• Justin@lemmy.jlh.name
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    8 months ago

    Imagine putting out a new high bandwidth cable standard in 2025 based on copper.

    The sooner display and networking move to SFP, the better.

    • cmhe@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      SFP? You mean the every device has slots to plug in different transceiver modules? I guess that would make it more future proof, but I think that will raise the cost, and might confuse ordinary people.

      You have to think about the slot-transceiver compatibility and transceiver-medium compatibility then. Hmm… but I guess that would make it more transparent what is going on than having those chips embedded inside the cables, but not sure if we can leave them out, and require the end users to take care of thinking of all these compatibilities themselves or risk fire hazards.

      • Justin@lemmy.jlh.name
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        8 months ago

        yeah, I guess tvs and receivers would come with active optical cables to make it simpler, but the main thing is that optical is much cheaper and faster than copper once you get the economies of scale down on the transceivers. 1 terabit over 100km, down a cable thinner than a USB cable, is no problem with the right lasers. Meanwhile, I have interference and patent issues at 0.02tbps on hdmi cables less than a meter long.

        Plenty of cheap optical HDMI cables out there, but they have compatibility issues. It would be so much easier with standard mmf mpo or SMF lc cables.

        apalrd did review a unique product recently that embeds a mmf transceiver into the existing HDMI for factor, though.

        https://youtu.be/1aIK01S5qa4