Long Optical Audio Cables (and optical interfaces)

I’ve been looking for a long TOSLink optical audio cable but I notice most of the consumer stuff is max 15 feet long. I really need a digital audio cable about 25 feet. I thought one of the major advantages of an optical audio cable was that optical could carry quite a long distance. Does anyone out there know why TOSLink cables have a limited length? I’d rather not run more coax cable in 2010.

I’m looking forward to the fiber optic linking systems Intel is working on for PCs and peripherals. They call it a hybrid system, silicon potonics, the merger of optics and silicon on one module.

I remember way back when when I was building my first laser in.. well, it was a while ago, it was a Heathkit voice communications laser kit(!). I remember thinking this would be cool to have fiber or something to link the two points so they wouldn’t have to be LOS (Line-of-Sight). Then when I was dealing with trying to wrangle in old IDE cables into a case with a lot of drives, or worse yet SCSI arrays back in the day, I thought things would be a lot easier with a fiber connector instead of friggin wires. And why not, fiber technology was pretty advanced, even back then!

It appears, though, that they seem to be coming out with new standards that are grandfathering their existing technology and standards before they are even released. As an example they just announced the Intel 50-Gbit/sec optical interconnect using their ‘silicon photonics’ technology which basically means the optical cables are directly attached to the chip, rather than the chip driving an output module which the fiber connects to. Just previously they were bragging about their 8-15-Gbit optical interconnect I guess this is similar to handling device I/O right on the processor rather than having an outboard I/O chip.

I think this type of technology will first lead to fiber optic connections that replace SATA, then instead of PCI Express, we’ll have our super-computers in a card (video processors) plugging into the motherboard for stability, some power, and the main connection will be a fiber link. Once we get past that stage you’ll start to see motherboards with fiber optics onboard and with optical ports between the processor and expansion cards. You’re socket whatever will become a socket whatever/O There will still be pin connectors in the socket, but you’ll also have optical I/O channels. The lasers will fire out the bottom of the processor and into the optical I/O ports built into the socket using micro-lensing technology and be distributed throughout the board.

Eventually your processor will just have a couple of bulky lugs for power and begin to resemble a really high-tech laser diode pump source. A couple of big lugs clamped down with the CPU and just a bunch of fiber optics integrated into the motherboard. This technology isn’t that advanced over what we have today, but I’ve not seen anyone who has fiber optics integrated into their circuit boards (as in a fiber running like a circuit trace) if you have, please comment and share.

The peripherals will still be primarily passing electronics between components still, but eventually they’ll begin to become more optical themselves to take advantage of the optical processing capabilities of the primary processor itself. The processor will advance ahead of the peripherals. By the time you have a fully optical processor, I suspect your accessories will still be using older electronics, but slowly catching up slightly out of phase on the development time-line.

So.. anyways! We’re like 10 years behind the curve on this stuff, get with it already! There’s tons of smart people on this, it’s just taking forever to roll out the new stuff. In the last 100 years we’ve learned to fly, gone to the moon, invented nuclear technology, invented computing and about a million other substantial things. I’d like to see a primarily optical computer developed in my lifetime and in consumer hands since I missed everything else!

Ah where was I? Oh right, digital audio optical cables longer than 15 feet.. What’s the deal?