USB On-the-Go Go Go Go

abhikhurana writes " There is an interesting article on CNET about a new USB standard called USB On-the-Go. Apparently this new technology is an offshoot of USB2 and it can remove the limitation of the master slave operation of normal USB devices, where you need a Host PC (the Master) to talk with the peripherals (the slaves). So using this, theoretically you can print using your digital camera directly on your printer or maybe connect two PDAs together to exchange some files. One thing that the article doesn't mention though is the speed one can expect from such a connection. If its as fast as USB2 then I think it can also act as the replacement for NICs for interconnecting two PCs. But considering that many wireless technologies like bluetooth offer similar opertational capabilities,albeit they are much slower, can USB On-the-Go really be a success? "

Comments

FireWire already Goes Goes Goes

[Anonymous Coward]

FireWire works in a peer-to-peer fashion. You can hook up components without a computer to mediate.

How many more USB do we need?

[euxneks]

next up:
USB3
USBSEEME
RUSB (Are USB?)
USBT (U Suck Big Time)
USBX! (for X-box!)
USBPS2 (for the mouse!)

I thought that USB was so we wouldn't have this many connections??

Strange

[Jobe_br]

I was under the impression that Intel had purposefully designed the USB protocol to be processor bound. This type of connectivity is already provided by Firewire, so I don't particularly see why this would be beneficial, unless devices somehow don't need to be explicitly USB On-the-go compatible or (more likely), the chipset/firmware for USB On-the-go is cheaper to produce/license than Firewire is.

In any case, my chips are still on Firewire - its a solid, fast and proven interconnect technology. With transfer speeds in excess of 38MB per sec. (76% of theoretical max of 50MB/sec) - I'd say they're doing quite decent. I'm not sure what USB2 is up to these days, but last I heard, they were still a far cry from their goal of even being faster than Firewire, in real world applications.

Incidentally - I don't mean to start a flame war on the benefits of Firewire v. USB - so don't get started. The transfer speed I threw out above is a valid benchmark for a external RAID array (that has drives fast enough to support that transfer rate and a equivalent RAID configuration to boot). I don't follow USB2 developments closely, so if I'm mistaken on its real-world speeds, forgive me and don't waste /. bandwidth by flaming me :).

Cheers.

Firewire : Same Price, Twice the Speed

[shking]

By the time this ships, Firewire will be twice as fast. Firewire has always had this capability & is about to double its speed. To quote the article:

The debut of USB On-the-Go helps USB 2.0 draw closer in functionality to rival IEEE 1394, also known as FireWire. The 1394 specification, which is used widely in consumer-electronics devices such as digital videos, also has so-called host capabilities. Analysts say it would cost about the same to implement 1394 and USB On-the-Go in devices.

Still Not There

[Salamander]

USB OTG is still not really symmetric. It's just a way for devices to negotiate over who gets to be master; that master then takes over all the polling that the computer would be doing in traditional USB. It's still a fundamentally crappy way to do things, it wastes resources (which the consumer does pay for), and it only works for two devices instead of N. Firewire is still way better technically, and here today.