The Silicon-Germanium (SiGe) expert engineers over at Ensphere Solutions in Silicon Valley have recently made headlines regarding the manufacturing process of upcoming Light Peak interconnect technologies that could very well be ready for consumer use sometime in 2010.

In perspective, Light Peak technology is Intel’s codename for an advanced optical standard originally proposed by Apple that transmits high bandwidth amounts of light data between 10Gbps and 100Gbps over fiber optic cable strands. One of the clear benefits of the technology is that it is designed to connect electronic devices to one another over a peripheral bus. FireWire, USB, SATA, SCSI and HDMI are all common bus technologies that the majority of consumer populations benefit from but unfortunately lack compatibility with one another. Intel intends to deploy Light Peak over the next few years as a universal interconnect standard with highly scalable bandwidth performance.

Ensphere Solutions is currently focused on designing a 10Gbps dual-channel optical-to-electrical and electrical-to-optical transceiver chip for the technology. The company decided to push its manufacturing limits by going with a 65nm CMOS design that should greatly benefit expanded research projects focused on faster throughput performance in the near future.

"We were used to 10-Gbit transceivers costing $50 or more," said vice president of marketing Al Gharakhanian. "But to get to the $10 price point you need for consumer devices, we had to go with standard CMOS, then work hard to meet the specifications for a 10¹² bit error rate and a 135-milliwatt-per-channel power budget."

The transceiver chip, named ESI-XVR10100, measures in at 1.7mm by 0.7mm and houses dual channels for both a receiver and a transmitter to begin and end data streams at different locations along the fiber. In layman’s terms, your DisplayPort enabled PC and DisplayPort monitor will be able to connect to one another through the same cable that your HDMI enabled DVD player and HDMI monitor connect through.

A recent post from TweakTown suggests that Intel intends to collaborate with the USB Implementers Forum to ensure that Light Peak can also maintain compatibility with the billions of USB devices already on the market. In the event that this situation becomes standardized, we can expect to see a plethora of support from hundreds if not thousands of manufacturers in the IT sector as well as the home theater industry. Of course, standardization has its delays and the actual process may not take place for another few years.