1394 Trade Association Adopts FireWire Brand

MaxVlast writes in that the The 1394 Trade Association has adopted the FireWire trademark, logo and symbol as a brand identity for the IEEE 1394 connection standard in a "no-fee license agreement" between 1394ta and Apple. Apple has also granted 1394ta the right to sub-license the FireWire Trademark for use on products, packaging and promotion of the standard.

Re:Better than USB 2?

[Webratta]

Are there any motherboards out that are supporting USB 2, or is it still add-on only?

The cool thing about Firewire is that Mac's have support for it now. Plus there are plans to eventually bring Firewire up to 1600 Mbps later this year. Also, Firewire can transfer data from device to device, while USB has to go through your computer as a go-between. People more intelligent than I are more than welcome to expound upon, correct, or add to this.

Re:Better than USB 2?

[Pfhor]

USB 2 suffers from a master / slave design. Theoretically one can plug a firewire drive into a firewire camera, and transfer footage from the camera directly to the HD. And you can run IP over firewire, for some really fast / cheap LAN for a central storage server.

On top of that, 1394b supports up to 1.2Gbps or 1.6 Gbps (depending on the media) which is being developed. And it works nicely with 1394a.

Re:Better than USB 2?

[atrus]

Yes! FireWire allows something USB doesn't: peer to peer connectivity. This allows me to take a Sony DV converter and plug it into a Sony Camcorder/Video walkman with a firewire cable to dub VHS->Hi8(DV). With USB, you'd need a host controller, which up to this point means computer. I don't want to use a computer for dubbing tapes or doing other device->device transfers.

Re:Better than USB 2?

[Space Coyote]

FireWire has many advantages over USB 2.0 that far outweigh the extra 80Mb/s USB2 claims over the current iteration of FireWire. Most importantly is the fact that it is peer-to-peer, meaning that no host PC is required to manage every FW connection. This makes firewire a good choice for video equipment, and interesting is also being adopted in the auto industry to connect electronic components together. Also, data carried over FireWire carries certain priority information with it, depending on the type of data being transferred. Video data or a CD burning session can thus be treated with a higher priority that pictures from a still camera. Anyone who has hooked up a USB CD burner downstream from their printer can attest to the importance of such a mechanism.

Re:Better than USB 2?

[Anonymous Coward]

FireWire is more than just an expansion bus, it defines a high speed multipoint network layer. You can have multiple hosts on the same [fire]wire and they can access multiple devices also on the wire. They can even access one another, using ordinary TCP/IP with the IPover1394 spec.

USB does none of this; it is a single-master, multiple-slave bus.

Re:Better than USB 2?

[Graff]

With USB 2 out now, why does anyone need Firewire? USB 2 has a max data rate of 480Mbps if I remember correctly.

There are a few good reasons for using Firewire vs USB 2.0

First of all, Firewire allows devices on its bus to talk directly to each other. Thus when transferring data on a bus with a hard drive, computer, and camera the data can go directly from the camera to the hard drive.

With USB each device sends its data first to the host controller, and then back out to the device it was intended to go to. This effectively cuts the bandwidth of the bus in half and also limits the bus to how fast the central controller can handle requests. So using USB in the camera-computer-hard drive combo above, the data would go from the camera to the computer, then back out the computer to the hard drive.

Secondly, Firewire is built to handle streaming data. It handles reserving bandwith much better than USB 2.0 does. This is very important when you are recording from a camera to a hard drive and the data is time-dependant.

Thirdly, Firewire is able to operate much closer to sustaining its theoretical maximum of 400Mbps. USB 2.0's 480Mbps data rate is a burst data rate and cannot come even close to sustaining that rate of transfer. I've heard that your average transfer rates over a Firewire bus is going to be around 75% of theoretical, where USB 2.0 is around 50% of theoretical. These results can vary, but Firewire almost definitely outperforms USB 2.0 for sustained data transfers.

Another big problem is that USB tends to transfer data at the rate of the slowest device on the bus, Firewire does not share this limitation.

Lastly, Firewire is due for a speed bump very soon. Probably late this year you will see Firewire bump up to 800Mbps, a much better rate than the current USB 2.0 rate of 480Mbps.

Now I'm not saying that USB 2.0 is utter crap. It is decent when you only have a couple of devices connected that are not doing sustained transfers. So it should be great for printers, mice, keyboards, etc. However, when it comes to video cameras, hard drives, and other devices that need good sustained transfer rates, I'll stick with Firewire. Not to mention that it is already included with the majority of these devices and USB 2.0 is not.

Re:Better than USB 2?

[kubusja]

Most of the people won't know it and won't use it.
And there are already cheap ($75) KT333 motherboards with 4 USB 2.0 ports on the market.
I think mobos with USB 2.0 onboard are
already much more popular than ones with firewire and people won't be willing to pay extra for the controller -they will stick with USB.
Apple again had superior technology but lost.

I personally chose USB 2.0 because I have quite a few USB 1.1 computers and devices will work with them, even if a bit slower. If I were to use
firewire I would have to buy a controller for each. I have some computer expertise
and I do not want to do it. I am pretty
sure an average Joe would be even less
likely to do so. If his mobo has USB 2.0 - he
will buy USB 2.0 device.

Kubus

Re:Better than USB 2?

[EvilAlien]

Yes, USB2 support is getting common. Months ago when I bought my Abit KG7, you could get MSI mobos that supported USB2. Since that time it is showing up in all sorts of products, maybe not a guarantee feature, but one that you should expect to see

It is supported on the VIA P4X333 [viaarena.com] and KT333 [viaarena.com] chipsets, for example.

Re:Sony's iLink

[psleonar]

I thought the reason sony called it iLink was that the connections on their computers don't provide power. The firewire ports on the Mac's and what you see on PC's are the bigger rectangular ports. The ports on a Sony machine as the smaller (squarer) ports and provide no power.

Both 4-pin (non-powered) and 6-pin (powered) implementations of 1394 are defined by the standard. Sony desktop Vaios come with the powered 6-pin version, but their laptops come with the non-powered 4-pin version. Both are referred to by Sony [askfor1394.com] as i.Link. And, confusingly, Sony also uses a proprietary pinout (with adaptor cable) for USB and 1394 on some laptop Vaios when the larger connecters won't fit.

Re:Damn good thing too...

[DavidRavenMoon]

"iLink" is so beat.... Sony had no hand in the design.

And iLink isn't even powered...

It's crippled FireWire.

Re:There ya go.

[Greg Titus]

That would depend on whether you would call Apple originally charging $1 a pop for using its FireWire trademark "gouging".

No, the $1 a pop (now down to $.25 per device), is the license fee for the IEEE 1394 patent pool. It's use of the actual technological guts of the port, and manufacturers pay it whether they call it FireWire or not.

_Most_ of that quarter per device goes to Apple, because they did most of the inventing involved and hold most of the patents in the pool.

This announcement doesn't change that fee structure at all. Allowing use of the name is completely unrelated.

Re:Competition

[LenE]

Whining crybaby companies like Lucent, who got on the 1394 bandwagon too late. Apple developed Firewire (1394) on it's own, and then partnered with Sony and Texas Instruments to provide chipsets and other products. As these companies and some others formed a consortium for patent sharing (similar to JDEC for RAM), they had a trivial, if not free licensing for early adopters. Sometime after the IEEE accepted this as the 1394 standard, the consortium decided to charge royalties to the "Johnny-come-lately" companies that didn't sign on early. All of the early adopters that shouldered the weight of developing this technology were allowed to use the catchy name that Apple coined, Firewire. Sony had a bit of NIH (Not Invented Here) syndrome and probably felt that it could market this as a proprietary technology by calling it i.Link.

Lucent and some other laggards got all huffy, because they found USB to suck, too late in the game, and wanted to produce chipsets for Firewire too. Because they were slow to the mark, they would be charged a licensing fee to use the name and symbology of Firewire. By just following the 1394 standard, they didn't have to license the name Firewire (or i.Link). In geeky magazine ads in embeded systems trade wrags, Lucent went as far as admonishing customers "Don't use the 'F' word, its 1394!"

I have nothing against Lucent, but they are the one that springs to my mind now. Other PC manufacturers were late to the table (HPaQ) and used 1394 as a label for their ports (which confuses and befuddles their typical users).

-- Len

Re:iLink is isochronous video over FireWire - NOT!

[Nurf]

Ergh.

You're all wrong. Trust me on this - I've been writing stacks and designing 1394 hardware for a while now.

There is no difference between iLink and FireWire. They are different names for the same thing. Yes, there are two plug types. One is tiny and 4 pin, the other is bigger and 6 pin. The big one has power. They are both part of the IEEE 1394 standard. They are both FireWire. They are both iLink.

There is no difference at the protocol level. Trust me on this. I have had my nose rubbed in more 1394 protocol stacks and chipsets than I care to remember.

The main reason that this hasn't happened before is that nobody trusted Apple. Especially after their stunt where they tried to tack on huge royalty fees for every 1394 port (this after agreeing several years earlier to pool patents with the other people who made 1394 possible). They timed this particularly well, and managed to delay the uptake of 1394 by maybe 2 years, and in some cases, permanently. Basically, they were complete idiots and damn near shot off their foot at the ankle. I think this had a lot to do with the fact that 1394 isn't standard kit on todays PC motherboard chipsets. The royalties alone were close to the cost of the entire chipset.

It Sony hadn't stuffed 1394 into every camcoder on the planet, 1394 would be dead. Apple are NOT my favourite people. Greedy idiots.

Re:iLink is isochronous video over FireWire - NOT!

[artemis67]

Basically, they were complete idiots and damn near shot off their foot at the ankle. I think this had a lot to do with the fact that 1394 isn't standard kit on todays PC motherboard chipsets. The royalties alone were close to the cost of the entire chipset.

Are you saying that the entire chipset of a motherboard cost $1? Because that's how much Apple was charging in royalties for FireWire, until a very public backlash forced them to charge .25.

I disagree with your assessment of why FireWire isn't standard on PC mobo's though. I think it has much more to do with Intel pushing Intel-owned standards such as USB and ATA (in spite of the fact that neither one of those is a true replacement). Had Intel embraced FireWire for the mainstream, then yes, we would see FireWire as ubiquitous on PC's as USB. But it was Intel's marketing strategy to position their competitor's product as being for high-end and niche markets, not for mainstream. Very shrewd.