Light Peak

Intel is developing a new interconnect known as Light Peak, check out this video for the lowdown:

From Apple Core:

Light Peak is based on fiber optic technology that is capable of transferring data at 10Gbps — dramatically faster than the 400-800Mbps achieved by FireWire and 480Mbps USB. At 10Gbps you could transfer a full-length Blu-Ray movie in less than 30 seconds. According to Intel, Light Peak can scale to 100Gbps over the next decade and has a number of other benefits.

From Engadget, “Optical technology also allows for smaller connectors and longer, thinner, and more flexible cables than currently possible. Light Peak also has the ability to run multiple protocols simultaneously over a single cable, enabling the technology to connect devices such as peripherals, workstations, displays, disk drives, docking stations, and more.”

Also, a presentation of the technology from IDF2009:

The IDF demo shows  how you can play a 2xHD video (8Gbps) in one direction and transferring a 2GB file back in the other direction with no slowdown to the video.

via Apple Core.