This sounds great to me, however I got the feeling it's only going to be for a high end HD camera, Blu Ray Burner or a fast portable HDD.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
FireWire to Reach 3.2 Gigabit/s Speeds
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
this is quite a foncusing thread. 
it would be great if it is backwards compatiable. if not, how soon til we see this in new macs? is jan too soon to hope for? not that im in the market for a new mac, but im sure i could convince someone i know to buy one
it would be great if it is backwards compatiable. if not, how soon til we see this in new macs? is jan too soon to hope for? not that im in the market for a new mac, but im sure i could convince someone i know to buy one finally
specs for 1600 and 3200 firewire have been in the works for over 10 years.
I was wondering when they'd finally get off their butts and turn it into a product.
Of course, the IEEE spec is only the start (which, btw, has NOTHING to do with Apple). It'll be a couple years probably before we can buy something using it at the least.
specs for 1600 and 3200 firewire have been in the works for over 10 years.
I was wondering when they'd finally get off their butts and turn it into a product.
Of course, the IEEE spec is only the start (which, btw, has NOTHING to do with Apple). It'll be a couple years probably before we can buy something using it at the least.
It's great to see that Firewire is not dying. When Apple dropped it off the iPod, I was a little worried. Can't wait to get my iMac with every freakin' new feature in it...in 2 years!
this is quite a foncusing thread.
Yes the S3200 aka 1394C firewire is backwards compatible..
S3200 continues to allow FireWire peripherals to draw electrical power from the interface, and the 1394 Trade Association notes that S3200-based peripherals can draw more power from the interface than other competing standards. And S3200 is downwardly-compatible with FireWire products, just as FireWire 800 works with FireWire 400 devices as well.
If you you got FW 800 on the Mac and 1394C device then it'll clock down to the 800 speed ..
Has to be 1394c to 1394c to see the full speed..
Go buy a 3 port FW3200 PCI card when they come out to put in your existing desktops and/or wait until a newer machine comes with 1 FW3200 slot built-in.
Here is a FW800 3 port:
Cost: $42.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815158016
What the hell are you talking about?
Apple holds the Chair seat:
http://www.1394ta.org/Contact/Board/
would be a nice addition to a ultra-portable laptop with an external HDD running this new firewire speed.
We'll have to see some devices and systems before we can judge the overall health of IEEE 1394...
eSATA is showing up for the high end storage - it's pretty common on motherboards and starting to appear on mainline systems. IEEE 1394c will have some trouble fighting eSATA for a storage bus.
Yes the S3200 aka 1394C firewire is backwards compatible..
S3200 continues to allow FireWire peripherals to draw electrical power from the interface, and the 1394 Trade Association notes that S3200-based peripherals can draw more power from the interface than other competing standards. And S3200 is downwardly-compatible with FireWire products, just as FireWire 800 works with FireWire 400 devices as well.
If you you got FW 800 on the Mac and 1394C device then it'll clock down to the 800 speed ..
Has to be 1394c to 1394c to see the full speed..
1394c is FW (800?) over Cat 5 cables.
FW3200 (or S3200) is part of the 1394b spec. 1394b has always included S1600 & S3200 modes in the spec, it was just never implemented. In the original 1394b, the S3200 mode was going to require optical fiber connections. The fascinating thing here is that after all these years of waiting for 3200, they've managed to implement it on existing FW800 plugs and cables. That will be a HUGE cost advantage over USB 3.0 in addition to all the inherent advantages of FW over USB. The 3200 speed is fast enough that the FW advantages will also outweigh any remaining benefit of eSATA, so hopefully we can avoid the nuisance of adding yet another interface standard.
Hopefully Apple will implement FW3200 on every new device they design, from ipod to xserve, in order to shove the consumer electronics interconnect market in a more consumer & user friendly direction. A few years ago there were rumors Apple was experimenting with using FW1600 to route the Mac's desktop to any FW connected display. Hopefully they will finally release this.
i.link and sony pcs
I have a Sony PC from the heyday, and while Bigandy claims i.Link is not firewire, but just very compatible... Windows disagrees and notes my "i.Link" port is driven by a Texas Instruments OHCI IEEE1394 controller
So i.Link is firewire.
I think the problem was only the name of the port, not the using the standard. Apple branded 1394 as Firewire, then I think they gave it to the standards committee or licensed it for cheap or something like that...
I have a Sony PC from the heyday, and while Bigandy claims i.Link is not firewire, but just very compatible... Windows disagrees and notes my "i.Link" port is driven by a Texas Instruments OHCI IEEE1394 controller
So i.Link is firewire.
I think the problem was only the name of the port, not the using the standard. Apple branded 1394 as Firewire, then I think they gave it to the standards committee or licensed it for cheap or something like that...
What's the point? I mean, with FW800, the bottleneck is not FireWire, it's the HD itself. So unless you get hard-drives that are A LOT faster than current hard-drives, then all that bandwidth of the new FireWire would be more or less wasted.
Bottleneck is Firewire even 800
My seagate drives will sustain 100MB/s on the outside sectors of the disc and will burst in excess of that. Firewire 800 can sustain about 80MB/s max. Too slow. Now if I setup a hardware RAID external connection I have to use SATA 3Gps:
2 HDs up to 200MB/s
3 HDs 300MB/s etc
Real world results are less given Hardware controller overheads etc but I can just saturate the 300MB/s of SATA 3Gps with 5 or 6 drives.
We need FW3200
The other benifists of FW over USB or sata:
1. true bi-directional
2. no CPU overheads
3. Daisy chain able; so no need for stupid USB hubs
4. Power over cable unlike SATA
5. One cable will deliver all bandwidth
Obviously SATA has port multiplyer for up to 5 devices over 1 cable but bandwidth does suffer a bit.
I'm sure others will list other benefits too.....
My seagate drives will sustain 100MB/s on the outside sectors of the disc and will burst in excess of that. Firewire 800 can sustain about 80MB/s max. Too slow. Now if I setup a hardware RAID external connection I have to use SATA 3Gps:
2 HDs up to 200MB/s
3 HDs 300MB/s etc
Real world results are less given Hardware controller overheads etc but I can just saturate the 300MB/s of SATA 3Gps with 5 or 6 drives.
We need FW3200
The other benifists of FW over USB or sata:
1. true bi-directional
2. no CPU overheads
3. Daisy chain able; so no need for stupid USB hubs
4. Power over cable unlike SATA
5. One cable will deliver all bandwidth
Obviously SATA has port multiplyer for up to 5 devices over 1 cable but bandwidth does suffer a bit.
I'm sure others will list other benefits too.....
Except that disk drives are native SATA, so manufacturers can put an eSATA port on an external drive without needing the expense of bridge electronics to do the protocol translation from SATA to 1394. Check the price of Seagate externals, you pay $15 to $25 extra for 1394 vs USB+eSATA.
S3200 is the "yet another interface standard nuisance".
SATA doesn't have CPU overhead like USB, it's the same as an internal SATA disk - DMA and all.
Power is a minor benefit - 1394 doesn't supply adequate power for even a single 3.5" hard drive in most cases.
To make matters worse, 1394 doesn't specify a single power standard, the voltage and current can vary within a wide range of currents and voltages. See this Apple document to see the voltage and current capabilities of current Apple computers - and note that on laptops the voltage drops as the battery drains!
Compare the typical 7 watts supplied by an Apple 1394 port to the 12 watt average power consumption and 34 watt spinup power of a Seagate 7200 RPM disk...
S3200 will be DOA for performance disk drives if it doesn't do NCQ, especially for external RAID controllers using an eSATA interface.
Not going to happen. I can't see Apple reinstating something they removed like that. Unfortunate, but likely.
.....but i.Link isn't technically FireWire. it was invented by Sony, along with the four pin port, specifically to avoid paying the royalties for the FireWire name. It's just very compatible
From what I've read, Sony and Apple both own some of the patents that are required for any compliant implementation of the IEEE1394 spec, no matter what name the implementation happens to choose. And they both have to pay into (and receive portions of the payments from) the general royalty collection program, imposed by the 1394 Trade Association on behalf of all relevant patent holders, for every IEEE1394 device. (The royalty fee is currently $0.25 per end-user device)
i.Link and Firewire 400 are both compliant implementations of IEEE1394. They are signal-compatible with each other, (except for the occasional omission of power supply lines on some i.Link ports and the need for a direct pin-for-pin adaptor to go from one plug's geometry to the other), and virtually any equipment designed to bear one logo will work with other equipment using the other (as long as the OS has a driver for it).
Nobody said there wasn't space in the connector for both the USB and the FireWire pins. But that's simply not the whole story.
You usually can't run wires from a FireWire or USB plug directly into the CPU. There is also control circuitry required as an intermediary. That circuitry takes up space on the logic board inside the iPod. By omitting the FireWire control circuitry, you free up space on the logic board. You can put that space to use doing other things, or you can simply shrink the logic board and miniaturize the product.
Download Apple's FireWire SDK, there are tools in it for controlling your DVR over FW remotely from your Mac!
S3200 is part of 1394b!
1394c is completely different -- FireWire over ethernet cabling
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firewire#FireWire_S800T_.28IEEE_1394c.29
1394c is completely different -- FireWire over ethernet cabling
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firewire#FireWire_S800T_.28IEEE_1394c.29
Yes the S3200 aka 1394C firewire is backwards compatible..
S3200 continues to allow FireWire peripherals to draw electrical power from the interface, and the 1394 Trade Association notes that S3200-based peripherals can draw more power from the interface than other competing standards. And S3200 is downwardly-compatible with FireWire products, just as FireWire 800 works with FireWire 400 devices as well.
If you you got FW 800 on the Mac and 1394C device then it'll clock down to the 800 speed ..
Has to be 1394c to 1394c to see the full speed..
Think no mechanical components, like Flash RAM Drives for new FW
Think no mechanical components, like Flash RAM Drives to take advantage of the new speed, like Apple's upcoming subnotebook...
Think no mechanical components, like Flash RAM Drives to take advantage of the new speed, like Apple's upcoming subnotebook...
I've just spent $500 today on a G-Tech G Drive Q 750gb hard drive today for back up for my mac and for use with Time Machine. This is the first back up drive I've ever bought however after reading of about this and USB3 I'm just wondering if it's worth returning it and hanging on for 6 months or so in the hope that these new features will be in the next models or is this irrelevant for my needs?
Thanks
Darren
Thanks
Darren
WOW, did you get ripped off!
Much more cost efficient and better features to get a Newer Technology miniStack v3 (~$110 for bare enclosure) from OWC and add your own drive to it ($500 GB WD SATA 300 from Fry's)... Then you get eSATA, FW400/800, USB2 and hubs for FW 400/800 & USB 2...
Much more cost efficient and better features to get a Newer Technology miniStack v3 (~$110 for bare enclosure) from OWC and add your own drive to it ($500 GB WD SATA 300 from Fry's)... Then you get eSATA, FW400/800, USB2 and hubs for FW 400/800 & USB 2...
One of the saving graces of FireWire will likely be HANA, if products are ever released:
http://www.hanaalliance.org/
The High-Definition Audio-Video Network Alliance is the first cross-industry collaboration to address the end-to-end needs of connected, high-definition, home entertainment products and services
http://www.hanaalliance.org/
The High-Definition Audio-Video Network Alliance is the first cross-industry collaboration to address the end-to-end needs of connected, high-definition, home entertainment products and services
This thread kills me.
Every page there is at least one person who seems to be saying: "Who needs this, FW800 is faster than most hard drives."
A: Most != All.
B: Now != Future.
C: Firewire != Only hard drive use.
There are faster hard drives. They are only going to get faster.
We may be basing some things on platter-drives now, but that doesn't mean we always will be. SSDs (Solid-State Drives) are coming, and coming fast, as the prices of flash memory come down. That has the potential of being much faster.
FW3200, 6400, or whatever is a future standard. It needs to be considered with future conditions in mind. Saying that it isn't needed because it isn't immediately practical this instant is very short sighted.
And FireWire, in general, can handle more differentiated tasks than merely connecting disk storage, although that is a key function. Data transfer from portable devices (more and more of them, better every year) and data transfer from dissimilar devices, even without PC computer management.
Don't get stuck thinking of what firewire does today. The question is, what can it do tomorrow? (and Apple would be stupid if it let selfish pride determine that it would fail to re-include an improved feature on future iPods and like devices, like firewire, just because it was removed previously. This is different than proprietary connection scheme attempts like ADC, or older ADB or something. FW is an industry standard, and can be widely used for many different things.)
Every page there is at least one person who seems to be saying: "Who needs this, FW800 is faster than most hard drives."
A: Most != All.
B: Now != Future.
C: Firewire != Only hard drive use.
There are faster hard drives. They are only going to get faster.
We may be basing some things on platter-drives now, but that doesn't mean we always will be. SSDs (Solid-State Drives) are coming, and coming fast, as the prices of flash memory come down. That has the potential of being much faster.
FW3200, 6400, or whatever is a future standard. It needs to be considered with future conditions in mind. Saying that it isn't needed because it isn't immediately practical this instant is very short sighted.
And FireWire, in general, can handle more differentiated tasks than merely connecting disk storage, although that is a key function. Data transfer from portable devices (more and more of them, better every year) and data transfer from dissimilar devices, even without PC computer management.
Don't get stuck thinking of what firewire does today. The question is, what can it do tomorrow? (and Apple would be stupid if it let selfish pride determine that it would fail to re-include an improved feature on future iPods and like devices, like firewire, just because it was removed previously. This is different than proprietary connection scheme attempts like ADC, or older ADB or something. FW is an industry standard, and can be widely used for many different things.)