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Gear / Technical Help => Post-Processing, Computer / Streaming / Internet Devices & Related Activity => Topic started by: §†∑∫åµÞ≥¥ on March 22, 2004, 06:18:36 PM
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In a nutshell, of course. I don't need the history of it. Is it similar to USB? Thanks in advance.
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In a nutshell, of course. I don't need the history of it. Is it similar to USB? Thanks in advance.
yes, similar to usb, faster and different connectors
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firewire is closer to usb 2.0. uses a different chipset, but the same plug and play idea
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FireWire is a branding held by Apple for the IEEE 1394 interface standard.
It's pretty neat. ;D You can daisy chain up to 63 peripherals together, it can do peer to peer communications (like having a printer talk to a digital camera w/no computer between), etc.
The latest revision 1394b can have transfer speeds of up to 3.2Gbit/s making it much faster then USB 2.0
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1394b is 800mb/s.
where did you get this 3.2gb/s at?
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1394b is 800mb/s.
where did you get this 3.2gb/s at?
1394b-2002 is a amendment to the IEEE 1394 standard which has the architectural support for bandwidth up to 3.2gb/s. It's the same amendment which allows gigabit wire distance to be lengthened from 4.5 meters to 100 meters.
Bunch here, so while the current ceiling of consumer products might be 800mb/s, the architecture is already available to impliment 3.2gb/s products. 1.6gb/s is already supported and implimented I believe.
http://tinyurl.com/24k9r
Press release from IEEE about 1394b:
http://standards.ieee.org/announcements/1394bapp.html
1394b whitepaper:
http://www.1394ta.org/Technology/About/1394a_and_b_whitepaperrevised.PDF
http://www.reed-electronics.com/electronicnews/index.asp?layout=article&articleId=CA91031&rid=0&rme=0&cfd=1
IEEE 1394b allows extensions to 800Mbit/sec., 1.6Gbit/sec. and 3.2Gbit/sec., all over copper wire. It supports long-distance transfers to 100 meters over a variety of media: CAT-5 unshielded cable at 100Mbit/sec., existing plastic optical fiber at 200Mbits/sec., next-generation plastic optical fiber at 400Mbit/sec. and 50-micron mulitmode glass optical fiber at up to 3.2Gbit/sec
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hmmm, cool. thanks.
question: if the architecture is able to support 1.6gps and higher then why arent devices made for it? this is higher than fiber channel!
also, the 800mbs 1394b uses a funky glass connector
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here is the ultimate reason why more companies werent in on firewire to begin with, even though it came out at the same time as usb- money. up till last year or so i believe the firewire chipset was patented technology that required a fee from the manufacturer to integrate it. usb was always available to anyone free of charge.
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here is the ultimate reason why more companies werent in on firewire to begin with, even though it came out at the same time as usb- money. up till last year or so i believe the firewire chipset was patented technology that required a fee from the manufacturer to integrate it. usb was always available to anyone free of charge.
not exactly. you only had to pay if you marketed your device as "firewire" or "ilink".
if you called it 1394, you didnt have to pay any royalties or fees
dont know what Sony was charging for the ilink moniker, but Apple was charging $1 for each device
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if the architecture is able to support 1.6gps and higher then why arent devices made for it? this is higher than fiber channel!
I would imagine chipsets haven't been fully developed, tested, manufactured, etc. for the utilization of the higher end speeds of the protocol (1.6-3.2gb/s).
Remember, "Firewire"/IEEE 1394/etc. is just a protocol, a standard, etc. Just like TCP/IP.... It's out there, it's a "standardized guide" in file transferring and developers, companies, etc. can use this standard in their products how they feel fit. Once there is a real need for the speed, the manufacturers will start utilizing the architecture for 1.6-3.2gb/s I imagine. Until then if it's cheaper, more trusted/reliable/etc. to continue using the lower 400meg transfer rate now then that's what they'll do.
The "speed" is more of a scalar. Or a divider, I dunno. Consider IEEE 1394b having an upper bound of 3.2gb/s and it's scaled from there in halves. 1.6 > 800megs > 400megs >>>>
Current chipsets/technology can "read/write/transfer" using this file transferring standard at a scale currently at 1/8th or a 1/4th the potential of the standard.
Does that sorta make sense? I really don't know for certain, that's my ejimicated guess ;D
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Some other thoughts, if a firewire card were to be installed in the PC to utilize the higher transfer rates the buses in PC's would have to be improved in terms of speed.
PCI buses aren't fast at all... Basic PCI bus can run at about 33mhz and has a throughput of 133MB/sec. PCI 2.2 = 533MB/s, PCI 64bit = 1066MB/s, etc.
I could envision some sort of AGP card though, as AGP has been whomping PCI in terms of bandwidth to the board for a good while now.
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I could envision some sort of AGP card though, as AGP has been whomping PCI in terms of bandwidth to the board for a good while now.
Except the "G" in AGP stands for graphics. AGP has always been faster than PCI because that's how it was designed. That's why a new PCI bus (can't remember the moniker) is coming out shortly.
Here's some other thoughts... why develop 1.6 Gb/s firewire devices when nothing can even transfer at that rate? There's no consumer computer peripheral that is anywhere near capable of those types of speeds, so it would be pointless to develop something like that until something comes along and replaces the hard drive.
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Except the "G" in AGP stands for graphics.
Which doesn't mean you couldn't the technology for something else. Granted it's a port and not a bus, but it's almost remeniscent of the new serial ATA.
why develop 1.6 Gb/s firewire devices when nothing can even transfer at that rate? There's no consumer computer peripheral that is anywhere near capable of those types of speeds, so it would be pointless to develop something like that until something comes along and replaces the hard drive.
I dunno if I'd call it pointless because there's nothing out there to handle it yet. You make something faster then the public can use--and the public will find a way to use it! Why did they make FAT32 support hard drives 2 Terabyte in size? We'll get there eventually but it's good to leave headroom so your standards don't go out of style quickly ;D
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Which doesn't mean you couldn't the technology for something else. Granted it's a port and not a bus, but it's almost remeniscent of the new serial ATA.
Like I said, a new PCI bus is being developed and will be released shortly, so this will never happen.
I dunno if I'd call it pointless because there's nothing out there to handle it yet. You make something faster then the public can use--and the public will find a way to use it! Why did they make FAT32 support hard drives 2 Terabyte in size? We'll get there eventually but it's good to leave headroom so your standards don't go out of style quickly ;D
That's like comparing apples to oranges... FAT32 can support 2 terabytes. OK great. What does that cost the manufacturer of those drives? Nothing, because it has nothing to do with the actual hardware. What does it cost to R&D and produce 1.6 mbps devices that won't even use 800 mpbs? A lot more than it's worth. When the devices come, the support will follow shortly after.
Edited for clarity.
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FAT32 can support 2 terabytes. OK great. What does that cost the manufacturer of those drives? Nothing, because it has nothing to do with the actual hardware.
FAT32 isn't a "drive", it's a file system. Just like FAT16, NTFS, ext3, etc. They wrote a standard method to handle files on a system, and in this case they wrote in large overhead into their standard for future growth. Essentially a "software solution" of just giving the ability to read larger clusters.
You're right that it has nothing to do with hardware, either does the 1394b standard.
What does it cost to R&D and produce 1.6 mbps devices that won't even use 800 mpbs? A lot more than it's worth. When the devices come, the support will follow shortly after.
Your asking the cost of a device that can transfer data at 1.6mbps (surely you mean GB/s) "that won't even use 800mpbs?" I don't get the "won't use 800MB/s" thing. What do you mean by 'won't use'?
You also mention the devices should be made that are fast and then a standard should evolve around it? How you R&D a high speed device w/out the standard first is a cost I'd like to see, probably far more expensive to make your own standard instead of just licensing a tried and true already existing model.
In talking about the "cost" of making your technology fast enough to support future implimentations. It might've cost them a fortune to get that jump from 800MB/s to 1.6GB/s, and then ten times more for 3.2GB/s. But I doubt that. Given the "doubling nature" of the speeds I'd wager it's more likely just a tightening of the algorithm/encoding they use to transfer things, more of a "firmware adjustment" then a redesign of the physical hardware.
In fact, 1394b uses the same essentially wiring as 1394a. Two twisted pairs, but now uses a full dual simplex tranmission--meaning that data is constantly being sent over both pairs in either direction, like a highway. It's actual a simplification of the previous standard, which made it more efficient. Not a redesign or change in the actual hardware.
To help reach the GB/s level they've gotten a helping hand from IBM's 8B10B encoding scheme (another software level change), it's the same encoding that Gigabyte ethernet and Fibre channel uses.
The only thing you need to change about 1394b to go from 400MB/s > 800MB/s > 1.6MB/s > 3.2MB/s is the medium through which the data is transferred. All are still twisted pairs, all are still using the same protocol, they just have different plugs and less resistance as they go on (copper wire > plastic optic fibre > glass fiber).
Anyways, I pulled a lot of this from reading a presentation by a Microsoft Corp. IEEE 1394b guy and Steven Bard from Intel which was presented at WinHEC 2000. You can find it here (http://download.microsoft.com/download/a/f/c/afcf8195-0eda-4190-a46d-aa60b45e0740/ExternalI-OBuses.ppt), there's a bunch more about BOSS, FOP/PHY, beta mode vs. strobe, etc.
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FAT32 isn't a "drive", it's a file system. Just like FAT16, NTFS, ext3, etc. They wrote a standard method to handle files on a system, and in this case they wrote in large overhead into their standard for future growth. Essentially a "software solution" of just giving the ability to read larger clusters.
You're right that it has nothing to do with hardware, either does the 1394b standard.
I know all of this, but I definitely disagree that the 1394b standard has nothing to do with hardware. Are you saying that you can take current 800 mbps cards and magically make them 3.2 gbps cards? Cuz that's more or less what you can do with FAT32.
Your asking the cost of a device that can transfer data at 1.6mbps (surely you mean GB/s) "that won't even use 800mpbs?" I don't get the "won't use 800MB/s" thing. What do you mean by 'won't use'?
Name one piece of hardware out there that would benefit from a faster bus. And yes, the peripherals will be begging for a faster implementation of firewire before it's actually implemented. There's a reason current firewire cards top out at 800 mbps-nothing can go faster than that. Hard drive? No way, the drive doesn't max out the bus. Scanner? This is a good example of a peripheral begging for a faster bus. Scanners existed for a loooong time and were slow as hell simply because of the bus. Have the scanners changed? No, not really, just the bus has gotten bigger so that all of the data can be transmitted more quickly. The device existed first, and then the bus came.
What else is there? Keyboard, mouse, game controllers, flash memory cards/keys, dvd burners, cd burners, etc etc, all of which would not benefit from a faster bus than is already in use. No use for the faster bus=no money spent in making new firewire cards capable of the speeds. Yes, the standard exists for 3.2 gbps (yeah that was a typo in my other post), but it's going to cost money to implement it. If it didn't, current 1394b cards would be capable of 3.2 gbps instead of their current limit of 800 mbps.
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^^ agreed. I cant even get a full 1Gb out of my gigabit interface on the powerbook!
the hard drive just isnt fast enough to keep up.
I'm not talking sustained either...