Even though Light Peak high-speed optical interconnection for PC peripherals is not officially standardized and its first iteration is unlikely to offer serious performance advantages compared to existing technologies, rumours emerged that the tech will become commercial already next year. Without public specs, though, Light Peak is likely to be extremely rare interconnection in 2011.

"Light Peak is now on track to appear in products in the first half of 2011 - and likely earlier in the year than later," an unnamed industry source familiar with the progress of the technology reportedly told Cnet News web-site.

Light Peak technology has been heavily promoted by Intel Corp., its primary developer. However, even Intel itself withdrew all of its Light Peak technical classes from its Developer Forum agenda earlier this year. Moreover, twelve months after Intel launched its Light Peak initiative at its IDF 2009, no new standards body has been formed to deliver public Light Peak specifications, it was reported in late September this year. Still, Intel itself said at the time that components needed for implementation of Light Peak would be available by the end of 2010.

While components themselves will be available, they will be pretty expensive and manufacturers of personal computers are unlikely to adopt expensive Light Peak given the lack of peripherals that can use it. The implementation of Light Peak is estimated to cost from $5 to $10, if not higher, despite of Intel's promise of $2 per port. Moreover, without support from Intel's own core-logic sets, Light Peak will share the destiny of USB 3.0, which is taking off pretty slowly.

The first incarnation of Light Peak will support bandwidth of up to 10Gb/s, which is two times higher than that of USB 3.0, but what will not bring any significant gains to all available peripherals, except, perhaps, external graphics cards or portable solid-state drives.

Tags: Light Peak, Intel