It
wasn’t long ago pundits predicted the death of FireWire/IEEE1394. They
claimed FireWire buzz had cooled and the upcoming USB 2.0 and that Serial
ATA would rule the world of connectivity.
The 1394 protocol
may be shifting direction a bit, but it’s alive and well and living
in increasing numbers of devices and turning up in some surprising arenas.
"The real question
is between USB 2.0 and 1394," suggests Pam Schure, product
manager/marketing manager for Adaptec’s Mac group. She says the point
of Serial ATA is to replace the cumbersome, pricey ribbon inside the
computer box with Serial ATA, which connects disk drives without blocking
the airflow. "Serial ATA is nothing more than a faster way of getting
to an internal drive."
So, are USB 2.0
and 1394/FireWire on a collision course?
"That’s a common question and a little bit difficult to answer,"
says James Snider, chairman of the 1394 Trade Association and
senior marketing advisor at Texas Instruments. "It’s not a head-on
collision. In some areas we’ll overlap, and in most we won’t, and in
some areas it’s still undecided."
Snider says USB 2.0 doesn’t yet have a full chipset, so it will be a
while before they have something on the market. "It’s my expectation
that for the next 12 months, if you want a high-speed serial bus in
your product, you’ll have to go to 1394. Twelve months from now, you
may have the choice."
Most in the industry agree that 1394/FireWire has, for now, locked the
consumer electronics market. "We won’t overlap in consumer audio/visual,
high definition television, camcorders—anytime you want your computer
to interact with A/V products," says Snider. "When you need to
do digital video editing off a camcorder, then you have to have 1394
in your computer. You can’t do that with USB or USB 2.0."
Where he says we’ll see overlap is in the personal computer peripheral
area. "Printers, for example, will see some overlap, but they are
mainly USB products because they don’t need the speed of 1394. They’ll
move to USB 2.0, and you’ll see a few 1394 printers, but I don’t expect
a lot."
There are, however, some cases where a multimedia device needs to hook
up to a peripheral and there, he says, "we’ll see some special
printers and hard drives that, for example, process images off of cameras
or camcorders using 1394."
"Hard drives are moving rapidly right now with 1394," says Snider.
"A small company such as VST comes out with an external hard drive,
and, if you have a 1394 computer, it’s easy to plug it in and get extra
space, which is great if you’re doing video editing. They’ve had so
much success that the Western Digitals and Quantums of the world see
it as a new way to market hard and a way to increase their profit margins
after having had their margins squeezed from competition for a while."
Eventually, he says, USB 2.0 will interface with hard drives. "But
by that time, we’ll really be seeing a lot of these audio/visual hard
drives, so, once again, the 1394 will have differentiated itself. In
fact, so much so that in some cases, manufacturers will be selling peripherals
to people who don’t even have computers. Sales have so far been restricted
to computers, but everyone, for example, has a television. For those
with camcorders, the television can become another output device."
1394 for Entertainment
Analyst Martin Reynolds of Dataquest agrees.
"First, 1394 is available and working in the marketplace and doing well
at Apple with high-speed entertainment, video apps. Also, disk drives
are beginning to build a following. But primarily it’s a digital video
and media interface."
He says USB 2.0 isn’t yet on the market, but every PC will have
it. "USB 2.0 will rapidly go past 1394 in terms of number of systems,
but 1394 will be for any kind of consumer entertainment, whereas USB
2.0 will pick up pretty much every other device. The PCs will sell both
interfaces because they both serve a segment of the market."
Operating at speeds up to 400 megabits per second, 1394-enabled
systems have 30 times more bandwidth than USB, making this technology
ideal for transferring massive amounts of data quickly. The interface
has already been adopted as the standard interface by virtually all
the digital video camcorder devices on the market and is being integrated
into a number of peripheral devices this year. Mark Kirstein,
vice president of Research at Cahners In-Stat Group, estimates that
roughly 20 million computers will ship with 1394/FireWire this year,
or 40 percent of all consumer PCs having the interface in 2000, up from
7 million units in 1999. He estimates 1394 will be in more than 50 million
shipping units by 2003.
Licensors of patents included in the portfolio offered by 1394 include
Apple, Canon, Compaq, Koninklijke Philips Electronics, Panasonic, Sony,
TMicroelectronics and Toshiba. FireWire devices can be connected in
daisy chain and tree structure networks, up to 63 devices, all of them
capable of communication with one another no matter how they are arranged.
Licensees pay $0.25 for each unit shipped.
For a time, some wondered if the $0.25 royalty would hinder the adoption
of 1394/FireWire. "A lot of money?" asks Adaptec’s Schure.
"Not really. There was initial talk of it going to a dollar, but at
$0.25, it’s not a killer license fee."
The Future Specs
Intel Desktop Products Group vice president Pat Gelsinger announced
the release of the final USB 2.0 specification April 27 at the Windows
Hardware Engineering Conference in New Orleans. USB 2.0 will extend
the speed of the peripheral to PC connection from 12 Mbits per second
on USB 1.1 to up to 480 Mbits per second—40 times more than current
capabilities.
The technology was jointly developed by the USB 2.0 Promoter Group,
consisting of Compaq, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Lucent, Microsoft, NEC
and Philips Semiconductors.
Leapfrogging that will be 1394b, a significant enhancement to the basic
1394 specification. It enables speed increases to 3.2 gigabits per second,
supports distances of 100 meters on UTP-5, plastic optical fiber and
glass optical fiber and significantly reduces latency times by using
arbitration pipelining. It is fully backward compatible with the current
1394-1995 and 1394a specifications, and the final spec is due out by
the end of 2000.
"USB is in the business and consumer segments; basically all segments
are covered," says Jason Ziller, technology initiatives manager
at Intel. "We expect the first USB 2.0 systems and peripherals in
fourth quarter this year, with broad availability happening in 2001."
He does not, however, see USB and 1394 on a collision course.
"We believe they complement each other, will coexist in the future
and both have important goals. 1394 we expect will also be on many consumer
PCs, then it will expand to any sort of digital electronics in the home,
such as digital VCRs, televisions, set top boxes and the like—any AV
equipment. Intel is very supportive of 1394 and thinks it’s strategically
important to the digital convergence of the consumer electronics industry.
As time goes on, it becomes more integrated into the home."
1394 Implementations for the Future
Sony Electronics, one of the licensors or 1394, is likely ahead of the
pack in the 1394 home connectivity market.
"We've had i.LINK (Sony’s brand name for its 1394 interpretation)
in our digital camcorders, as well as our PCs, for a number of years,
and we promote the digital video editing applications," says Rick
Clancy, senior vice president for corporate communications at Sony
Electronics. "Beyond that, we have big plans for i.LINK. At the Consumer
Electronics Show in January we announced that later this year we’ll
introduce digital TV sets with i.Link that will connect to set-top boxes
such as digital cable set tops."
He says that, ultimately, i.LINK in the home will be more an i.LINK
network, with multiple devices connected throughout the house.
"Then wireless 1394," he predicts. That’s a concept packed with
possibilities.
But even today, 1394 is finding solid ground outside the personal computer
industry. In April, Cathay Pacific Airlines announced a new in-seat
data system from Primex Technologies that uses the 1394 technology.
The new inseat data system is called "EMPORT" and provides a high-speed
network cabin distribution system allowing more than 200 passengers
to access data at the same time. The EMPORT system communicates with
the ground via a satellite connection. Starting next year, the system
will be installed in every class and every seat of Cathay Pacific's
56 passenger aircraft. The system makes it possible for passengers to
use their laptop computers to access email and the Intranet on board.
Back in the computer industry, 1394/FireWire is finding plenty of supporters.
A recent example is LaCie, which announced a next generation of high-capacity,
high-performance rewriteable DVD drives. Scheduled for delivery this
summer, the new high-speed DVD-RAM drives will provide users with the
hot-swappable performance of FireWire connectivity as well as single-sided
4.7GB and double-sided 9.4GB removable, rewriteable storage capacity.
"The missing link has been high-speed, high-capacity removable storage
that people can use for their projects," Mike Mihalik, vice
president of engineering for LaCie, commented. "Our new industry
standard FireWire DVD-RAM will give them the ability to store a complete,
full-length feature film, hundreds of multimedia-rich presentations,
thousands of photos, and hundreds of thousands of documents on a single,
pocket-sized disc. In addition, with the FireWire interface they can
add, remove or swap the drive between systems without having to restart
the computer." -- DH
FireWire
and USB 2.0 on a Collision Course?
