 10Gb hasn’t been very widely deployed as “the bigger pipe”. It’s been lots of link aggregation.
As 10Gb starts to hit the desktop, the first “big pipes” will be cards like our 6 port 10Gb card. I would love to have 100Gb to follow up with.
Lightpeak is going to be a firewire/USB kind of thing. It’s not going to supplant Ethernet. There’s Ethernet and EtherNOT and EtherNOT never wins.
Steve Modica
CTO, Small Tree Communications -
It’s funny you say that Light Peak will be relegated to peripheral attachment, and won’t replace Ethernet for high speed storage networks, because I don’t think many people 10 years ago forsaw Ethernet taking over SCSI and Fibre Channel in that application.
Ultimately, it will be price that will determine which technology perseveres. and Lighr Peak looks like it will be very affordable.
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Mark my words… EtherNOT never wins.
SCSI, FC, Token Ring, Fddi, ATM, GSN, HIPPi-800, Infiniband, x.25 and whatever else you want to mention all fall away as ethernet comes along and whomps them. There are too many ethernet ASICs out there in the world doing real work. What’s the one chip architecture that’s on *all* motherboards? The one that has a higher capture rate than even Intel’s CPU? Ethernet…To quote another guy who’s name I can’t remember “I don’t know what the future of networking will look like, but I know it will be called Ethernet” (OpenFabric and iWarp are basically an attempt to get Infiniband functionality and virtualization on to Ethernet)
Steve Modica
CTO, Small Tree Communications -
For me, the question is whether LP can be switched in the way that Ethernet and IB can be.
I look at LP and think about Infiniband not Ethernet. IB’s management protocols and ‘subnet’ control are very very good things that make IB better than GiG-E or 10-gig-E.
But IB is relatively expensive. LP being targetted at consumer market should make LP less expensive than IB.
If LP matches IB’s management and control capabilities then I think LP could be a winner in the cluster market, a real alternative to IB.
So far it seems to me LP is targetted at peripheral interconnect – I’ve not seen a networking protocol stack… I may have missed finding it though.
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It’s PCI Express protocol. It’s switchable.
I imagine we could see PCIE switches that use lightpeak. There are PCIE switches now, but they don’t get used much. I think we’ll see expander like devices.Steve Modica
CTO, Small Tree Communications
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