With serial bus-like FireWire, your PC may catch fire<\/p>\n
By Zatni Arbi<\/p>\n
JAKARTA (JP): By now you must already be somewhat familiar
\nwith the Universal Serial Bus (USB). Not very long from now, you
\nwill be seeing another type of connector port at the back of your
\nPC, notebook and handheld devices. In fact, the two Silicon
\nGraphics Visual Workstations that I covered in my article last
\nweek already have it, and it is called FireWire. As you can see
\nin the accompanying picture of the rear panel, each workstation
\nhas two of these connectors, and that's why you can have two live
\nvideos simultaneous streaming into the system.<\/p>\n
As the Visual Workstations show, FireWire will not replace
\nUSB, it will complement the already accepted successor of the old
\nand faithful parallel and serial ports. FireWire is also known as
\nIEEE 1394. No, not because the specification was ratified more
\nthan 600 years ago, but because the Institute of Electrical and
\nElectronic Engineers gave the number 1394 to the specification
\nthat they accepted back in 1995.<\/p>\n
Serial<\/p>\n
FireWire was actually the brainchild of Apple Computer back in
\n1990. Back then, when you talked about audio and video, you must
\nbe talking about the Macs because only the Macs could handle
\nmultimedia acceptably well. That's also the reason the FireWire
\nstandard has a very strong background of digital consumer
\nelectronics (CE), particularly the ones that store, process and
\nplay back audio and video contents.<\/p>\n
Like the USB, FireWire is actually a serial bus. It means that
\ndata is sent through one after the other, like people in a
\nsupermarket checkout counter. However, unlike the original serial
\nconnection (RS232C) that you have on your PC, which is capable of
\ntransmitting data at the rate of 115 Kilobit per second at the
\nmaximum, a FireWire is capable of pumping 100, 200, 400 and 800
\nMegabit of data per second (Mbps), depending on the
\nconfiguration. At the moment, talks have been ongoing for a
\nFireWire of 1.6 Gigabit per second (Gbps) data rate. In
\ncomparison, the USB connection is capable of only 1.2 Mbps.<\/p>\n
The USB is fine for medium and low data transfer requirements.
\nYou can connect a scanner, a mouse, a keyboard, a display
\nmonitor, even a pair of digital speakers to your PC through the
\nUSB connection. However, you cannot really use an external data
\nstorage device like Jaz from Iomega. You still need a SCSI
\ninterface for a fast storage subsystem.<\/p>\n
FireWire exceeds the data transfer capability of the SCSI. Not
\nonly that, you can connect up to 63 devices. It is actually half
\nthe total number of devices that you can connect to a USB, but
\nwho cares? Can you think of 30 devices that you want to connect
\nto your PC at the same time? Unlike in a USB connection, where
\nyou may need a hub if you want to connect more than one device,
\nthe FireWire connection is completely peer-to-peer.<\/p>\n
FireWire also expands the concept of plug `n play further as
\ncompared with the USB. You can add a device -- say, a FireWire
\nprinter -- and the system will automatically recognize it. Pull
\nthe printer out, and the system will reconfigure itself. You can
\neven do this without having to power down the PC first.
\nIncidentally, Hewlett-Packard already has a FireWire printer just
\nin case you want to run ahead of the pack.<\/p>\n
With such a strong background in the consumer electronics
\nindustry, it is no surprise that FireWire is going to be used for
\nconnecting the PC to devices such as a digital video camera, a
\ndigital still camera, a digital Hi-Fi, a digital monitor, a
\nDigital Versatile Disk (DVD) and other digital consumer
\nelectronics products.<\/p>\n
Who has it?<\/p>\n
Intel has been promoting new types of computers that they call
\n\"Legacy-free PCs\". In their recommendations, the new PCs should
\nno longer use old subsystems such as the Industry Standard
\nArchitecture (ISA) expansion slots, the parallel and the serial
\nports. To replace these two ports, Intel suggests putting both
\nthe USB and the FireWire ports on the box. With these two new
\nconnectors, you won't even have to open up the box to add new
\ncomponents.<\/p>\n
We know that the two Silicon Graphics workstations have
\nFireWire. Apple Computer puts FireWire on every Power Macintosh
\nG3. Last year, Compaq already put FireWire in its Presario 5600
\nSeries. A brand new product from Sony called PictureBook is also
\nequipped with a FireWire port.<\/p>\n
What about hard disks? Since the data transfer rate is better
\nthan SCSI, it is just natural that people will go with FireWire
\nhard disks. So far, none of the big players in the hard disk
\nindustry, such as Seagate, Quantum and IBM, has announced a
\nFireWire hard disk, but we know they are working on it. At the
\nrecent MacWorld, however, a company called VST Technologies
\nalready showed around their FireWire hard disks and magneto-
\noptical drives. We can expect FireWire hard disks to eventually
\nkill SCSI hard disks.<\/p>\n
There is a problem with copyright protection, though. As the
\ndigital contents (movies, music, etc.) travel along the FireWire
\nconnection, say from a video-on-demand service to your digital
\nTV, you can easily record them directly on your PC's hard disk.
\nTo overcome this problem, five companies (Intel, Sony, Hitachi,
\nToshiba and Matsushita) have devised an encryption and decryption
\nmethod for digital contents protection. They call the method 5C
\n-- for \"5 companies\". How creative! Sony has come up with two
\nchips that it calls i.LINK LSI that do the encryption and
\ndecryption on the fly, and this is hoped to expedite the adoption
\nof FireWire by the industry.<\/p>\n
This new standard is really gaining momentum, because people
\ndo want to connect their PC to other consumer electronics. For
\nexample, people want to be able to capture live video with their
\ndigital video camera, and with FireWire they won't need
\nspecialized boards such as miroVideo DC30. Thus, you can already
\nexpect the next generation of Home PCs to have FireWire in
\naddition to USB ports.<\/p>",
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