“FireWire has two main strengths over USB. First, it’s got a much sexier name. Second, it’s much faster, even compared with the newer USB 2.0 spec, because FireWire’s architecture dedicates several express lanes purely for data. That’s one reason why most DV camcorders use FireWire rather than USB for downloading your raw footage onto the PC for editing. So while the brochures and boffins speak of FireWire being rated at 400Mbps and USB 2.0 at a zippier 480Mbps, our testing of an external drive showed that a 500MB file was copied from the drive to the PC in about 20 seconds via FireWire compared with 30 seconds on the ostensibly faster USB 2.0,” David Flynn writes for The Sydney Morning Herald.
“By way of comparison, it would take about 10 hours to shift the same 500MB file across USB 1.1. In typical one-upmanship, last year Apple announced FireWire 800, which bends the needle at twice the speed of the original FireWire,” Flynn writes. Full article here.
More info on Apple’s FireWire and FireWire 800 here.
No news here. We already knew that 🙁
duh
Never mind that so far we have no devices and chipsets that can actually ake advantage of all of Firewire 800’s speed. Yes, these drives are faster, but they are not twice as fast as Firewire 400, simply due to the limitations of the bridge chipsets.
But it’s still faster thana Firewire 400. That’s the point, most peeps will take ANY speed advantage. Eventually things will get better.
But yeah, the majority of the public is not going to know that Firewire is faster. They see 480 vs. 400 and think USB 2 is faster not taking into account the thoroughput.
Well well well, mac are better than pcs…. We all know that don’t we.
I had to borrow this. Ok it does not belong to this Intel vs. Apple, but it’s quite fun:
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Windows is a 32-bit extension to a 16-bit graphical shell for an 8-bit operating system originally coded for a 4-bit microprocessor by a 2-bit company that can’t stand 1 bit of competition.
Ok.. Now there is also a 64-bit extension to that.
I wonder if Intel is going down like Motorola? There is signs for that. I hope that they don’t start to produce mobile phones.
Findland.. we used to say much the same thing when selling Macs long ago. I also like to compare windows with the car Homer Simpson designed for his brother but with a Model T frame.
Quoting old Apple web pages…
YAAAWWWWWNNNNNN!!!!!!
Sad, MDN, sad.
Why don’t you do a story on this http://www.amiga.com/ ?
How about this: http://www.commodore.ca/
“it would take about 10 hours to shift the same 500MB file across USB 1.1”
What?! USB 1.1 –> 12 Mbps, 500 MB = 4000 Mb
4000 Mb/12 Mbps = 333.3 s = 5.6 min. Only off by a factor of 100.
Even if it were low-speed USB 1.1, 1.5 Mbps, that would still be only about 45 min.
USB 2 is being adapted successfully in large part because it uses the same plug as USB. FireWire 800’s biggest roadblock is that it does NOT backwards compatible FireWire 400 it uses a different plug. This is a major stumbling block in adoption. You can’t make a FireWire 800 devise without also including a plug for 400 or USB 2. This adds quite a bit to the cost.
Why couldn’t Apple find a way to make the plugs backward compatible like they did with USB? I hope they have plans to go way beyond 800 to make the change worth it.
My Nikon D2 digital camera now comes with USB 2 where My Nikon D1 came with FireWire. I would have rather they went with FireWire 800 but that would not have been possible.
“if Intel is going down like Motorola?”
I doubt it. Remember Zilog Z80? Zilog took the 8-bit CPU market away from intel, but intel won it back with 8086. AMD may be taking the lead in 64-bits, but I’m sure intel’s 64bits version of x86 will win back the market with their FUD marketing, meanwhile itanium will join i432.
s
I mean IBM can take Intel down? Ok AMD can help.
To put things in perspective…
Intel is $195billion and highly diversified in chip manufacturing and design (embedded, specialized, server, wireless, desktop).
IBM is $185billion and highly diversified in server/big iron manfuacturing, software, business solutions, research/design without microchips, research/design with microchips and chip fabrication (their only money-losing division at the moment)
Does anyone really believe someone is going to “take Intel down”?
As for USB vs FW.. biggest problem I’ve seen with FW is that the ports fry out so easily making them useless (which is doubly bad when it is on your motherboard).. FW is really quite delicate compared to USB (wrong or poor quality cable, FW hub, end device puts out too much power…)
As for speed, USB2 is rated slower that FW on sustained rates (it’s in the IEEE specs) which is why it matters on items like hard drives. However, for databurst, USB2 is faster (hence the 480 vs 400 numbers.) On top of that, Intel has wireless USB2 coming to market in the next year which should replace bluetooth quite handily as BT is 700Kbps. Also, their is already on spec FW1600 however the issues that affect FW400 and lead to FW port failure have a much higher yield with FW1600.
Apple invented FireWire and – more importantly – gave up license fees to support it as an industry standard.
Everything good started at Apple! AOL, WebTV, Tim Berner Lee’s Internet was inspired by HyperCard, etc…
Steven Georges: I was under the impression that Firewire is developed co-operatively by a consortium of interested parties, not merely by Apple. I vaguely remember that Apple had very little to do with driving the cabling spec for 800, but I stand to be corrected.
FW800 is more than just a bandwidth upgrade, unlike USB2! FW800 can run 100 meters over glass optical cable (also true for the remaining speeds for FW all the way to FW3200), whilst USB2 has to be bridged to Ethernet (using something like Keyspan’s USB Server) or RS-485 to achieve the same capability.
Josh: I think it’s a relative certainty that FW800-3200 will ultimately become a complementary technology to Serial ATA and Serial ATA II.
Given that S-ATA II aims to double S-ATA performance to 3Gbits/sec peak transfer (375 MBytes/sec), I would argue that FW3200 over fiber will ultimately be mated to S-ATA II RAID controllers and drives to create a cheaper alternative to Fiber Channel.
And just to prove a point re: FW800 vs USB2, here’s an interesting product.
http://www.computervideogear.com/digital_video_capture_card/newnex-1394b-optical-repeater.htm
[I]As for speed, USB2 is rated slower that FW on sustained rates (it’s in the IEEE specs) which is why it matters on items like hard drives. However, for databurst, USB2 is faster (hence the 480 vs 400 numbers.) On top of that, Intel has wireless USB2 coming to market in the next year which should replace bluetooth quite handily as BT is 700Kbps. Also, their is already on spec FW1600 however the issues that affect FW400 and lead to FW port failure have a much higher yield with FW1600.[/I]
But wireless USB2, like wireless FW, is dependant on the development and ratification of elements of the 802.15 UWB specification.
I’m not sure that wireless USB (or indeed wireless FW) lead to a shift in the marketplace, but will lead to a shift in convenience: I can see 802.15 creating the opportunity for a wireless bridge for both USB devices and FW devices as well as creating the opportunity for devices that have native wireless capability.
As for Bluetooth, I think you’re more likely to see Zigbee appear as the natural successor under 802.15.4, rather than wireless USB under 802.15.3, simply because of the power consumption and distance issues.
True about the delicate nature of FW ports I’ve already had to replace my motherboard one b/c of fired ports. Good thing I purchased Apple Care.
No matter how big you are you can fall.
IBM has quite nice processor line now. Soon Sony (PlayStation), Nintendo and xBox will use their processors. They need more processor lines though.
I don’t mean that Intel has to declare bankrupt. For me it is Ok if Intel falls from 1st position to let’s say 3rd. I hope that IBM can brake little this Microsoft&Intel; hecemony.
Ive takes BluePrint product designer 2004 gong.
Ive’s corner was argued by Mac evangelist Stephen Fry to a collection of 250 BluePrint readers, who asked questions and then voted for the winner. Fry said: “Good product design should be judged by the ‘lick’ test and whether it gives you a ‘stiffy'”. He observed, “Apple delivers on both counts.”
This was here once before. There it goes again.
Re: NY aware:
Sorry to hear that you had problems with the FW ports/ cables etc. As for speed USB480 is NOT faster than FW 400 even on burst, due to higher overhead (handshake etc) and polling for USB 1.1 (yes, it “checks” regularly even if no USB 1.1 device is connected). HS overhead is due to that USB utilizes an “unintelligent” (and really cost-effective) protocol (as with ATA vs. SCSI). And, of course, USB demands a LOT more involvement by the CPU than FW. FW even allows devices to talk directly to each other, while USB is strictly controller based.