Intel shows off Light Peak Optical "all-in-one" Connector

As a kid, I remember cartoons where the evil mainframe computer would take over the world by using a laser (of course an evil laser!) to tap into the world's systems and forcing the hero to save the day.

This is exactly what Intel is working on; well except for the laser and the evil part. Today at IDF, Intel showed a new method for connecting mobile systems to an existing network of devices. The new technology is being dubbed "Light Peak" and could allow mobile devices to connect to storage, display, networking, audio and pretty much anything you can conceive.

The new standard uses an optical connector (hence the laser reference) that is capable of sending up to 10Gbps at distances of up to 100 meters (about 333 feet). The idea is to reduce the number of ports and connectors needed for mobile devices (remember we talked about moving all of the PCI-e family onto the CPU?) and replace them with a single one that can pretty much do them all.

I do not think I will ever get tired of saying this, the future of computing is looking pretty cool right now!