What's a firewire?

J

Jamin43

banned
I'm self studying this stuff from ground zero - and came across the terminology of " firewire "

From what I have been able to grasp - it's basically a high speed ( similar to a USB port but faster ) - that's a universal port ( I"m guessing that means that firewire devices have a universal port as well on the device ???? or is any device able to plug into firewire female port with the proper wire connection? )

Uses are for high data transfer rates - things like Video - Audio - External storage drives ?????

**** Am I leaving something out ****

Is a firewire - more or less a luxury - or specified port for certain functions such as video editing or other task - that's not needed by all - or is it more of a universal port that we're moving toward every computer having in the forseeable future - similar to USB ports?

- I want to understand exactly what a firewire is and it's utility to decide if I need one in a future build.

Thanks in advance for any help / clarificatoins
 
Firewire is more or less a mac thing. PCs have adopted some use for it, mainly transferring videos from video cameras and other high end video/audio solutions.
 
From what I have been able to grasp - it's basically a high speed ( similar to a USB port but faster ) - that's a universal port ( I"m guessing that means that firewire devices have a universal port as well on the device ???? or is any device able to plug into firewire female port with the proper wire connection? )

Uses are for high data transfer rates - things like Video - Audio - External storage drives ?????

**** Am I leaving something out ****

Is a firewire - more or less a luxury - or specified port for certain functions such as video editing or other task - that's not needed by all - or is it more of a universal port that we're moving toward every computer having in the forseeable future - similar to USB ports?
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That's about right - it has much higher sustained transfer rates than USB, even USB burst transfers don't come close to Firewire. Unless you're serious about hooking up cameras ans stuff to your computer, you don't have to worry about it; and anyways, just about any modern computer comes with a firewire port. And no, it's not replacing USB - at least not in the following decade or so.
 
No. Firewire is not a more or less Mac thing. Yes, Apple had a major role in its development, but it was not the only company by far.

Firewire is just one name of the IEEE1394 protocol. It also goes by the name, iLink (Sony's moniker), and the less common Lynx (Texas Instruments pet name for it). At the moment it comes in two speeds: 1394a or Firewire 400 @ 400Mb/s and 1394b or Firewire 800 (as it is commonly known now) @ 800Mb/s. The 1394b spec actually was designed for speeds of up to 3.2Gb/s. The 1.6Gb/s and 3.2Gb/s controllers should be coming out in the near future.

While the current High-Speed USB 2.0 spec theoretically allows for a higher throughput (@ 480Mb/s) as compared to Firewire 400, Firewire has several distinct advantages that will actually result in a higher overall realistic throughput. First, USB relies on the host CPU to carry out the low-level I/O requests of the USB bus. Firewire handles all those I/O requests in the interface controller. This is one reason that Firewire devices tend to carry a price premium over USB. All devices with a Firewire port have a built in I/O controller.

The advantage of offloading the I/O handling from the CPU to the Firewire bus controllers is three fold. First, Firewire data transfers use much less CPU resources compared to their USB counterparts. Two, Firewire devices can communicate directly with each other without involving the CPU or any main system RAM. Three, Firewire has a much more efficient/simpler bus networking ability. An upside to this is that you can chain up to 63 devices in a series fashion on a single bus.

Firewire is often used in professional audio/visual equipment, but it is not a luxury. While it is true that many Macintosh computers come with Firewire, you can also find it on more generic PC hardware. It doesn't get as much popular recognition as USB. This is probably due primarily to its cost as I mentioned above. USB is cheaper to manufacture and include with little expense in many inexpensive consumer devices.

Overall, Firewire and USB are similar in function but differ vastly in execution. In general, Firewire ends up being much faster in practice as compared to USB. They will continue to coexist in the computer world for years to come. USB 3.0 and the Firewire 1600/3200 formats are on their way.
 
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You can think of firewire as being independent of processor interrupts while USB is not. Think of firewire as a hose with a steady stream and USB as something more like sprinkler that cycles on and off. Nevertheless, USB is winning the serial interface war despite the fact that it is an inferior system. Cheap usually wins out over better in the computer business and many other businesses as well.
 
Glad to help Jamin43.


fmw said:
Cheap usually wins out over better in the computer business and many other businesses as well.
Click to expand...

Sadly yes...and the better, more expensive equipment tends to be doomed to get better and relegated to the professional markets and thus more expensive (ala Beta).
 
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