USB 2.0 For Linux

SilentTone writes: "PCWorld is reporting that USB 2.0 or high speed USB will be hitting Linux first half 2002. Intel is already providing space on its Pentium 4 motherboard for the USB 2.0 controller. With a transfer rate of 480Mbps (more than firewire's 400Mbps) it seems promising." Update: 09/04 23:02 PM GMT by H : So, somewhere between my preview and going live, I seem to have "lost" the link - if you find it, please post below. I'm looking - in the meantime, this is a good Linux and USB tutorial, and Blue Cat Linux is supporting USB 2.0. HA! Found it - story updated.

Comments

USB 2.0 is already here...

[dew]

At Fry's Electronics here in Silicon Valley, low-cost USB 2.0 PCI controllers have been on the shelves for well over a month now. Funny thing is, I haven't seen any devices on the shelves that could speak 2.0. Maybe I just didn't happen to see them, but it seems that we might run into the kind of time-delay catch-22's that plagued the original USB: it wasn't important to get a USB board or have USB-support because there weren't any peripherals, and there wasn't any impetus to manufacture USB peripherals, since the install base of computers with USB controllers was small. So USB took quite some time to actually achieve widespread penetration. The same fate may befall 2.0; it may be at least a year before 2.0 is truly compelling. In the interim, Firewire will do quite well. (It's more widespread and is also a more interesting, peered protocol with QOS-like features.)

At any rate, Linux support for these next-generation devices is still important; better for it to come sooner (before it's popular) than later (at which point people wonder why Linux is lagging behind).

Re:USB 2.0 is already here...

[srvivn21]

The nice thing about the transition from USB to USB2 is that devices are compatable. You can run USB2 devices through a USB interface (albeit at lower speeds). I don't think that the incubation period is going to be as long this time.

Then again, what the hell do I know? =o)

Re:USB 2.0 is already here...

[jacobito]

Actually the problem with acceptance of the original USB was lack of OS support. USB-equipped motherboards were available for quite some time, but Win95 and WinNT had extremely poor or no support respectively. I don't think USB devices took off until Win98 and then the iMac came out. As for Linux, well I love it and I use it, but it's probably fair to say that the USB support in 2.2 had little influence on the number of USB devices that were manufactured.

My $0.02, anyway.

The problem with USB 2.0

[James Ray Kenney]

After reading the comments so far, I figured that there should be something on topic, SO...

The one problem with USB 2.0 is that it needs a computer to function. That makes it useless for many consumer uses.
Firewire does not need a computer in the loop. Each device is intelligent enough to talk to other devices in and of itself.

While USB 2.0 does not market itself for those purposes, it does market itself for purposes that firewire has worked fine for, for the last few years. Purposes like video transfer, high-speed data connection, etc. Fire wire is cheep enough these days that interface boards are being bundled along with low-end video editing software.

If more motherboards would provide it onboard, there would be NO need for USB 2.0, except in the few situations where a hub topology was really needed.

James Ray Kenney

Re:The problem with USB 2.0

[John Whitley]

And not to put too fine a point on the excellent comment that "it needs a computer to function" -- USB puts *ALL* intelligence in the USB host.. i.e. the computer. If you're Intel, this sounds like a good thing. If you're an embedded developer with anything resembling a processor, it can actually rather suck.

You see, the USB bus basically requires that the host POLL the client devices, with all of the problems that entails. E.g. the USB device's driver polling frequency determines the latency by which the host can accept an update of client state, and since polling itself requires client processing bandwidth to handle, polling faster sucks more client bandwidth. Moreover, polling sucks cycles even if there is nothing to tell the host!

USB is great as a simple desktop bus facility since it does permit cheap implementation of things like keyboards, mice, etc. But for high-rate communication between embedded devices USB is just awful.

If a camel is a horse designed by committee

[alewando]

Then USB 2.0 is a duckbilled platypus.

Everyone, sing after me:
Let's slap together a bunch of features onto a product never intended to provide them!

Hey!

Let's win this battle on the marketing field rather than the technical merits!

Hey!

Let's leverage our existing monopolies to create new ones!

Hey!

What's the "SB" in USB stand for? Serial Bus? No! Super Bandwidth!

Hey!

Microsoft isn't going with USB 2.0; that alone should give pause. And what's the roadmap for the future? A present negligible superiority is all well and good for the moment, but how much can they expect to increase it as IEEE 1394 plods ahead? Not terribly much.

*Sigh*

Re:once again

[fobbman]

Mind you I'm unable to quote whatever article that Hemos is referring to as there is no link to the story and I've searched the PCWorld website and found nothing about Linux and USB 2.0, but just going off of the quote it says that Linux won't have support until the first half of 2002 while this story quotes that Microsoft already has beta drivers and final WinXP drivers will be available by either the end of this year or the first part of next.

Sure there was no linked article, but at least read the freaking POST before you go trumpeting Linux beating M$.

Not much of a story

[Quikah]

After a few minutes of searching I think I finally figured out exactly where PCWorld has "reported" that Linux will have USB 2.0 drivers in first half of 2002. It is located in this story .

Here is the information they give:

"But don't count USB 2.0 out. Microsoft has announced that it will offer downloadable USB 2.0 drivers for Windows 2000 and for the upcoming Windows XP operating system. Linux support for USB 2.0 should come in the first half of 2002.

Silicon behemoth Intel currently provides space for a USB 2.0 controller chip on its Pentium 4 motherboards, and Gateway has announced that it will put the chips in some PCs beginning this fall. Intel and Acer Labs plan to put USB 2.0 into at least some chip sets by mid-2002; Via Technologies, on the other hand, will add IEEE 1394 support to its chip sets before turning to USB 2.0. AMD says it will support USB 2.0, but not how or when."

Sounds like speculation to me on the Linux drivers. Do any Linux USB devs have any actual info about this?

Re:once again.....GNU/Linux lags BSD

[garett_spencley]

Will someone please hurry up and mod this freak a troll please, I'm all out of mod points! I'm very sick and tired of hearing BSD zealots bash linux.

I have nothing against BSD. As a matter of fact I LOVE BSD. I have deployed all the major BSD variants (Free, NET and Open) and their merits are undisputable. But for crying out loud this flaming is FUCKING ANNOYING!

And the funny thing is that what you guys accuse Linux users of you are guilty of yourself! I'm thinking in particular of the 1337 h4x0r attitude. While a number of Linux lusers have been guilty of this in the past I'm seeing more and more BSD lusers doing the same thing. By bashing Linux! "I'm so 1337 u 1inUx users 5ucK! Switch to BSD! It's awesome. It doesn't suck like linux!"

So please shut up and stop being hypocrits. BSD is great but so is Linux. Get over it! No one wants to hear your whining.

Now someone please mod this post as offtopic.

P.S Oh and for the record. Regarding my first paragraph: I'm also sick of hearing Linux users bash MS.

--
Garett

your logic boggles...

[levl289]

If you were to read the headline, Linux gets this in Q1 2002. WinXP is gold *now*, meaning that it'll be out before then. Beyond that, I'm running 2.2.18 right now, so yeah, that too will require a separate download.

If you're gonna bash MS, do it with proper logic.

(I'm sure this'll win me a modding-down)

I like USB, but...

[srvivn21]

USB2 is FINNALY catching up to IEEE 1394 (firewire, iLink, whatever) in terms of speed. Have you heard of 1394b? Coming to devices near you starting at 800mbps, ramping up to over 3.2gbps by 2003.

Ain't technology grand?

Re:I like USB, but...

[lup23]

Agreed...

People keep saying that USB 2.0 is faster then 1394a and it is, slightly. 1394b has a number of other benifits that USB doesn't have.

1. 1394 is non-computer centric. There can be any number of computers in a chain from zero to 63.

2. 1394 provides an isosyncronous mode of transmision. This is required for streaming video.

3. 1394 has better methods of bandwidth enforcement then USB

Beyond thoes benifits, 1394b supports speed up to 3.2Gbits/sec at up to 100 meters over fiber.

Another sign from the industry is that theLucent spinoff, Agere Systems, has scrapped plans to produce a USB 2.0 chipset and in order to speed development of it's 1394b chipset http://www.lucent.com/press/0701/010716.mea.html

USB 2.0 looks to be too little, too late.

USB 2.0 problems

[Auckerman]

1. Firewire is ALREADY ubquitious and plans to move it to your TV already in place.

2. The moment you put a mouse (or anyother low speed device) on that USB 2.0 port you loose the 480MB/sec max throughput.

3. Microsoft supports Firewire instead of USB 2

4. Firewire is looking to move to 800MB/sec in the near future.

Pardon me for...

[Burning1]

...sounding like a troll, but... who cares?

Does it really matter weather Linux supports USB 2.0 before manufacturer X?

Do we really need to act like a bunch of kids arguing back and forth about our toy being better than someone else's?

• Linux gets USB2 support? Great.
• Linux isn't going to be behind the curve on this new technology? Excellent.

But seriously people, do you seriously feel that it's only possible for Linux to be considered a viable operating system if we parade our wins?

Microsoft will support USB 2.0 when the situation demands it.

Hey, If you want to do an item by item comparason between operating systems, and are willing to admit failures as well as success: go for it.

...But this kind of comment just makes us look like children.

The Link

[XBL]

I think maybe he means http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,60124,00 .asp.

Agreed

[marcsiry]

I worked for a major toy company that was basically subsidized by Intel to put a USB port on every one of our products. Additionally, we were encouraged to bundle CPU intensive software in order to drive computer upgrades.

We all knew that USB was a poor choice for anything but momentary inputs, but we were pumping video, sound, all sorts of crap through the lines, and watching the signals degrade and the software sputter to a halt. This was USB-1, of course, but IMO, regardless of the bandwidth, it's a poor choice for the sort of tasks FireWire is ideal for, precisely because it's CPU dependent.

I had a USB 1.0 Mobo in 97

[alexhmit01]

I bought in January of '97 a Tyan Tomcat motherboard with a P75 chip, it had a USB port. The spec changed and USB was busted, so they relabeled the parts (and replaced the motherboards if you complained enought).

The problem wasn't motherboards. By mid-97 all machines had the ports. Every machine my high school picked up that year (first half of 97) were P133s-P166s and had USB ports. These were Dell computers with vanilla mobos.

The problem was originally software support, MS didn't support USB until Win98, the Win95 support was busted. Additionally, the market for mice and keyboards died around then. The computers shipped with them AND the market was only supporting $20 replacements, not the highend ones that were popular through 96 and early 97.

Without software support, there was no interest in the hardware. People were pushing parallel port solutions instead. The parallel port scanners, zip drives, etc., dominated the low-end, and SCSI still ruled the high end.

Apple made USB a reality. They used it to replace ADP when they needed something to replace the external SCSI-1 port they used for expansion forever. With their move to IDE hard drives, the SCSI port was rediculous.

Anyone selling addons for Apple built them as USB devices, including mice and keyboards. As the standard was the same, there was no reason to not write Win98 drivers and open up the PC market.

Apple's ability to make something a standard on a segment of the industry is powerful. While Dell and Compaq (soon to be HP) ship lots of machines, nobody is interested in a Dell-only or Compaq-only option on the consumer level. The PC world is commodity only now, so only MS/Intel can add things to the standard. There is no room for vendors to improve the experience, since we scream and yell that it is propriatary.

USB 2.0 is a bad hack. If you don't use a USB 2.0 hub, then any USB 1 device (which keyboards, mice, scanners, etc., should always remain) drops the whole thing to USB 1. In addition, the bus is split up, so the 480 MB theoretical is a real joke. The bus uses time slices, not bandwidth slices. So when the keyboard and mouse grab their fractions of a second, they take bandwidth that could go to the video camera.

Furthermore, Firewire 2.0 brings Firewire up to 800 MB, and its reality is much closer to the theory.

OTOH, I agree that it is good for Linux to support it. As Linux distributions/kernels in the wild don't get upgraded as often, having the support now means that in 2 years, everyone will have it. Better to have the software beat the hardware.

Adding support in Windows is more user-painless (insert CD, press setup, watch this application you got from a no-name vendor to save $3 overrights basic operating system files...) then Linux, so it is good to see Linux beat the curve.

Alex

USB 2.0 transfer rates

[iso]

With a transfer rate of 480mbps (more than firewire's 400mbps) it seems promising

Let me guess: you also buy processors based soley on the megahertz rating. If you seriously believe that the "480mb/s" rating of USB 2.0 (chosen only because it appears on paper to be faster than FireWire), then I have a bridge to sell you.

USB was meant to be a replacement for serial ports; for low-speed devices that could tolerate high-latencies, like keyboards and mice. It was never meant for devices like digital camcoders; that's FireWire's specialty. USB 2.0 is a hack. A wide adoption of USB 2.0 over FireWire would be a very bad thing. Thankfully FireWire 2.0 will reach very close to real and sustainable speeds of 800mb/s, cleanly beating even the highly exaggerated speeds of USB 2.0.

People that buy on "specs" really piss me off. Learn something about the underlying technology before you go making rampant generalizations.

- j