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I remember that optical transceivers are expensive. On the flip side, there was optical SPDIF way back when.
by Scene_Cast2 6y ago
I remember that optical transceivers are expensive. On the flip side, there was optical SPDIF way back when.
- seiferteric 6y agoI know that's is currently true, but at scale can they not bring down the cost for these optical interfaces?
- smitty1110 6y agoThem main problem is that to get high bitrates over anything longer than 2m you probably need a glass fibre. And that increase the cost a lot, and makes the cables more fragile. Corning offers an optical USB3 cable where the optical converter fits in a slight-larger plug, it's not impossible. But most people wouldn't pay for it it when they don't need 50ft cables.
- tinus_hn 6y agoUTP seems to be doing just fine.
- gruez 6y ago>On the flip side, there was optical SPDIF way back when. the bitrates is also much lower for SPDIF. According to wikipedia it only supports uncompressed 48khz 20 bit PCM audio, which translates to a bandwidth of 120KB/s. I'm not sure when it was introduced, but wikipedia says USB 1.x was introduced in 1996 and had a bandwidth of up to 1.5 MB/s.
- arprocter 6y agoThat probably explains why the soundbar connected to my PC via optical is silent if I set the output above 48kHz (24-bit works though) I'm back to plugging headphones directly into the case, as the output from the jack on the screen was noticeably worse
- vel0city 6y agoTOSLINK (the optical SPDIF standard) originally had a max bitrate of 3.1Mbit (387.5KB/s). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOSLINK https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOSLINK
- morphle 6y agoNot really, a 10 Gbps SFP+ can be had for $18. A 1 Gbps SFP is around $8. They continue to drop in price. With an SFP you can go 500 m tot 10 km, around $0,06 per meter for a pair of fibers.
- topspin 6y agoYou're competing with something that costs a few cents. $8/$18 would be more than the value of some of the devices were dealing with here, and you need two. This is why Intel has at least twice now promulgated early specifications based on fiber and then fell back to copper; manufacturers won't build the products because users won't pay the price. There isn't a good solution here. People want neato fast stuff and they want it cheap, small and everything else that precludes good RF hygiene, and no one wants regulators interfering. It's intractable.
- seiferteric 6y agoSeems like a lot of cheap stuff does not need to be fast, so USB2 is good enough. I would like to have seen something like those audio aux jacks with built in TOSLINK inline like the old MBPs had. Maybe a USB2 port with an optional optical channel somehow squeezed in would be really neat.
- topspin 6y agoThis $19.99 USB storage device [1] has a read speed over 3x maximum USB2. Next year it will be $10. The year after it will be $5. Or some such curve. Good luck telling people that can't have it because you say so. Optical stuff has a curve too, but until it can compete with a bit of stamped metal inside a molding on price, it will be too expensive for USB. The market simply will not allow it. [1] https://www.bestbuy.com/site/pny-elite-x-fit-128gb-usb-3-1-flash-drive-black/5664105.p?skuId=5664105 https://www.bestbuy.com/site/pny-elite-x-fit-128gb-usb-3-1-f... Some problems are intractable.
- Spooky23 6y agoIdk... I bought a USB-C disk drive that is faster than a SAN I bought in 2016.
- wongarsu 6y agoAt 1m, the 10Gbit/s fiber cable with both transceivers is about 1.5x the price of a USB 3.2 cable. Of course USB wants to also support dirt cheap devices that don't need all that transfer speed. So you probably need to put the transceivers in the cable, to allow cheap devices to ship low-speed copper cables. Then you have problems with bulky cables, in addition to the bending radius challenges of fiber.