Perhaps so, but this new standard reminds me of the born-dead USB1 standard, which at the time of its launch was so slow as to be almost useless.
This new optical standard is only about 50% faster than the now-ancient copper SATA standard of 6Gbps. It has stuff-all reserve for future development!
Every time we have one of these new standards, Wi-Fi whatever, they are just a bit above the previous standard and never at the limits of the tech. There is never enough reserve to give them decent longevity. It's as if those manufacturers involved in setting standards were making a standard that would be quickly obsolescent—that is, they'd guarantee ongoing production/sales without much effort.
It's been such a consistent problem for so long that it has shades of the Phoebus cartel about it. As always, the user ends up paying more because of premature (planned) obsolescence.
> This new optical standard is only about 50% faster than the now-ancient copper SATA standard of 6Gbps
you are surprised that free-space optical transfer over many(?) meters is "only" 50% faster than data transfer over <1m carefully constructed differential coax-pairs?
Electronics is an extremely cost conscious industry. There's not a viable market for massive jumps forward if the laptop would cost 10x. Approaching the Shannon Limit also is at odds with maximizing battery life. Recent Macbooks only have 2x2 MIMO. Presumably 3x3 MIMO used relatively too much power, space, or BOM.
> It's been such a consistent problem for so long that it has shades of the Phoebus cartel about it.
Which wasn't what the general public thinks it is and, much like equating short-run in-device transports with lossy, room-distance ones, is a good signal that one is comparing apples and trailer trucks.
OK, at the end of my WiFi I have a SATA or much faster drive (or any other data source) attached.
So the WiFi becomes the transport layer in the OSI model. It's the throughput data rate that matters not the type of devices that are connected at either end of the link (nor the protocol by which they're connected).
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Right, I think conditioning is definitely part of it, but my point was (as I hinted elsewwhere) the move to optical would have allowed for a vastly better performance with little additional overhead.
That 224GB/s figure is some serious bullshitting. For comparison, the fastest optical ethernet transfer over fiber is 800Gbps or 100GB/s, and even that is over 8 fiber pairs and still in-development tech. Claiming to do over twice of that in free-space with "common household LED light bulbs" is pretty ridiculous.
224GB/s is unrealistically fast but 9Gb/s unacceptably slow. A compromise of 9GB/s would perhaps be reasonable. 1/25th the speed would be manageable.
"common household LED light bulbs" is pretty ridiculous." Likely so, but all we have to do for 9GB/s is to use the transmitters and receivers used in standard commercial fiber optics (or a suitable adaptation thereof) and we'd romp home.
Well the speed is the speed of light, ideally this should have low latency. The datarate will be effected by how quickly you can turn on and off the light and that will have some limits.
Latency in WiFi comes from interference and contention (wait until other devices have finished sending; this has improved with Wifi6 AFAIK), and some other, probably less significant factors. Travel time of the signal through air should be the same.
Light and radio waves are the same physical phenomenon. The difference is the frequency. Light is much much higher frequency than radio. Nuclear radiation are even higher frequency. Maximum throughput with maximum damage!
