" ... [the FireWire] industry needs a killer app to keep FireWire
going. I had a long talk with [these] designers this week ...
developing a FireWire optical interface for the sound studio. Give
me your opinion on http://www.ioneconnects.com/ They are using the
Toshiba mLAN technology to bundle 200 channels of audio (MIDI,
digital chamnnels, etc.) on a FireWire link. This is slick! But we
both agreed that FireWire is a niche technology getting swamped by
USB 2.0 (because Intel dominates the chip-sets ...) ... " From Roger
Harkness (Opticis.com).
My Rant: It is like pulling teeth to get any news of new FireWire
products. The 1394 Trade Association Membership (http://1394ta.com)
does not update their new products list regularly, preferring to wait
until someone else announces first.
So, where are the all the new goodies? Our current sales records
indicate that, other than speciality extension cabling over fiber
optics, FireWire seems to be almost dead in the water. The advent of
FireWire 800 has done very little to spark new development, probably
because it barely exceeds 2X GigaBit Ethernet bandwidth /
performance. Many of the Audio device makers (edirol.com, m-
audio.com, etc.) now tag FireWire as their flagship methodology, but
alas, not the video device makers, except for a few speciality cameras.
Is anyone putting the fire into FireWire? FireWire should be the
protocol of choice for fiber optical networking, mostly because of
its peer to peer topography and slim, trim hardware / firmware. Is
anyone working on FireWire 1600? FireWire 3200? (Both are indicated
as a part of future 1394 specs.)
Has anyone tried FireWire 1600 as a dual port FW800 scenario?
(effectively four FireWire 400 ports) ... over fiber? (The VCSEL line
drivers are already up to this task.)
Areas where FireWire should excel: Local area networking (short haul
fiber), Multimedia over fiber (short haul fiber), Chip to chip,
module to module bus interface, inside the box (very short haul
fiber), Herb to curb Internet connectivity (short haul fiber). ...
Shortly, SATA, GigaBit EtherNet and / or Fiber Channel may swamp
FireWire in these areas, to bad too as FireWire has several
advantages the least of which is manufacturing costs.
... I could go one with this rant, if anyone is interested ...
Ed Karns
FireWireStuff.com
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