Light Peak – Overkill for Audio Interfaces?
This week, Intel and Apple announced the first incarnation of Light Peak – on the latest iteration of Mac laptops. Apple calls it Thunderbolt.
Cheesy name aside, the 10 gbps performance is staggering. It’s more than an order of magnitude faster than Firewire 800. Want to move a Blueray movie? Less than a minute. USB 2.0 and 3.0 just got leap-frogged, big-time.
For those of us with terabyte+ music libraries, moving these and backing them up just got easier. This interface has 3x the transfer rate of a high-performance SATA drive!
Is Apple positioning this as the successor to firewire? Probably. Will it lead to better fidelity in music server systems? Who knows.
But I want one…
Bob
2 Comments to Light Peak – Overkill for Audio Interfaces?
Categories
Links
Archives
- April 2013
- March 2013
- February 2013
- January 2013
- December 2012
- November 2012
- October 2012
- September 2012
- August 2012
- June 2012
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
Hey Bob,
You Wrote:
“Apple calls it Thunderbolt. Cheesy name aside, the 10 gbps performance is staggering…”
Agreed, major cheese name but, Light Peak was only the code name given during development. This first implementation uses a copper PHY but, all (two of) the implementations I’ve seen at Intel Developer Forum were over fibre, which’ll be smokin’ fast when it arrives.
“Is Apple positioning this as the successor to firewire? Probably. Will it lead to better fidelity in music server systems? Who knows.”
It is the successor to 1394 as far as Apple & Intel are concerned, though I doubt it will lead to better fidelity since FireWire and USB3 both support isochronous transactions and FireWire is a true peer-to-peer protocol…two key contributors to fidelity.
Great ponts, Oliver. Thanks!