FireWire vs. USB; Apple and Intel Play Hardball

[NFS4]

So what happened to Firewire? Three things. First, Apple, who owns the patents for FireWire, killed its Golden Goose by demanding a license fee of several dollars for each PC, which Intel and most computer makers found to be economically untenable. This opened the door for USB. Intel gave the USB technology to their OEM partners royalty-free (as they do today), and IEEE 1394-FireWire-was quietly dropped from the PC 98 specification. Apple backed off their high-priced position, down to today's 25¢-per-PC license fee, but the damage was done

http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1104

 

[kuk]

Via feels the same way too ...

Quote from the recent Anandtech VIA PX333 article.

The integration of USB 2.0 into a VIA South Bridge makes a lot of sense but is a complete 180 from what VIA's position was at last year's Computex. During an interview with VIA's President, Wen-chi Chen, VIA took the position of supporting IEEE-1394 over USB 2.0. Luckily things have apparently changed and USB 2.0 has been integrated into the 8235 South Bridge. You can expect to find this South Bridge in all future VIA chipsets as well.

 

[Chumster]

First, Apple, who owns the patents for FireWire......

Yeah, I always felt it was ironic that Windows XP shipped with Firewire support and not USB 2.0

/boggle

Chum

 

[Adul]

i still prefer firewire support.

 

[Eug]

Yeah, Apple hurt themselves with the initial $1 cost. That's a lot. Maybe if they started with $0.25 in the first place. I also wondered what this independent-functionality-not-requiring-a-computer of Firewire would mean for the big PC companies, like Intel. I guess the author thinks that this is a major point.

So this 5V vs. 3.3V business, is this the reason why essentially only Mac laptops support powered Firewire? So far I have NEVER seen a powered Firewire port on a PC laptop. IMO, this is a very important feature of Firewire. In fact, one of my devices requires Firewire power just to function, and doesn't include a connector for an AC adapter.

Anyways, I still like it better than USB 2. Powered, less CPU dependent, and integrated OS support both for Macs and PCs. Plus it is the format of choice for multimedia. Right now the Firewire-->IDE bridge chips are significantly faster than USB2-->Firewire bridge chips, but USB2 will catch up sooner or later. Anyways, I currently own four Firewire devices (besides a hub), and they all work beautifully together, daisychained, in Win XP. Win XP also installed networking drivers for my Firewire card, but it's not as if I'd use it much. Ironically, my Mac doesn't support Firewire networking, and it's not as if 4.5 meters is exactly ideal for networking.

The question though is, what will 800 Mbps Firewire do to stir up the market?

 

[McCarthy]

Why is it "lucky" to have USB 2.0 instead of 1394? I realize Anand's articles are news and commentary, not just spec pages, just seems curious he chose that phrasing.

I've used neither USB 2.0 or 1394 and at this point am wondering what drives people's thinking a lot more than so called news about hardware. 1394 was superior to USB 1.1 in every way except cost. The article made mention of the 5v controller chips being a problem that would keep 1394 from replacing IDE for laptops. Which would be parallel ATA. Which are also 5v chips. Something there doesn't compute. But it sounded like a reasonable excuse, right?

For all I know from personal experience 1394 may be a dog in real life performance. Doesn't seem that way in benchmarks, but I've never used it. But I end up supporting it simply because it grates on my nerves incessently to see people praising USB. I was going to avoid this thread till I read that nonsense in the article saying "The situation could have been reversed, but the first FireWire chips produced by Adaptec and Texas Instruments were erratic performers. In contrast, USB 1.1 seemed to suffer none of these ills."

With that second sentence I must completely dismiss anything this author is writing as biased or at the least ill informed from the start. My personal experience with USB has been dismal and the multitude of posts here on these very forums over the years about USB problems didn't escape my eyes.

If it's cheaper it's better, if it's cheaper it's better, gotta remind myself to chant that as I fall asleep each night, maybe the world will make more sense in the morning.

--Mc

 

[Eug]

Dunno about the "dog in performance" bit actually, with Firewire. Right now Firewire IDE bridge chipsets have hit around 75-80% throughput (with peak speeds around 40 MB/s vs. a 50 MB/s max), which is pretty damn good. Much better than USB 2.0 in terms of not only relative speed vs. the theoretical, but also absolute speed as well (even though Firewire has a lower theoretical speed).

I also agree that the author is biased. It seems odd that he would say that USB 1.1 was so great. IMO USB 1.1 is OK, but the famous BSOD with Bill Gates is testament to the fact that it had significant problems. Not to say Firewire is perfect, but USB 1.1 certain wasn't either. USB 2.0 also has its problems, but I'll give it the benefit of the doubt since it still needs more time to mature. Then we can do a more real comparison.

It is interesting to hear that parallel ATA uses 5V chips. Hmmm... Well perhaps the 15 Watt power requirement is what's holding back 6-pin powered Firewire in PC laptops? (Whereas I've got a 6-pin powered port in my lowly iBook, I've only ever seen 4-pin non-powered ports in PC laptops, even in ultra high-end ones). So what's the deal? Anybody know the truth?

 

[KeithP]

While Firewire and USB 2.0 seem to be competitors now, it is believed that Apple will introduce Firewire 2 with double the current throughput of Firewire when they revamp their G4 motherboards. Could happen as early as July's MacWorld Expo.

 

[jema]

Some of the grape wines reports that they are about to tripple it, but that doesnt matter as FireWire at 800 or 1200Mbs still will spank USB2s lillywhite...

I think the PC folks (me included) could have forked up the money. If intel & co had maybe we would have FW native HDDs today and how much support money and user agony wouldnt that have saved?

 

[Eug]

Originally posted by: jema
Some of the grape wines reports that they are about to tripple it, but that doesnt matter as FireWire at 800 or 1200Mbs still will spank USB2s lillywhite...

I think the PC folks (me included) could have forked up the money. If intel & co had maybe we would have FW native HDDs today and how much support money and user agony wouldnt that have saved?

While I prefer Firewire over USB 2 for external devices, I still think that for internal hard drives, the standard of choice is serial ATA (if we're excluding SCSI at the moment).

Plus I've heard nothing about 1200 Mbps Firewire. It still seems to me like it's gonna be 800 Mbps. But even if the speed were increased to above 800, wouldn't it make more sense to go straight to 1600 Mbps?

 

[NFS4]

Originally posted by: jema
Some of the grape wines reports that they are about to tripple it, but that doesnt matter as FireWire at 800 or 1200Mbs still will spank USB2s lillywhite...

I think the PC folks (me included) could have forked up the money. If intel & co had maybe we would have FW native HDDs today and how much support money and user agony wouldnt that have saved?

Increased speeds don't mean JACK SQUAT for Firewire now if there isn't motherboard support. "SOME" motherboards are JUST NOW getting Firewire integrated into the Southbridge (SiS745) and only a few even offer it on the board via an extenal chip (Abit IT7, Abit AT7 come to mind).

USB 2.0 has already made its way into the southbridges of new chipset from Intel and VIA (ICH4 and P4X333). The truth in the matter is, people will be more than willing to use USB 2.0 which is onboard than to go out and buy an external card for Firewire.

 

[Pariah]

USB2 is a standard without a market or target audience. USB1.1 was widely accepted because it served a useful purpose to allow you to connect a mouse, KB, joystick and other low bandwidth peripherals that use to require a variety of different connectors to all use the same connector and be hot swappable. USB2 just increases bandwidth for peripherals that don't need it. Firewire has a large installed user base from DV users which are the most likely people to need the large fast external storage drives. There won't be a USB2 DV or any other application which would drive user adoption and increase demand for peripherals. Both standards are designed for external uses, so I don't see integrated motherboard solutions as meaning much, as the average Joe has absolutely no use for an external optical drive or hard drive sitting on top of his desktop case. Where it is an added convenience is on portable devices like laptops, and basically all laptops are adopting firewire now.

 

[Eug]

Originally posted by: Pariah
USB2 is a standard without a market or target audience. USB1.1 was widely accepted because it served a useful purpose to allow you to connect a mouse, KB, joystick and other low bandwidth peripherals that use to require a variety of different connectors to all use the same connector and be hot swappable. USB2 just increases bandwidth for peripherals that don't need it. Firewire has a large installed user base from DV users which are the most likely people to need the large fast external storage drives. There won't be a USB2 DV or any other application which would drive user adoption and increase demand for peripherals. Both standards are designed for external uses, so I don't see integrated motherboard solutions as meaning much, as the average Joe has absolutely no use for an external optical drive or hard drive sitting on top of his desktop case. Where it is an added convenience is on portable devices like laptops, and basically all laptops are adopting firewire now.

In fairness, while USB 2 right now doesn't have a big user base, I agree with the posters that say mobo integration is important. USB 2 by default will dramatically increase in market share simply because so many mobos will include it. It won't in the near term significantly affect the DV market, but I feel it will make a significant impact for stuff like external drives. Whether or not it will take over the external drive market from Firewire is debatable however, especially since Firewire does offer some technical advantages for this too. ie. I disagree it's only the DV people that need external drives. Lots of people want more storage, and many people are willing to spend the extra bux for an external drive.

 

[ElFenix]

my roommate rented a dv cam from wally world and i'm pretty sure it had USB2. it had USB 1.1, which was horribly slow. no, i don't consider going with USB2 a lucky thing either. i'd rather pay the extra $0.25 for firewire built in. good thing creative is putting it in their sound cards.

 

[Eug]

Originally posted by: ElFenix
my roommate rented a dv cam from wally world and i'm pretty sure it had USB2. it had USB 1.1, which was horribly slow. no, i don't consider going with USB2 a lucky thing either. i'd rather pay the extra $0.25 for firewire built in. good thing creative is putting it in their sound cards.

I remember seeing mention of a USB 2 camcorder somewhere, but I can't find the link. They are by no means common however.

 

[Pariah]

I didn't say DV users were the only users, just the most common, especially among the average consumer. Considering the whole camcorder industry is moving over to DV, the market will only continue to grow, especially with the plummeting prices and far superior quality to analog standards. Most people don't need anything larger than a CD for their random storage needs. Obviously if you work with video or other media formats that require multi GB files, CD's aren't too useful, and hard drives are required. Anyone who has the need and the money for external storage has probably already gone with firewire, I doubt a $20 card is going to drive many customers away like SCSI card costs do. I don't see too many people putting off purchases in anticipation of USB2 either. A large percentage of OEM systems have built in firewire now as well. Sony and Apple have had it as a standard feature for years.

"my roommate rented a dv cam from wally world and i'm pretty sure it had USB2. it had USB 1.1"

There are multiple digital video standards besides DV. DV camcorders don't use USB connectors, your roommate probably rented a Digital8 camera which usually comes with USB which is more useful for stills transfers off the camcorder than video. USB 1.1 is far too slow for the DV standard. I doubt it had USB2, it doesn't really make any sense to create another standard to compete with an established one and considering Sony has dropped USB on all their Digital8 camcorders in favor of firewire, other manufacturers will probably follow suit rather than switch to USB2 for non DV camcorders.

 

[Eug]

Originally posted by: Pariah

There are multiple digital video standards besides DV. DV camcorders don't use USB connectors, your roommate probably rented a Digital8 camera which usually comes with USB which is more useful for stills transfers off the camcorder than video. USB 1.1 is far too slow for the DV standard. I doubt it had USB2, it doesn't really make any sense to create another standard to compete with an established one and considering Sony has dropped USB on all their Digital8 camcorders in favor of firewire, other manufacturers will probably follow suit rather than switch to USB2 for non DV camcorders.

Ah here we go. Hitachi USB 2 camcorder. It's DVD-RAM/-R based however. This would be useful for me since I can read both DVD-RAM and DVD-R in both my PC drive and my set top DVD player, but I'd prefer to have Firewire support too. By the way, with the old model Hitachi I have successfully played the DVD-RAM discs in my DVD player in case you're wondering.

 

[jema]

Originally posted by: NFS4

Increased speeds don't mean JACK SQUAT for Firewire now if there isn't motherboard support. "SOME" motherboards are JUST NOW getting Firewire integrated into the Southbridge (SiS745) and only a few even offer it on the board via an extenal chip (Abit IT7, Abit AT7 come to mind).

USB 2.0 has already made its way into the southbridges of new chipset from Intel and VIA (ICH4 and P4X333). The truth in the matter is, people will be more than willing to use USB 2.0 which is onboard than to go out and buy an external card for Firewire.

And why do think that is? Could it be because Intel has a say in USB2? I dont think Firewire is harder to implement once the PC industry gets over the mindwall stating that everything they do is allways better and what the customer wants.

 

[McCarthy]

nicely said Jema. More I think about Anand's "luckily" the more it bugs me. At best it reminds me of people who lost both arms and both legs in a car crash saying they were lucky.

If it's cheaper it's better, if it's cheaper it's better.....

Must be bedtime.

 

[manko]

Follow-up story: Apple offers no-fee FireWire brand license

The 1394 Trade Association (TA) and Apple today announced that the FireWire trademark, logo and symbol have been adopted as a brand identity for the IEEE 1394 connection standard in a no-fee license agreement between the TA and Apple.

This sounds like good news for people with DV cams...

 

[Eug]

Originally posted by: manko
Follow-up story: Apple offers no-fee FireWire brand license

The 1394 Trade Association (TA) and Apple today announced that the FireWire trademark, logo and symbol have been adopted as a brand identity for the IEEE 1394 connection standard in a no-fee license agreement between the TA and Apple.

This sounds like good news for people with DV cams...

That just means that you can now officially call it Firewire instead of IEEE 1394 without paying extra money. You still have to pay money for the actual technology. ($0.25 per unit or port I believe.)

 

[manko]

same story discussed on Geek

 

[corkyg]

Just a user here - I have both 1394 and USB 2.0 active in this system. They are both good and both do everything I expect - but - I give Firewire a slight edge on being a little more user friendly when it comes to PnP. Firewire is not new - it has been around and has passed the tests. Basically it is derived by separating the channels that make SCSI 2 into SCSI 3. The presence of USB 2 on mobos is nice - but I remember another defacto standard created by market hype - the Zip drive. It never was as good as the LS-120 - but people believed the reviewers BS and it became standard.