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Is firewire dying?
According to an Article found on Infoworld, IEEE 1394 (a.k.a FireWire) appears to be dying, while Intel updating the USB specs to 2.0 with speed expected at 360-480MB per second range. Intel is not (and will not) supports the FireWire on their core logic chipset. I think it's a sad thing when a technology is dying.. What do you think about it folks?
"Read that last sentence carefully. Somehow, I don't read this as a declaration that firewire is dead, or even sick. The problem lies with biased reporting and provocative headlines, not with the technology or even the marketing."
Not to mention these common Slashdot responses that seem to be the main threads here:
1. Apple must die because they are greedy/closed/stupid: So therefore, Firewire must die. If A is bad then B must be great!
2. Ill informed or outdated knowledge: "That darn Apple, charging $1/port That's too much!" No, that's Intel FUD. Nevermind that Apple lowered the licensing cost to $.25 per system. People don't know/care about that. I also doubt many people here know how much money OEMs make on a particular hardware component, yet in this case they repeat what Intel said.
3. People not reading the actual article: Seems about half the time people here just post knee-jerk reactions to the headlines without even reading the original article. Much as you pointed out the supposed reporter did.
Look people. USB 2.0 is vaporware. You bitch about MS doing it, but in this case it must be okay because Apple owns the patent on IE1394. What logic! I guess if Intel released a press release saying Apple was dead and it was quoted in the PC press, that must mean it's true.
Sheesh. Less quantity more quality.
Actually, the AC's have provided several links. Here is one repeated at a starting score of 1 (although that might change).
http://www.1394ta.org/Press/1999.05/12.h tm.
Why should it suprise you that they dropped the price months ago? It doesn't seem to suprise you that everyone else lowers their prices.
(currently testing something about signatures here)
Here's an informative URL:
For the lazy and/or illiterate, here's the bottom line:
USB 2.0 could conceivably push IEEE 1394 into a niche, but it would be a huge, huge shame, and it would have absolutely nothing to do with superior technology. What else is new in the PC industry...
I agree that Mackido is a little biased, they seem to think that Microsoft is wrong all of the time, unlike Slashdot, where we're more fair, and think Microsoft is only wrong 99.999% of the time!
(currently testing something about signatures here)
There has to be communication logic in both places though. At least with USB you can have one 'dumb' device like a keyboard or mouse that only takes commands to itself over USB, runs them through the mechanism, and gives back a state value or binary from the eeprom. If you have mutual data transfer going on between two devices, they both have to be smart.
For instance, I hook a USB-enabled hard disk up to my computer, and all it does is look at the driver and send seek messages, read/write messages, etc to it. With firewire, the device has to be smart enough how to load and save files from itself. A Firewire DVD player, for instance, has to send _encrypted_ video over the wire, and the connecting host has to have the logic to decrypt the data. This is a good example of devices getting very complicated and how not having a device in control limits forward-compatibility (supporting devices you haven't seen yet)
Firewire is cool (although it looks to be little more than a network with device-powering built in). USB is cool too, it was designed with manufacture of cheap devices in mind. The implementation of USB is much cheaper right now, both in devices and on the motherboard, so Firewire's main advantage is speed and disadvantage is price. While I see Apple doing much to market its advantage, they are also doing things like charging for usage, which makes the price differential even higher.
Unfortunately it is hard to compare a USB device against a Firewire device since they are completely different markets, but you can add a USB-enabled microcontroller to your hardware to make it USB-compatible for under a dollar. Firewire costs a more than that just to license.
USB is improving, that's a Good Thing. It's got a lot of shortcomings today. But Firewire is better suited by it's very nature for higher-end tasks like digital video editing, hard drive connections, and _high-end_ scanners in the prepress range. It's likely that Firewire will never be the mass technology that USB is and will continue to be, but it's going to be perfectly safe - like SCSI is to IDE.
Remember, Apple includes it on all their high-end desktops (and supposedly on the Kihei iMacs), Sony has it on much of the Vaio series systems (including some laptops), and a lot of the newer digital camcorders use the interface as well. Firewire doesn't degrade under contention the way USB does (and legacy USB devices will probably have a negative impact on a USB 2.0 system), and that's another factor in Firewire's favor. Intel may not like it, but Microsoft supports it, Apple supports it, and consumer electronic companies support it. Firewire's not going anywhere. Unfortunately, InfoWorld has an Intel-centric view here (if it's not on the chipset, it's doomed).
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
That said, it would be a shame if FireWire really did go extinct. Imagine all the ReplayTV owners who would be unable to add more harddrive space when they could finally afford it after paying such obscene amounts for the box. ;)
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"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Quine "quine?
It's nonsense about Intel being lobied. Compac has stated that Firewire will be a big part of their stratagy. IBM has announced products. So have other computer makers.
The thing about this is that Inlet is scared of Firewire. They need to sell CPUs to be viable. Firewire negates that need. Intel would like us to wire our home networks of audio, video, home protection, coffee makers, air conditioners, heating systems, and other devices to a computer. Firewire allows us to do without one, perhaps using the Tv screen to set the devices.
The FCC has already MANDATED a firewire port on all future HDTV devices, set-top boxes etc.. What will this do to Intel in the post pc world that is being spoken about? Is there any wonder they don't want to support it any longer?
Cite your sources, AC. Everyone says this, no one shows it. I guess that's the advantage of hiding behind the AC wall...
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
According to an Article found on Infoworld, IEEE 1394 (a.k.a FireWire) appears to be dying, while Intel updating the USB specs to 2.0 with speed expected at 360-480MB per second range. Intel is not (and will not) supports the FireWire on their core logic chipset. I think it's a sad thing when a technology is dying.. What do you think about it folks?
.0083% of the cost.
I think HeUnique should actually read the linked article before he posts it to Slashdot. With the exception of one anonymous comment, every negative thing said about Firewire came from Intel! As Firewire comes from Apple, and USB 2.0 is being developed by Intel, don't you think they'd be just the least bit biased? This is no different than SCO's derogatory comments toward Linux.
Like an unloved house plant, IEEE 1394 -- the high-speed peripheral serial bus -- appears to be dying on the vine
Sony loves it. Apple loves it. Compaq doesn't necessarily love it but they have it on their systems. The audio/video industry is having massive orgasims over Firewire. More importantly on the PC side is that Intel's lover Microsoft apparantly likes it and has it in their specs for future PC's.
In October, at Intel's USB developer conference in San Diego, the chip giant is expected to release the final specification for USB 2.0 which will, it now appears, have an equivalent performance to IEEE 1394.
The specs which might be released in October are equivilant to current Firewire speeds shipping today! I hate it when people compare products that will come out in the distant future (USB 2.0, Playstation 2) with today's technology (Firewire, TNT2, Voodoo 3).
USB is expected to perform in the 360-480Mb per second range or 60MBps, while current shipping versions of IEEE 1394 perform at 400Mbps.
See what I mean? By the time USB 2.0 devices start arriving. Firewire will be at 800 megabits with 1200 on the horizon. By the time USB 2.0 devices are common, Firewire might be at 1600 megabits!
"1394 deployment into the PC platform has proceeded more slowly than expected," said an Intel document
As somebody pointed out before, this is a joke considering how long it took USB 1.0 to catch on. Bet they didn't give Apple any credit for jump starting the market with the USB only iMac.
One key factor in the "slower than expected" deployment of IEEE 1394 may be that the bus is not supported by Intel in its own core logic chips.
Oh, of course if Intel doesn't support it it must be dead, right? Then the PowerPC must also be dying. Oh, and Intel didn't come up with Apple's Airport strategy, so of course it will be DOA when the iBook starts shipping.
The Intel Web site also cited "uncertainties about cost and licensing," for lack of IEEE 1394 adoption.
The "uncertainties" were settled earlier this year when Apple droped the fee from $1 a port to 25 cents per system. Even on a $300 peice of shit computer, that is
Last year Intel cited video conferencing systems, high resolution scanners and printers and auxiliary data storage as devices that would benefit from the IEEE 1394 bus but this year the company is citing the same peripherals for use with USB 2.0.
Not going to happen. For the same cost or maybe a little more, you get much higher bandwidth, peer to peer connectivity, longer cables and guaranteed bandwidth.
If Microsoft make a press release that Linux is dying because they don't support it, are you going to post that too (as a serious article)?
...if you're trying to copy from one USB storage device to another. You see, USB 2.0 doesn't support peer-to-peer networking. It's on a star topology, so if you wanna copy from one volume to another, the info has to go from the first device to the computer, and then goes through the USB chain a second time to the destination storage volume. That eats up double the bandwith it normally should and results in horrible latency problems. Firewire, on the other hand, doesn't require a CPU to babysit the information from one point to its destination. If data needs to get from one point to another, it goes straight there without needing to go through the computer and hence travels through the pipeline once. Intel designated USB to be the cheap, low-cost connection standard, saving chipset cost by forcing the processor to handle a lot of the traffic overhead and it's beginning to show.
Now that we have that taken care of, Firewire is here. Now. My company has a Sony DV cam that I record stuff with. I dump it to my computer using Firewire and Final Cut Pro (which remotely controls the camera through the Firewire, let's see USB do that) and edit it on my G3. I dump it out to the camera through Firewire and the camera dumps it to a video tape through an S-Video cable. I am doing this now. Can USB do this at 720x486 @ 60 fields per second? No. Will USB 2.0 be able to do this, whenever it comes out? Maybe, but I'm not risking any of my video editing projects on it, considering what I've read about its latency problems.
lacie has a 20GB firewire drive for 500 buckeroos
Cool, I'm glad prices are falling that fast. Internal or external?
What you Apple bashers need to realize is that you can have 67 devices per firewire bus, and it is possible to do RAID with it. So if you ran out and bought a 10 gig hard drive every three months, in two years you would have 80 gigs to store all your mp3's. And thats not even counting how much capacity will rise in relation to cost.
I read an article about this. I wish I remember where I saw it, as it was pretty convincing. The basic argument is that USB 2.0 is a too little, too late attempt on Intel's part to make sure that they don't lose control of the peripherals storage market. It would be a shame if they succeeded in killing Firewire.
The main reason Firewire is better is that Firewire is here now, and USB 2.0 is set to achieve equivalent speeds a year or more from now. By that time, second-generation firewire will be out, which will boost speeds. In addition, I've read that there are technical issues with USB 2.0, and that Intel's time table and performance goals are optimistic to say the least.
The article also said that USB 2.0 would not have some of the features that Firewire has, and will be hobbled by backwards compitibility with the current USB. Looks to me like FUD on Intel's part to kill a technology that is technologically superior.
Anybody know more about the two technologies?
Intel is trying kill Firewire because it doesn't require a computer on the bus. That scares the hell out of them. It's the same reason USB 2.0 won't ever replace Firewire: it's useless to the (very large and powerful) consumer electronics industry.
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"That's just plain juveniel and idiotic"
Is not...
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Please update your information.
Firewire licensing is $0.25 per _device_ not per port, and Apple doesn't even get all of that (it's divided among all the companies involved in Firewire development).
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It's impossible that Sony will. USB needs a computer on the bus, and Sony wants you to be able to hook that camcorder with Firewire up to that TV with Firewire and that recordable DVD with Firewire. Firewire is the future of consumer electronics, and it'll be really nice to be able to hook all this stuff up to your computer as well.
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The price for a 2GB or a 4GB hard drive that supports FireWire is ridiculous. Nobody would pay that kind of money for such a small drive, regardless of it's speed. Sure, it's a great technology, but think about supporting it. If a company has to license the use of the FW BUS from Apple *choke*, then build the unit, then sell it at a high price, you're not going to get many buyers when there's a cheaper alternative. Not only that, FireWire was introduced with very bad timing. USB is much more cost efficent, and actually has comperable performance for an end user.
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Your correlation just doesn't make sense for several reasons.
1) Firewire is a growing technology. More and more devices are being developed to take advantage of it. (That is not happening with SCSI)
2) Consumer Electronics are already incorporating or very soon will incorprate Firewire as their primary communication method.
Total cost to Intel for installing Firewire on the Motherboard in their standard chipset would be under $1, not counting the ASICs.
Per port cost of firewire are very low. Firewire is dramtically cheaper than SCSI because it only uses 6 wires and a very small connection standard. (The unpowered variety- called i-link by Sony only uses 4, omitting the Power lines, and is considerably smaller)
Texas Instruments is shipping millions of PHY and Host Controllers that are the only two chips needed for Firewire. Together they can be had for under $20 and that is with all the "fees" paid.
The 1394b spec is in the works which will have provisions for 800Mb/sec, 1600Mb/sec, 2400Mb/sec and maybe even 3200Mb/sec.
Firewire is here to stay, no matter what INTEL tries to say or do.
FireWire is being priced right out of the marketplace by Apple's licensing requirement, which I believe runs at US$1/device that implements it. That may not sound like a lot, but costs are high enough, and margins razor thin, that $1 means a big deal when it's applied to millions of devices, especially from one manufacturer. What we have here is history repeating itself. IBM did this with Micro Channel in the late 80's. IBM was going to charge a licensing fee to every manufacturer that wanted to make motherboards or add-in cards. Instead, the industry, lead by Compaq and including Intel (the Gang of Nine) came up with EISA. That led to VLB and finally to PCI. IBM has since learned, as witnessed by their free release of a PowerPC motherboard reference design. That would have never come out of the IBM that gave us MicroChannel.
Apple is too greedy to take the long view. Apple should have given away the spec to FireWire and evangelised its use in everything from disk drives to camcorders to digital TVs. Then it should make FireWire a common port on every Apple system. With Apple being the standard creator, and providing powerful systems to take advantage of all those FireWire enabled devices, the market might have seen considerable advantage to buying Apple (there are no guarantees). But Apple will never learn. And with Steve "Reality Distortion Field" Jobs back in the saddle, it will stay mired in the business practices of the bad old 80s.
Hmmm. And me that thought everyone was able to see through this one when USB 2.0 was first announced. Ah well...
First let's get it clear it's megaBIT not MB (megaBYTE). Meaning that it's going to be about as fast as FireWire is today.
Second USB 2.0 specs was first released just after Apple made it 'expensive' to make FireWire ports.
Third the specs are clearly a bit too ambiguous. They want to make USB both back AND forward compatible on the same cheap (read: low-quality) cables and connectors they use today.
And then there is the fact that USB 2.0 is not going to hit computers before 2001. At that time FireWire should have reached at LEAST 800 megabit (it's in the works).
And finally FireWire is a lot better suited for highspeed transfers since it reserves 20% for datatransfers as opposed to USB's 10% (you can see how that counts on a chain with many devices that makes a lot of isynchronous traffic that's what the other %'es are used for if needed)
http://www.patents.ibm.com
and search on universal serial bus. You'll find patents for USB speakers, USB microphones, USB connectors, etc....
Firewire is getting low support for 2 reasons - Apple is doing goofy things with the licensing of the patent and no one is sure what the heck is going on. and 2) firewire is intended as a replacement for scsi/ide buses and those systems are coping with current systems pretty well.
Until current needs of average users exceeds the capabilities of scsi or ide you won't see a demand for firewire. and without demand....
kevin
rather than worry about whether or not Intel supports firewire and if in choosing not to support it, why not question whether or not AMD will support firewire?
Lately, Intel has been doing a couple of stupid things, and the company that has been the quickest to take advantage of those things has been AMD, especially with their new Athlon systems. I think that if AMD chooses to support Firewire in their next systems, as well as IBM supporting the technology, and maybe if Apple decides to stop being morons about it, this technology will prosper and make intel look like morons for choosing not to support it.
The only thing that Intel is doing by not supporting Firewire is limiting their machines and limiting the users that purchase them.
You're right. USB is a great solution for low-end, low-bandwidth peripherals. Ethernet is great for networking. But until USB 2.0, even Intel was puching Firewire as the standard port for high-bandwidth peripherals. This includes digital cameras, external hard drives, digital video, some scanners, and similar devices. Firewires is (IIRC) several times as fast as most SCSI implementations, and has the advantages of dedicated bandwidth, plug-and-play, hot-swappable design, no terminators or SCSI id's to fool with, and peer-to-peer architecture that allows any device on the bus to communicate with any other. In other words, Firewire is a lot better than SCSI for high-end HDD's.
Firewire was *not* aimed to do everything under the sun. It is positioned to work in concert with USB and ethernet: USB for the low end, ethernet for networking, and Firewire for high-bandwidth devices. That's how Apple's professional desktops are designed, and within a year all of Apple's other products will be as well (iMac in a few weeks, PowerBooks in a few months, iBook might be a while yet.) USB 2.0 is attempting to be all things to all people, and as a result it is going to be mediocre all around. Firewire is simply a better technology targeted at high-bandwidth multimedia and storage devices.
Nope. Almost a year ago, Apple settled with everyone by lowering the licensing drastically.
This article talks in-depth about how badly USB 2.0 will handle heavy traffic.
Here is a particularly interesting note:
There is another issue there as well. If you are going to keep backwards compatibility, then all your older or slow speed devices (like Printers and Keyboards) will slow down the bus. If you have a on slow device (say a printer) that is talking at 12Mbps and taking 50% of the total bandwidth and another device (say a Disk Drive) trying to talk at 240Mbps and they split the bus (each gets 50% of the time) -- then the fast device can really only get about 120Mbps (or less). The slow device is actually stealing 120Mb of potential bandwidth (50% of the time) even if it is only sending 6Mb of data in that time. Now imagine that you have 15 slow devices and one fast one (a not so uncommon scenario)
I mean, what about USB? It's been around for over 5 years and just now it's beginning to be widely adopted. Intel is trying to kill Firewire just because they didn't invent it.
A blocking process is one that blocks the process. --Uresh Vahalia, UNIX Internals: The New Frontiers
>Does anybody here ever use an RS-422 serial port to do anything?
iirc, that's what the Mac serial ports were (prior to geoport). I used it for years to network my law office.
hawk, esq., who has now gone years without a Radio Shack flunkee claiming that the RS before 232 was because Radio Shack invented it . . .
Sony, the oft-forgotten codeveloper of IEEE 1394, markets its FireWire technology as iLink (since Apple owns the FireWire trademark). Most, if not all, Sony DV cams come with iLink, and most DV cams come with some form of 1394 capability. Check out 1394ta.org, Apple's FireWire Site, and Sony's site for more 1394 info and devices.
Remember, this is Sony we're talking about. They are far larger than Intel and I doubt they'll let a technology they helped develop just die. PSX2's going to have FireWire ports for external hard drives and stuff, I don't know about USB2. I doubt FireWire's going anywhere.
rooooar
Whenever a single company tries to control an important standard and loses the market, I think that's a good sign. Let's hope other companies notice.
(like Firewire doesn't work well with long distances).
USB is even more limited distance-wise. It is designed to be a cheap, low-performance bus, and so it has crappy cables not designed for long distances.
- Fast Enough for Multiple Streams of 5-channel uncompressed audio, plus DVD or better quality video.
Firewire is faster right now than USB 2.0 is slated to be. And that won't be out for a year at least.
-Support Large Networks.
Not a chance. Intel has a host-device architecture, and doesn't do peer-to-peer connections. Therefore it makes a lousy networking solution. Firewire has peer-to-peer networking.
- Be an open standard.
Firewire is IEEE1394. USB is not overseen by any independent standards board.
- Support Peer to Peer Connections
That's not in the specs for 2.0.
- Be Simple enough that cheap hardware could support it.
That was the big draw of USB 1.1, but I've read that USB 2.0 will need much of the same logic as Firewire to do the necessary high speeds. That means that it will be every bit as complex as Firewire. Not only that, but backwards compatibility with USB 1.1 will require additional logic on top of that, so USB should end up about the same price as Firewire.
- Work with all populuar Audio, video, and Computer gear.
Firewire is already there. Most camcorders and digital cameras today have Firewire ports, and firewire hard drives have started appearing.
http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG19990 827S0032
Basically, it looks like several companies banded together to produce 1394 transmissions at 2.4 gigahertz. Let's see USB 2.0 do that.
Firewire isn't going anywhere, this is more lame "news" from an increasingly biased source (Infoworld).
I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
copied from News.com
Dateline : Cupertino, CA
In stunning news today, Apple Computer, Inc. announed that since its computers will not be using Intel chips, this may be the end of the line for Merced as we know it.
"I just don't see how Merced can survive" said one industry analyst. "I mean, if even ONE person doesn't have an Intel processor shoved up his ass, then that's one more person contributing to the demise of Intel!"
Sources at Apple, who refused to be named, said that "this all could have been avoided" if only Intel were gracious and forgiving enough to allow a non-Intel designed standard to have made it to market.
It is believed that IEEE 1394 is the standard the source was referring to.
"Does Apple even make real computers? How can you listen to the company that makes those Apple 2's anyway!" said John Kissass from Dataquest. "Really, i mean, if Apple" he chuckled, "says that the sky was some strange color, and Microsoft and Intel tell you the truth about our green sky, who are _you_ going to believe?"
It is not known if Intel is planning on closing its doors forever because of this staggaring announcementm suffice to say that even one person making up their own mind and not using Intel standards could spell the end of the WinTel reign, its possible that, somehow, Intel will make it through the day.
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
No-one at all can say which is dead, and which is not. Just as many posters before me have noted. Look at AMD and Intel. Everyone said Intel ruled the market and AMD would crumble at their feet. Yet AMD has just released a processor that blows the _current_ Pentium III's out of the water. This kind of thing happens so many times. Unless your the proud owner of a time machine, you and no-one else knows whats dead, till its dead.
You must also remember that USB and FireWire while being similar, are not one in the same. FireWire components can exist WITHOUT a computer. So you can (conceptually) go out and have a Sony HandiCam with firewire, plug it into a VCR with FireWire and transfer all your video, at very high speed to the VCR, or vice versa. Or any other number of components you have can talk to eachother with FireWire without the need to have a computer. And since PC's can support FireWire, you can also plug that same cable into your computer and do all the same there.
With USB (currently) you are usually always plugging the USB component into the computer. Not hooking one component to the other. This means, that if you go out and buy a product with USB on it, your ONLY use for it is with your computer. Now, I understand that many, many people have computers these days, but there are still many that dont have a computer at all. With USB components you have just lost this entire segment of the market. FireWire currently has its obvious andvatagaes, and like it or not, DOES have some large backers such as Apple, Microsoft, Sony and Compaq to name a few. These companies as Im sure you will agree are NOT small time. Yes they have all seen their fair share of their products that don't succeed. But FireWire is certainly far from dead.
Regardless of both these things, I would like to see some kind of standard come into place. I own both USB products and FireWire products and would like to see one single standard, or a possible interopability. But until then, or until one is entirely phased out, no-one can say who is 'king'.
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aphex
I Steal Music!
1. Digital camcorders
Go to any good electronics store today, and look at the digital cameras. Notice anything? Almost every single one has a FireWire port. Now, how many have USB ports?
2. USB reqires a computer
To use USB, there must be a computer (or at least an intelligent hub) in order to allow transmisions; you can't just go camera to camera. FireWire makes no such demand: you can easily connect two cameras directly, with no hub whatsoever.
3. FireWire isn't at peak speed yet.
FireWire currently travels at only 400 Mbps. However, the maximum rate is 1200 Mbps. I don't see USB matching that for awhile.
4. FireWire can fork.
With FireWire, I can use a splitting cable and channel my camcorder into two computers simultaneously, and broadcasting only one set of data. Try that with USB!
5. FireWire guarantees speed.
FireWire can say to a device, "You need a constant 200 Mbps data flow? Sure!" Whereas with USB, it's more like, "well, if your friends don't hog the bus too much, I'll see what I can do." No promised rates.
With all of these merrits, I don't think USB 2.0 will be a problem for awhile.
In a related story, Intel also gave out a press release that the Athlon chip, by competitor AMD, is also a dead issue.
"I mean, how menay people do you know who own machines with Athlons in them?" said an unnamed Intel spokesman. "In another year or so, Intel will be selling chips at least that fast, and if we ever get Merced to work, it might be that fast, too."
Oh no! $0.25/device! We'll go bankrupt!
How much more are they going to have to pay Intel for chipsets with USB-2.0 so Intel can recoup development costs? Let's be serious here. This story is Intel FUD. There are already millions of computers and consumer electronics devices out there with Firewire. There are none with USB-2.0, and USB-2.0 is totally worthless to the consumer electronics industry. There are nearly 30 Firewire devices shipping today, and many, many more have been announced. We're seeing with Firewire a rampup of of almost exactly the same proportions we saw with original USB last year.
Sure, USB-2.0 ports might end up on computers. Right next to the Firewire ports.
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