Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Pollett. I'm
Speaker 1: an editor at how stuff works dot com. Sitting in
Speaker 1: across from me as usual is the person who forgot
Speaker 1: to put his phone on airplane mode. Senior writer Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: The trained mind does not need a watch. Watches are
Speaker 1: a confidence trick invented by the Swiss. Oh that's an
Speaker 1: interesting thought. Sorry. Normally I would comment on the quote
Speaker 1: of the week or or of the podcast, and and
Speaker 1: I was thinking, oh, that's that's interesting. Sorry. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't really ever come by. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: recognize the actually thinking of the origin of that quote,
Speaker 1: but I'll tell you about it after the show. Okay,
Speaker 1: so today we're going to talk about some well I
Speaker 1: was gonna say competing technologies, but according to at least
Speaker 1: one party in this, it's not supposed to compete. But
Speaker 1: two different methods of transmitting data from computers to other devices,
Speaker 1: or even from the Internet to a computer, depending on
Speaker 1: how you're using them or uh, I would say, in
Speaker 1: in in one case, within the computer itself, yes, also possibility.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, so we're talking about USB three point oh
Speaker 1: and Intel's light peak technology. Yes, one of these. You
Speaker 1: would sort of probably be expected to know. USB is
Speaker 1: pretty ubiquitous as it has been, uh since I would
Speaker 1: guess the late nineties or at least early two thousand's UM,
Speaker 1: which if I'm not mistaken, until actually had quite a
Speaker 1: bit of a responsibility in developing USB in the first place. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In fact, Intel worked quite hard on USB three point
Speaker 1: oh as well. Uh, it's the the universal serial bus
Speaker 1: is what we're talking about here. And and you know,
Speaker 1: you're probably familiar with these. You probably have devices that
Speaker 1: you hook up through your computer that have you have
Speaker 1: that same UM plug that goes into the computer ports. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, everything from cameras to cell phones to uh
Speaker 1: external drives, UM two keyboards, mice, joysticks, all sorts of things.
Speaker 1: I've even seen some touchscreen displays that are USB connected
Speaker 1: connectible where you can have a second display up, which
Speaker 1: is a little interesting. It's actually that's that's probably taxing
Speaker 1: USB two point oh to its to its limits. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean this was just the purpose of the Universal
Speaker 1: Serial Bus was really to kind of help simplify ports
Speaker 1: on a computer. Right. Oh yes, but because I remember
Speaker 1: the days of Scuzzy. Um, yeah, Scuzzy for those of
Speaker 1: you who aren't familiar with it, good now, I know.
Speaker 1: Scuzzy actually was was pretty nice. It was speedy for
Speaker 1: its day. Um. But my my first two computers, being
Speaker 1: Commodore amigas, they used Scuzzy ports, or at least for
Speaker 1: most of the stuff that I had. Actually you would
Speaker 1: have parallel ports on those as well. UM. But the
Speaker 1: thing that annoyed me about Scuzzy, uh was that you
Speaker 1: could only have up to eight devices attached to your computer. Um.
Speaker 1: You would hook it up by this really thick cable.
Speaker 1: Um thick especially compared to to something like USB one
Speaker 1: and two anyway, and uh you had to actually set
Speaker 1: the address on the back of the device itself. I
Speaker 1: had um an external drive that I used to use,
Speaker 1: and you'd have to uh at my old job actually
Speaker 1: um where you would actually have to turn the thing
Speaker 1: around and uh, you know, actually change the number and
Speaker 1: yourself you could actually see the number it was. It
Speaker 1: was one of those little digital counters like you would
Speaker 1: see on a handheld counter. It's what kind of funny. Um,
Speaker 1: so you said it, you know one through eight. Uh,
Speaker 1: and if you had a competing and uh something on
Speaker 1: that address, then it would cause problems. Also, you had
Speaker 1: to have a terminator at the end on the last switch,
Speaker 1: so if you had don't call the I knew he
Speaker 1: was gonna go there. No, you had to have say
Speaker 1: you had a uh an external drive on your computer,
Speaker 1: it would have an outport as well, so it would
Speaker 1: have it would be out to the computer and then
Speaker 1: you would have an import and if nothing was coming
Speaker 1: into it, if you didn't plug in the terminator, the
Speaker 1: computer wouldn would theoretically continue to look for the other
Speaker 1: device which wasn't plugged in, and it would it would
Speaker 1: slow things down sometimes depending on what you were doing,
Speaker 1: cause it not to work. Um. So you had to
Speaker 1: have this little uh it's kind of hard to describe it.
Speaker 1: It was almost like a dongle, little plastic and metal
Speaker 1: device that you would shove in there that you know
Speaker 1: and lock into place that it would know, No, there's
Speaker 1: no other devices on here. You have the two external drives.
Speaker 1: One of them is you know, number four. Number one
Speaker 1: of them is number seven. You know, I know that
Speaker 1: this is the stuff that's on there. And the best
Speaker 1: part of all, if you wanted to add something, you
Speaker 1: had to turn off your computer, turn off the device. Uh.
Speaker 1: Some would even say unplugged the devices, although it never
Speaker 1: seemed to bother mind rather than the four computers that
Speaker 1: I blew up when I didn't I'm kidding, but yeah,
Speaker 1: you're supposed to turn off everything before you you know,
Speaker 1: plugged or unplugged any of the devices into this guzzy chain.
Speaker 1: And uh, my first computer with USB was the very
Speaker 1: very first iMac. I actually got it on the day
Speaker 1: it came out, and uh, it was the first computer
Speaker 1: I had to have USB. And the idea of being
Speaker 1: able to hot swap devices and have up to a
Speaker 1: hundred twenty seven instead of eight, it was so nice. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Hot swapping, by the way, in case you don't know,
Speaker 1: that just means that you can unplug or plug in
Speaker 1: a device at any time, whether your computers on or off,
Speaker 1: and that in theory, nothing bad should happen it. What
Speaker 1: should have but is that the computer should check to
Speaker 1: see what kind of device has just been hooked up
Speaker 1: to it and whether or not the computer has the
Speaker 1: correct driver to interact with that device, and if not,
Speaker 1: it prompts you to either you know, load the driver
Speaker 1: or try and search for it. Yep. And that's another
Speaker 1: one of the nice things about USB is that it's
Speaker 1: you can find it on Windows machines, you can find
Speaker 1: it on Linux machines, you can find it on Macintosh,
Speaker 1: and for the most part, you can buy peripherals that
Speaker 1: will work with all three or at least two of those,
Speaker 1: as long as there is a driver available for them.
Speaker 1: And that wasn't necessarily the case before. So USB is
Speaker 1: really kind of um made everything a lot easier, and
Speaker 1: fire FireWire two to an extent, but FireWire didn't catch
Speaker 1: on like USB did. The FireWire was mostly the domain
Speaker 1: of Apple. Um. Yeah, the the sony for example, with
Speaker 1: the USB thing, and and the idea that you can
Speaker 1: use the same peripherals on different devices. I have a
Speaker 1: couple of my own that I've swapped out between my
Speaker 1: Mac and my uh my PC, including and this this
Speaker 1: got a lot of mirth off the internet when I
Speaker 1: took a picture of it. Uh A, I've used my
Speaker 1: Mac keyboard to hook up to my work PC because,
Speaker 1: as we all know, the left side of my keyboard
Speaker 1: on my work PC doesn't work. So and that was
Speaker 1: the USB keyboard that I happened to have at home
Speaker 1: was my Mac keyboard, and I was like, huh, I
Speaker 1: wonder if this will work, And sure enough it does.
Speaker 1: The Apple button doesn't do anything. But other than that, um,
Speaker 1: and I've I've hooked up a PC keyboard to my Mac.
Speaker 1: So there you go. So at any rate, the USB
Speaker 1: solution was to try and cut down on all these
Speaker 1: different ports, and of course there are a lot more
Speaker 1: besides just the scuzzy I mean you had serial ports,
Speaker 1: you had parallel ports, you had the keyboard and mice
Speaker 1: jacks that you would have to insert the you know,
Speaker 1: you plug your your mouth or your keyboard in. They
Speaker 1: have those little round plugs if you remember. You now
Speaker 1: you've got a lot of USB one so you don't
Speaker 1: have to worry about that kind of stuff. Um, and
Speaker 1: it's simplified things a bit, right, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: was thinking about that too. Um. The nine pin connectors
Speaker 1: that you used to see on the old Attaris where
Speaker 1: the ports that also worked with the Amiga. So all
Speaker 1: my um, I could use my joysticks and stuff to
Speaker 1: play games with. But now if I were going to
Speaker 1: do that on a Windows or a Macro, a Linux machine.
Speaker 1: You could buy a USB joystick and it would work
Speaker 1: across all of them. You have the same port. You
Speaker 1: don't have to mess with all that stuff anymore. That's nice. Now.
Speaker 1: One of the limitations now we're currently the standard currently
Speaker 1: is USB two point oh. Yes, that's watching away for years.
Speaker 1: Yes exactly, it has been that way for years. Uh
Speaker 1: and and we've known that USB three point oh. They
Speaker 1: finalized the standard for that in two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: but we still haven't really seen a wide rollout, and
Speaker 1: we'll probably get into a little controversy about that in
Speaker 1: a little bit. But the uh there, there's some limitations
Speaker 1: to USB two point oh. One of which is the
Speaker 1: speed UM. Now it US be two point That is
Speaker 1: fast enough for most regular applications, like if you want
Speaker 1: to use a keyboard or joystick or a mouse. The
Speaker 1: bandwidth is fine for that, you know, it's you don't
Speaker 1: need something that's going to be super fast. And the bandwidth,
Speaker 1: by the way, is four hundred and eighty megabits per
Speaker 1: second UM. But if you want to do something like
Speaker 1: back up your hard drive to an external drive and
Speaker 1: you're using a USB cord and you've got a massive
Speaker 1: hard drive, right, you know, yeah, it's gonna take some time.
Speaker 1: So you've got like a hard drive that's like you know,
Speaker 1: you could have up to a terabyte, right, I mean
Speaker 1: or more really, but you want to back that up
Speaker 1: because we we always say you should back up your
Speaker 1: hard drive. One of the things that makes that less
Speaker 1: than easy is the fact that are a lot of
Speaker 1: our cables don't have the bandwidth capacity to make that
Speaker 1: data transfer at a very fast clip, so you have
Speaker 1: to wait quite a bit while you do it. It's
Speaker 1: always nice to schedule at for the middle of the
Speaker 1: night when you're asleep theoretically, but you're asleep in the
Speaker 1: middle of the night. Man, I kind of figured that
Speaker 1: stuff out. So, uh so USB three point oh ups
Speaker 1: that speed and by ten times actually four point eight
Speaker 1: gigabytes or gigabits sorry four points Yeah. As soon as
Speaker 1: I said, I was like, well, you need to correct
Speaker 1: that before we get letters four point eight gigabits per second,
Speaker 1: and uh so that's yeah, it's ten times the speed
Speaker 1: of u USB two point oh. And they talk the
Speaker 1: I remember hearing things like, well, at that speed, you
Speaker 1: could you could rip a Blu ray disc and just
Speaker 1: a matter of moments comparatively speaking, like thirty seconds. So
Speaker 1: there's this amazing ability to uh to transfer data at
Speaker 1: a really good clip. And just like USB two point
Speaker 1: oh uh, it is capable of powering devices as well.
Speaker 1: There there are um enough, the way the cables work.
Speaker 1: There are four cables in USB two point yes, there
Speaker 1: are eight in USB three point oh. Yes. Now two
Speaker 1: of those cables are for ones of power cable, ones
Speaker 1: of ground cable. Yeah. Um yeah, I had I had
Speaker 1: gotten my notes from from Norman Chan and Maximum PC
Speaker 1: who wrote a nifty article. It really well. The title
Speaker 1: says it all everything you need to know about USB
Speaker 1: three point oh plus first spliced cable photos. They actually
Speaker 1: have pictures. He said that there are five new cables
Speaker 1: are yes, um but yeah, it's basically you're transmitting more
Speaker 1: information over that distance. So I don't mean to contradict you. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: that's right. I would rather I would rather have the
Speaker 1: correct information. Well, here's here's how I understand it. So
Speaker 1: USB two point oh. One of the other limitations is
Speaker 1: that it does this thing called polling, which is where
Speaker 1: you know you can only so do you like your
Speaker 1: data in this location where than you I shouldn't have
Speaker 1: pause to let you say something. I can tell you
Speaker 1: had something to say. But respondents say they want their
Speaker 1: data on this hard drive at any rate. Worry about that,
Speaker 1: ladies and gentlemen. Uh No, the USB two point it
Speaker 1: can only send data in one direction at a time, right, exactly.
Speaker 1: So you're like, let's say you've got a smartphone that
Speaker 1: you're using, and you want to move files to and
Speaker 1: from the smartphone, So you say, pulling pictures off the
Speaker 1: smartphone and you're putting music onto it. Right that that
Speaker 1: that could happen. You can't do both of those things
Speaker 1: at the same time using USB two point oh. Right,
Speaker 1: You're gonna have to do one first and then the other.
Speaker 1: Right now. USB three point oh, because of the additional
Speaker 1: wires that they've added, they've the standard allows UH two
Speaker 1: a well, simultaneous transmission of data both to and from
Speaker 1: the device at the same time. I said that simultaneously
Speaker 1: in the same time. This is what happens when we
Speaker 1: record in the morning. Oh my goodness, people. But but yes,
Speaker 1: you can actually see these these lines now if you
Speaker 1: if you look at the end of a regular USB
Speaker 1: uh connector, you'll see, um it sort of reminds me
Speaker 1: about sandwich cookie in a way, because half of it
Speaker 1: is an open space and the other half is seems solid.
Speaker 1: And that's how that's what frustrates so many people about it.
Speaker 1: They know that they've got the cable, they're reaching around
Speaker 1: the back end of their of their PC and they
Speaker 1: know they've got it in the slot, but the closed
Speaker 1: end is on the closed end, and you have to
Speaker 1: flip the plug over and then find the the connector again,
Speaker 1: and it's it's frustrating. It's not that big a deal,
Speaker 1: but if you look at it, you'll know what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about. But on the USB three connector, you can
Speaker 1: actually see where the other wires it plugs in the
Speaker 1: same way, it's backward compatible as far as using support. Now,
Speaker 1: you would actually need a USB three card on your
Speaker 1: computer for it to use USB three. But let's see
Speaker 1: you have an older computer and somebody lent you a
Speaker 1: USB three cable. You could still use that on your
Speaker 1: computer and you would be able to see where the
Speaker 1: wire connectors are on the closed off looking in, they're
Speaker 1: actually visible to you, so you could tell just by
Speaker 1: looking at it whether it's a USB two or USB
Speaker 1: three chord. Right and and just to clarify a little bit,
Speaker 1: you can use USB three on a USB two ports,
Speaker 1: a USB three cable, and a USB two port, like
Speaker 1: Chris was saying, but it will, of course it will.
Speaker 1: The data will move at USB two speeds right because
Speaker 1: it doesn't have the connectors to make it work. And
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be confusing. No, no,
Speaker 1: not at all. I just wanted to make sure I
Speaker 1: covered that. Uh. But the idea that it being backwards compatible,
Speaker 1: that stretches back to USB two, which was also backwards
Speaker 1: compatible with USB one. I mean you want to you
Speaker 1: want to make sure that you don't just wipe out
Speaker 1: someone's entire Like the whole purposes make life simpler. You
Speaker 1: don't want to make it more complicated by saying, okay,
Speaker 1: all that stuff that you had no longer works. So
Speaker 1: now that we have these devices that require lots of
Speaker 1: data to transfer at high speeds, let's say that you
Speaker 1: want to back up your hard drive, or that you've
Speaker 1: captured a bunch of high definition video and you want
Speaker 1: to pull that from a camera onto your computer. Uh.
Speaker 1: USB two, I know, is starting to look a little slow.
Speaker 1: And that's why USB three point oh was was being
Speaker 1: put into play. It's also called superspeed USB because USB
Speaker 1: two point it was called speed USB. So superspeed is
Speaker 1: the idea that it's gonna go much much faster, it's
Speaker 1: gonna continue to power these devices. It actually draws more
Speaker 1: power than than USB two point oh. USB two point oh,
Speaker 1: I think had a maximum of five milli amps and
Speaker 1: USB three point oh is nine miller amps. Um so
Speaker 1: for powered buses, it's it's that's a means it's gonna
Speaker 1: be able to power more power hungry devices. Yes, definitely,
Speaker 1: So that's kind of the story in USB three point oh.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about light peak for a second. Okay, I
Speaker 1: think it's in transition. I think it's important to note
Speaker 1: that USB three if and if if I'm not mistaken,
Speaker 1: USB three is is only external, like you're going to
Speaker 1: hook up external peripherals with USB fight I know. However,
Speaker 1: white peak can be used on a motherboard to connect
Speaker 1: devices inside your computer. Is that yeah? Or or you
Speaker 1: can use it as an external as well. This was
Speaker 1: sort of Intel's take on how can we simplify these uh,
Speaker 1: these ports even further than USB three point oh because
Speaker 1: USB three uh, you know, there's certain devices you can
Speaker 1: connect to like the external hard drives or the high
Speaker 1: definition cameras, but it still does not have the bandwidth
Speaker 1: necessary for other applications like driving a high definition monitor,
Speaker 1: or or replacing an HDM MY chord um or replacing
Speaker 1: the Ethernet chord. You couldn't do that with USB three.
Speaker 1: The bandwidth isn't there. It's not really designed for that.
Speaker 1: So Intel was saying, well, what if we were to
Speaker 1: develop a technology that would allow us to essentially boil
Speaker 1: it down to one cable for data. You know, you
Speaker 1: could just have the same sort of cable. Essentially, your
Speaker 1: your computer would look like it would have a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of the same ports, and in theory, you could
Speaker 1: plug any cable into any of those ports and then
Speaker 1: into any compatible device and it works. So you might have,
Speaker 1: you know, five cables, they're all identical, and one of
Speaker 1: them is going to an external display, and one of
Speaker 1: them is going to your high high definition camera, one
Speaker 1: of them is going to a an external hard drive, etcetera.
Speaker 1: So the way they decided to try and implement this
Speaker 1: is through fiber optics. There there's a chip that is
Speaker 1: central to this system that UH would be installed on
Speaker 1: a motherboard and would transmit it would essentially translate binary
Speaker 1: data into optical data using a laser and UM fiber
Speaker 1: optic lines. I'm impressed that you managed to hold off
Speaker 1: saying laser. You know I did that to myself. UM. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's if you remember, we did a podcast
Speaker 1: not terribly longer last year on fiber optics UM and UH.
Speaker 1: Fiber optics are a much different animal as far as
Speaker 1: the way they transmit information. They're going by light UM
Speaker 1: and they do have some advantages. UM. Now, when we
Speaker 1: talked about fiber optics in that podcast, we were talking
Speaker 1: about how delicate the lines are. You have to be
Speaker 1: very careful with that. Well, I did some research on
Speaker 1: light Peak for the podcast, and and tell claims that
Speaker 1: you can even tie the cable in a knot and
Speaker 1: it will still be able to transmit information very very
Speaker 1: quickly without you know, having to worry about damaging the
Speaker 1: lines on the light peak transmitter. And that's funny because
Speaker 1: light peak may if you may never have heard of it,
Speaker 1: but this is something that's been in development for pretty
Speaker 1: long time now. So it's like, actually, we were expecting
Speaker 1: to see products launching with light Peak, perhaps as early
Speaker 1: as late, but that didn't happen, and now we're hearing
Speaker 1: about it coming out in And the idea here is that,
Speaker 1: at least the initial idea is that you're using fiber
Speaker 1: optics to transmit data the there'd be two fiber optic
Speaker 1: lines that would be dedicated to transmitting data out and
Speaker 1: two that would be dedicated to transmitting data in. So
Speaker 1: just like USB three point out, you could have simultaneous
Speaker 1: communication from both the device and the computer. And uh,
Speaker 1: the theoretical starting speed for light peak, and I say
Speaker 1: theoretical just because it hasn't hit the market really yet
Speaker 1: is ten gigabits per second. So that's more than twice
Speaker 1: as fast as USB three point out. Indeed it is.
Speaker 1: And uh that at that speed you still can't necessarily
Speaker 1: replace things like HDMI chords. You would still need to
Speaker 1: get a little faster than that. But Intel says that
Speaker 1: within ten years that top speed will re a peak
Speaker 1: of around a hundred gigabits per second. Now, at that speed,
Speaker 1: you're talking about using the potential for using this technology
Speaker 1: for everything from the cable that would go from your
Speaker 1: modem to your computer, so you would use the same
Speaker 1: sort of cable to hook up to your Internet connection
Speaker 1: as you would to your external hard drive or to
Speaker 1: another monitor, which is kind of a cool idea, right.
Speaker 1: You no longer have to worry about, oh gosh, I
Speaker 1: need this one specific cable, where the heck is that?
Speaker 1: And you know, you start hunting through all your cables.
Speaker 1: Now you just have a pile o cables that are
Speaker 1: all the same and you just grab one, which is
Speaker 1: a great idea. The there's some limitations to light peak
Speaker 1: as well. One of those is that we don't really
Speaker 1: know how light peak would provide power to devices, right
Speaker 1: because you have a lot of devices that either charge
Speaker 1: through USB or the The USB provides the power that
Speaker 1: the device needs to to operate as well as the
Speaker 1: data transfer, and light Peak on its own cannot really
Speaker 1: transmit power because you're talking about fiber optics, it's just
Speaker 1: light um and by light, we're using like I said,
Speaker 1: lasers and little photovoltaic type sensors. So there would have
Speaker 1: to be some sort of either external power source to
Speaker 1: power these devices. Um, So you'd have one wire essentially
Speaker 1: going in to provide power and another wire coming in
Speaker 1: that would be the light peak wire, or you would
Speaker 1: have to pair light peak with copper wire of some sort. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because of course, uh, you know, the USB is using
Speaker 1: copper as it is in order to to do what
Speaker 1: it does. So yeah, it seems like you would have
Speaker 1: to have something like that simply to avoid, um, you
Speaker 1: know that the charging having to worry about the charging issue.
Speaker 1: And people have come to expect that with USB and
Speaker 1: FireWire both being the connectors have choice for the majority
Speaker 1: of electronics over the past decade or so. Um, I
Speaker 1: think people sort of expect that, and they'll go, hey,
Speaker 1: this is great, it's really fast, but now I have
Speaker 1: to plug it in while I'm you know, I think
Speaker 1: that that may throw people a little bit. Um. And
Speaker 1: and just while we've been talking, I did a little
Speaker 1: more additional research just to find out how many lines,
Speaker 1: and I found reputable sources saying four and five additional
Speaker 1: lines on USB three it's a mystery. So um so
Speaker 1: I'm we may have to to uh post on on
Speaker 1: our Facebook feed or something that we can find out
Speaker 1: definitively one way the end, because I thought, you know,
Speaker 1: I had gotten it from a reputable source, and you
Speaker 1: got your from reputable source, and we will go out,
Speaker 1: we will find a USB three point accord and we
Speaker 1: will cut it open. Okay, then that'll tell us right there, yep,
Speaker 1: but yeah, we will cry. But I don't have a
Speaker 1: device that can actually operate under USB three point over
Speaker 1: right now, so it's not at the at the moment,
Speaker 1: it's sort of a moot point. Um. But yeah. And
Speaker 1: that was one of the things though about light Peak
Speaker 1: two is that on its debut it may not necessarily
Speaker 1: be using fiber optic, right That is an interesting point.
Speaker 1: We heard from Intel that the initial light Peak wire
Speaker 1: is not actually using fiber optics to transmit data through
Speaker 1: the wire. It's going to use copper, which, of course,
Speaker 1: again it is like all the other cables. So but
Speaker 1: supposedly they have found a way until has found a
Speaker 1: way to uh to transmit data at that ten gigabits
Speaker 1: per second speed that was supposed to be the starting speed,
Speaker 1: which is interesting. Uh. One of the problems, one of
Speaker 1: the other problems about using copper is that electricity can
Speaker 1: create interference, you know our f interference and um USB
Speaker 1: three point I was kind of pushing that envelope right
Speaker 1: now as it is, so to have an even greater
Speaker 1: bandwidth of copper means that you have to you know,
Speaker 1: think about those problems about shielding the cable and such
Speaker 1: way so that the interference is at a minimum or
Speaker 1: else you're going to have problems when you're transmitting data.
Speaker 1: And so it's a lot of people have started talking
Speaker 1: about that. I've heard some snarky comments talk calling the
Speaker 1: first generation of light Peak copper peak because it's not
Speaker 1: using light it's using copper um. Maybe it'll be light copper.
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe it will, it could be, I don't know.
Speaker 1: But the the other discussion, besides the fact that the
Speaker 1: first generation of light Peak will not actually be using
Speaker 1: fiber optics in the cable, the chip is different. The
Speaker 1: chip could have you can have fiber optics within the motherboard,
Speaker 1: but the actual cable that you're using to hook up
Speaker 1: to the various devices is going to have copper in it.
Speaker 1: The other big discussion is is light peak going to
Speaker 1: make USB three point oh a moot point from the start? Like,
Speaker 1: is is it an also ran? Not if it never
Speaker 1: makes it to market. The thing is right now, they've
Speaker 1: been promised for years and they're just hasn't been any moved.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's been movement, but you just don't see
Speaker 1: them on store shelves either one of them really in
Speaker 1: any quantity, even though I think you would agree. I mean,
Speaker 1: you've seen some uh, some displays this at c E S. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've seen yeah, demos of light Peak have been at
Speaker 1: c E S uh previously. You And there are USB
Speaker 1: three point oh devices and motherboards that are out there
Speaker 1: on the market right now. You can go out and
Speaker 1: buy them, but they aren't as plentiful as they as
Speaker 1: you might think they should be. Considering that USB two
Speaker 1: point oh is such a wide standard, you would imagine
Speaker 1: that USB three point i would get adopted fairly quickly.
Speaker 1: And depending upon whom you ask, you might hear that
Speaker 1: the adoption rates are actually faster than USB two point oh,
Speaker 1: and other people say, like, well that that has maybe.
Speaker 1: But USB two point oh is an accepted standard, so
Speaker 1: you would think USB three point would be adopted very quickly,
Speaker 1: especially since it was introduced the standard was finalized in
Speaker 1: two thousand eight. UM. One of the the allegations that
Speaker 1: I've heard some journalists levy against Intel is that Intel
Speaker 1: is specifically dragging its heels in supporting USB three point
Speaker 1: oh in order to give light Peak an advantage, because
Speaker 1: you know Intel, Intel's not just doing this light Peak
Speaker 1: project until makes chips and and chip sets from other boards.
Speaker 1: And if Intel doesn't create sets that support USB three
Speaker 1: point oh, then some one of the most popular chip
Speaker 1: manufacturers is in effect holding back USB three point oh adoption. Now, Intel,
Speaker 1: for its part, says that's a lot of bologna that
Speaker 1: they are not trying to sabotage USB three point out
Speaker 1: that in that light Peak isn't even intended to replace
Speaker 1: USB three point oh. I've seen reports, essentially kind of
Speaker 1: in a mysterious way, say that light Peak will work
Speaker 1: with USB three point oh. And whether or not that
Speaker 1: means that you will have light Peak cables that have
Speaker 1: a USB connector on them, I don't know. They haven't
Speaker 1: really gone into detail to explain what they mean by that. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, getting back to what I said earlier. Um,
Speaker 1: I remember in the when I first learned about like
Speaker 1: light Peak, hearing that it was supposed to basically be
Speaker 1: inside your computer, you know, hooking up your hard drive
Speaker 1: and your components to transfer data more efficiently within your
Speaker 1: machine itself. Now, the more recent research suggests that they
Speaker 1: intended to be thing for used for things that you
Speaker 1: plug in peripherals that you plug into your computer as well. UM,
Speaker 1: So in a way, if if it were sticking to
Speaker 1: what's inside your computer, UM, that would make more sense
Speaker 1: that it would be a technology to use fiber optics
Speaker 1: to move info around inside your machine or inside peripherals
Speaker 1: just that much more quickly, and then using USB on
Speaker 1: the external to transfer information between devices. Now you know,
Speaker 1: if they really are serious about using it to hook
Speaker 1: peripherals to your computer, then yes, I don't see how
Speaker 1: it could not be considered a competitor to USB three. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, if the USB three uh contingent believes that
Speaker 1: Intel is doing this in an anti competitive way, I
Speaker 1: would expect to see this hit the streets and the courtroom. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, you'll you'll hear about the court cases because
Speaker 1: you know that happens a little bit in between technology
Speaker 1: companies when one feels slided by another. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: would imagine that really there's room for both. Uh. There
Speaker 1: may be applications for which light peak is particularly well suited. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, and it may be particularly more expensive because
Speaker 1: it relies on fiber optic technology rather than good old copper. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I UM, I know. I would imagine things like, let's
Speaker 1: say I can't imagine you're needing a light peak connection
Speaker 1: for your keyboard or for your mouths. Well, everybody, everybody
Speaker 1: that's in quotes, everybody's using the wireless mice and keyboards anyway,
Speaker 1: right through Bluetooth, right, Yeah, no, not really, but yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't really, that's that's overkill for something like that,
Speaker 1: or or even for gaming devices where you really don't
Speaker 1: want where you really want a fast connection. You're you're
Speaker 1: concerned about things like latency between your your computer and
Speaker 1: your keyboard. So yeah, still, even then, I can't imagine
Speaker 1: that that a USB, even a USB two device would
Speaker 1: be useful for that because it to be because a
Speaker 1: game pad, even though you do want to cut down
Speaker 1: on on latency, there's not a whole lot of data
Speaker 1: being pushed through. And if there isn't a lot of data,
Speaker 1: it's going through very very fast. I mean it's you know,
Speaker 1: we're talking about top speeds of four megabits per secon
Speaker 1: for USB two point oh and four point eight gigabits
Speaker 1: per second for USB three point out. That's that's definitely
Speaker 1: overkill for those kind of devices. But for the other thing,
Speaker 1: applications like to replace the Ethernet port, or to replace
Speaker 1: HDM my ports, or to create a fast connection between
Speaker 1: your computer and an external hard drive so you can
Speaker 1: back up really really quickly, you know, in a few
Speaker 1: seconds as opposed to you know, an hour or two,
Speaker 1: depending on what kind of device you're using and what
Speaker 1: kind of how much data you're you're shipping around. Then
Speaker 1: totally makes sense. And we also should remember that USB
Speaker 1: three point oh USB in general has a limitation on
Speaker 1: how long the cable can be, which is around five meters,
Speaker 1: which is actually pretty pretty long. Um, But the light
Speaker 1: peak cable, it's limitations a hundred meters when you start.
Speaker 1: When when Intel starts mentioning things like that, like the
Speaker 1: fact that light peak cables could be up to a
Speaker 1: hundred meters long without any loss in performance, you have
Speaker 1: to come to the conclusion, Asian that this is not
Speaker 1: intended solely as an internalized component, because why would you
Speaker 1: need a hundred meter cable inside your computer? That I
Speaker 1: can't imagine an application for which that would be really
Speaker 1: really useful, But I'm sure there's somebody out there going,
Speaker 1: really that would be great. Finally, I could build my
Speaker 1: computer the size of the Graysler building. Um. The Chrysler
Speaker 1: building is slightly longer or slightly taller. Yes, but you
Speaker 1: put the computer part in the middle, silly, any of
Speaker 1: the peripherals at the top of the bottom. I thought
Speaker 1: this through. Okay, Okay, so anyway, the Yeah, it's gonna
Speaker 1: be interesting to see how this pans out, whether USB
Speaker 1: three point or like peak goes forward, whether Intel starts
Speaker 1: to produce more chip sets that actually that actually support
Speaker 1: USB three point oh, so that we start seeing more
Speaker 1: of those computers on the market. Um, Like I said,
Speaker 1: there are some motherboards out there that have USB three
Speaker 1: point chips. You can actually go out and buy a
Speaker 1: USB three card and install it on your computer. Um.
Speaker 1: Although a lot of people think, well, what's the point
Speaker 1: of that. I mean, the reason why people like USB
Speaker 1: a lot is that it's convenient. And part of that
Speaker 1: convenience is that it's pre installed on your computer. You
Speaker 1: don't have to go and open your computer up and
Speaker 1: put in a chip. And of course a lot of
Speaker 1: us are using laptops that you may not be able
Speaker 1: to install another card in your laptop, depending on how
Speaker 1: it was manufactured and how tech savvy you are. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, like my netbook, I can't do it. You know,
Speaker 1: you know, if the netbook came with USB three, that'd
Speaker 1: be awesome, but there's I'm never gonna get USB three
Speaker 1: on that netbook. I would have to buy a new
Speaker 1: one that would have that built into it from the start. So, uh,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm curious to see how this plays out, especially
Speaker 1: again with the whole computer security angle. Backing up the
Speaker 1: computer and at just a fraction of speed is really
Speaker 1: appealing to me. Or the idea of buying a new
Speaker 1: MP three player and moving my five thousand plus song
Speaker 1: list onto it in just a second or two is
Speaker 1: that's also very appealing to me, so you can just
Speaker 1: immediately go and listen to your music. So we'll have
Speaker 1: to keep an eye on this see how it plays out,
Speaker 1: whether or not whether or not it really they really
Speaker 1: do work in tandem, or if light Peak will push
Speaker 1: USB three out of the way before it even gets
Speaker 1: a chance to get started. Well, that wraps up this
Speaker 1: discussion on USB and light Peak. I hope you enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go get some coffee right there. If you
Speaker 1: wanna let us know what you think about the debate,
Speaker 1: send us a message on Facebook or Twitter. Are handled
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