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Clash of the Titans Over USB 3.0 Specification Process
Ian Lamont writes "Nvidia and other chip designers are accusing Intel of 'illegally restraining trade' in a dispute over the USB 3.0 specification. The dispute has prompted Nvidia, AMD, Via, and SiS to establish a rival standard for the USB 3.0 host controller. An Intel spokesman denies the company is making the USB specification, or that USB 3.0 'borrows technology heavily' from the PCI Special Interests group. He does, however, say that Intel won't release an unfinished Intel host controller spec until it's ready, as it would lead to incompatible hardware."
So will this mean in the end we will have 2 competing USB standards? USB-Intel and USB-AMD? I can only hope that one will get picked over the other before it appears in most products because after the whole HD-DVD and Blu-Ray thing it would be an absolute pain to get a computer with USB-Intel in it when all the products will be USB-AMD.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I've not heard of USB missile launchers either. It shoots USBs?
True, there is no HID standard for Firewire. But that's not its strength. Firewire's strength is USB's weakness, and Firewire's weakness is USB's strength.
Firewire seems to be fading into smaller niches though. I don't want to daisy chain hard drives, so eSATA will do fine, and eSATA does allow the use of port multipliers, one port still does five drives.
I have two HDV cameras, but I don't use them much, I prefer an HF10 which writes to SDHC cards. Firewire is good for audio tasks, which I don't do.
Thing is...your examples are easily served by USB 1, without even taking us into area of USB 2. Which is usefull basically only when dealing with large storage and video devices, and those areas are very well covered by eSATA and Firewire.
So...with USB 3 we have a case of extending USB into areas which it wasn't really meant to serve...and which already are served very well.
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The two sides I see here are not Specification A and Specification B but not producing an open standard and producing an open standard.
"there is a lot to be said for open standards"... Yes, Something indeed. Who lead the CD revolution? Sony. Who developed the standard? Sony (and Phillips). They released the standard after they had working products to sell. The "standard" still then cost a lot of money to even look at. (See the wikipedia article on the Red Book standard).
My Point (finally?): Giving the excuse of "we don't want to release it early because then there will be incompatibility issues" (paraphrase) is complete bunk. No company in their right mind would implement a pre-standardized hardware specification (and sink mucho dinero into the manufacturing costs of just the parts to make the parts). And if they do, they aren't AMD/nVidia or Intel. [1]
It would only help in that the other parties would be able to help improve the standard before it is released. Oh, and have equal footing with Intel too, since they would be sharing equal responsibility to creating it.
[1] Counter argument: HD-DVD and BluRay. Nope, that case is an argument FOR what I am saying, not against. If they both would have worked together to produce an open standard, instead of trying to beat each other completely, they both would have had the right product and we, the consumers, would be able to have real competition in the hardware sector.
That is all.
It's not USB2 or SATA that cannibalized Firewire's supposed market... It's Ethernet.
Much better range, lower price, more devices, equally high speed, similar (controller) requirements, easier device sharing, etc.
High-end printers, scanners, CD/DVD duplicators, studio (audio/video) equipment, hard drive arrays, etc. They all have gigabit ethernet connectors now.
Ethernet ate the high-end, USB ate the low-end, Firewire got left out in the cold, with just a few niche applications where Ethernet is inconvenient and its benefits don't apply, and yet USB isn't quite fast/flexible enough. That basically means just digital camcorders, and a handful of studio equipment...
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
So? Just leave that extra royalty covering bit tacked on. More profit.
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Interestingly (or not) you demonstrate a logical understanding of the technology marketplace. To paraphrase you, if I may, Intel and AMD are fighting about who gets to piss on the idea of competition creates value for the consumer. Any space where AMD and Intel are competing is full of this, and not inconsequentially, lawsuits. Intel has been partnered with MS for a long time, and they worked hard to be the hardware version of what MS was to software.
We can detail the lawsuits ad nausea, but my point is that anyone that was a healthy partner with MS has done to their industry what MS did to software. Like that or not, it is true. In the end, we have Mr Gates to thank for this, no matter how philanthropic he may try to be these days. I wonder sometimes how far exactly he has set the human race back from what will eventually, and necessarily be.
Though that is sort of scifi philosophy, it is true. In the name of riches, the advancement of technology has been slowed, deliberately, and with malicious intent against the betterment of mankind. In this way, I find his generosity a bit pale these days.
Open standards are indeed the ONLY way to create technology and advancement that will last and actually advance mankind in a direction that betters all of us. Despite the socialist sounding tone of that, it is true. We are all better for the sharing of technology from the space race. Technology, and specifically computing/networks are still in the hands of those that would derail it's benefits if there is profit in it. There are those that are trying to change this situation, but it is slow going. Even hardware manufacturers are hobbled by things like the DMCA and it's ilk around the world. Sometimes I'm sad to say I'm American.
Fighting against the 'right thing to do' for the sake of money is not in the best interests of the community, and in the end, it hurts your business. Customer is king, so they say, and when you put hurdles in the way of a complete and exemplary experience by the end user, you harm your business in some way, if not in big ways. It's unfortunate that not enough people will understand that the competitions in the technology markets have hurt them, and they will not understand how to express their frustration that older USB devices won't work with new USB hosts. It will be just one more black magic thing they don't understand about technology type things. They will go to PCs R Us and buy whatever the best they can get happens to be, hoping that it works for a couple of years, not unlike car buyers. So for profits, businesses promote the throw-away society. When there is something new, throw the old away, don't upgrade, don't re-use. How is this helpful to the human race?
Well, just some late night thoughts about this whole thing, and the absolutely ignorant waste it makes of the world.
BTW, there is hardware space competition.... if you are willing to build your own and not buy what the idiot^H^H^H^H^H salesman tells you at worstbuy.
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Intel has a point: releasing documentation on a non finalized standard creates a fluster-cluck of bad implementations that aren't necessarily compatible with each other. IIRC, isn't that what's happened to 802.11n, pre-n, draft-n, n-ready, looks a bit like n in a dress, MIMO, etc. which just confuse the crap out of a consumer already pissed at USB 2.0 HiSpeed and USB 2.0 FullSpeed crap.
nVidia has a point: Intel not telling anyone else until the last moment would, indeed, give Intel an unfair first mover advantage.
Obvious solution: Release the pre and post release specs with an agreement attached that anyone wanting a copy has to sign. An amount of time that gives everyone a fair chance to get product ready is picked after final specs are chosen. Anyone gaining access to the specs agrees not to release until that time period has passed. Now no one releases incompatible hardware and no one gets an unfair first mover advantage.
$1 per port would make quite a difference on a low cost device, especially if it's got two ports or more.
Think a 6 port firewire-hub. That's $6 just in royalty.
But I don't think they actually charged that much. Wasn't it more along the lines of $0.25 per device?
The biggest reason why USB was a really slow hit with the x86-crowd was the lack of USB-support in MS-Windows and other x86 OS's. In order to connect a USB-device you had to install USB-support, reboot, install the device drivers, reboot, sometimes there would be another driver to be loaded after the first one (sic) so another install, reboot...
Also, some early USB equipped x86-mainboards didn't have USB support in BIOS, so you couldn't use a USB-keyboard to change BIOS-settings, enter Windows safe-mode, etc, etc.
USB was also slow as hell for most other uses than HID-devices or printers.
My first mp3-player would take more than an hour to fill. 6GB @ 12Mbps, the horror!
When Apple put a port in their hardware, they usually already got the drivers ready and they rely mostly on making their own hardware.
The Imac came with a USB-keyboard and USB-mouse made by Apple, and thus everyone that had an Imac used USB-gear.
What has MS license cost or Microsoft's greed got to do with firewire royalty and Apple's greed?
They're not connected. Don't confuse subjects.
If anyone accuses Apple of greed, that doesn't mean that they think Apple is worse than Microsoft. Both are greedy. Microsoft more than Apple usually though.
/.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)
If firewire "dies" companies like Avid, M-Audio, Prosonus, MOTU and many more are gonna have to go back to the drawing board.
USB (even 2.0) just isn't that great for moving a lot of digital audio. By comparison, Firewire (400 or 800) is a dream. If firewire goes, what am I gonna do, go back to PCI? I was just getting used to not having to open my case to switch audio interfaces.
Seriously, does anyone else here think firewire's going to disappear after "tape-based camcorders die out"? I've still got the receipt for my new 828MkIII.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The fact that anybody could build a 9-pin serial, parallel port, or midi/gaming device was exactly the reason for it's downfall. There were no standards for how to communicate with these devices. You had to install a special driver just to get your external drive working. Remember Zip drives? Sure they worked over parallel. But they required special drivers, so if you wanted to bring data to a friend's house, you would have to install the drivers on his computer. The situation was really bad for joysticks and such. Where certain games would only work with certain joysticks. The higher barrier of entry has actually made things much better for the end users.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.