FireWire: over a billion ports served
By Nilay Patel 
posted Apr 9th 2008 9:04PM
posted Apr 9th 2008 9:04PM
Alright, so we've harshed a little bit on FireWire recently, but we've got to stop and give the venerable interconnect some love: the 1394 Trade Association says that there are now over a billion FireWire ports out there. That's quite an accomplishment, even if we're not so sure that the group's claim that "every 1394-equipped device sold now has 1 billion opportunities to connect" is the most accurate or useful way of measuring the success of the technology. Even still, growth is always a good thing, and with an estimated 15 percent expansion rate in existing markets and some new applications like in-car networking showing potential, it looks like FireWire is set to hold its own against USB and eSATA for a while longer.
firewire pwnnnss its name also sounds cooler
It pwns USB 2.0 in real world performance too.
Um, yay?
[# of firewire devices that exist] x [# of possible locations on the earth to connect to those devices] = 1 billion opportunities to connect
Sounds right to me.
USB guys: "bwahaha, that's what we sell everyday!"
The man speaks the truth.
According to In-Stat, right now USB is at roughly 2 billion *devices* and that number is expected to reach 3 billion by 2010. USB ports on the other hand.. oh dear..
1. Can you implement it without worrying about patents?
2. Can it scale frequencies limited only by the hardware?
3. Can it scale voltages limited only by the hardware?
4. Can it perform connection multiplexing?
5. Can it go wireless, losing only the ability to supply power?
--Can I, as an individual, use it, and only it, to run my entire house, building my own appliances, and sell the thing for three million dollars without lawyers showing up at my door?
USB is horrible. Firewire is horrible. Maybe some day people will see the light.
never used firewire in my life - no lie :)
Me neither.
I have a port on my old laptop with that symbol on it. I never even knew that was firewire!
eSATA FTW...although just for storage. I use (I guess I should say "used") firewire a lot for uploading video from my camcorder.
Same here. Let's go into the back room and make USB babies.
I've only used FireWire once...and that was just to give it a shot with an external HDD. No devices I've encountered actually need FireWire; USB is always there.
I use it for my external hard drive. It's a lot faster than usb for large data transfers.
I had never used FireWire before the latest external drive I bought. I'm not quite sure what inspired me to do it, but I have to admit - it's much faster than any external USB drive I've used. Also, I haven't expanded yet, but I really like the fact that I can add another drive by just daisy chaining it off my current drive instead or running yet another cable to my PC.
I have 2 Firewire ports on my tower right now that are dusty, but almost all 7 USB ports are plugged with something, lol.
Not that I'm bias, just the way things happened...
I think the issue is that PCs often have the 4pin FW port, which, like mini usb, is not the most secure connection.
the beauty of firewire, besides the speed, is how tightly it connects to devices. that is why it is the ideal choice for us professional photographers to plug into our digital camera backs.
Does Apple still get a $1 for every firewire port?
Probably, but I frigging hope not. If /anyone/ gets money like that, screw it. Period.
Ive never had a firewire port. Ever.
You've missed out on a great opPORTunity, then!
For what, another unused port on your system? I haven't ever owned a device in the 12 years I've used computers that actually needed FireWire...
Target mode on a mac... i use it on occasion. Other than that, pretty much useless.
Yeah well, brilliant Firewire. All the pc's in our household had it for years, my gaming rig even had several of them thanks to Soundblaster hardware upgrades. Still I've yet to buy a single device which would connect to Firewire.
On the other hand, we've got more USB devices than finger and toes to count them on. So much for bragging rights, 139...what?
It has higher real world download speeds so usually you find firewire ports on external hard drives or video cameras
Actually, only Firewire 800 is faster than USB 2.0 but since Firewire 400 the more prevalent type, there is no advantage in terms of speed for most users.
On top of that, USB i the de facto standard - one type of connector at the PC end that has been widely embraced for years now, Firewire never had a chance.
For out-and-out speed, eSATA is at least a match for Firewire 800 and supports low-level drive features such as S.M.A.R.T. which Firewire does not, making it a more suitable connector for external drives.
That leaves one area and one area alone in which Firewire is king, which is camcorders.
But as we switch from more traditional magnetic tape media to HHD or solid state storage, even that will slowly die.
Put bluntly, for the vast majority of people, Firewire is a waste of a port.
Were it not for Apple, it probably would've died a long time ago.
Actually, it's a misconception that Firewire 400 is somehow slower than USB 2.0 (480). 480 mbps is a peak rate for USB.
In practice, USB 2.0 is slower than Firewire 400, and requires more CPU utilization.
I've been able to sustain ~50MB/sec for large transfers onto a firewire 400 drive.
USB is cheaper and more ubiquitous, but Firewire is faster.
Yeah, for external HDD not only is Firewire usually around 35% faster than USB2.0, but it uses only 13% the CPU power USB needs.
i don't like it when my wire's on fire
thats what she said
andres: that doesn't make any sense, unless of course thats what HE said...
if HE has a wire, thats kinda sad. I like to think of it more as an ATA rounded cable...
Pretty sweet. I like having FireWire. It's always been fast and reliable for me so I'd hate to see it go.
Long live Firewire!
I've had a firewire port on each of my 4 active PCs for years, and they're all still VIRGINs.
My firewire port has dust in it. Does that count as virgin?
(Seriously, I never poked a connector in it.)
"I never poked a connector into it"
That's what HE said.
any guy who ever said that never got laid, lol
Well that's not true. He could have poked that connector into lots of different ports, but he didn't poke it into one particular one because that port has portal dustes.
one this this article fails to mention are the number of active firewire users - i really think it in the single digits in terms of usage vs usb.
firewire is dying - and this is only propaganda IMO.
Ports mean nothing if they aren't being used.
Yea I can't really think of a less used port, except maybe the PS/2 Mouse or keyboard port that still comes with every PC.
Protocols mean little to nothing to me if they can't be used free of royalties. Unless I'm mistaken, firewire falls into that category.
It is obviously marketing. Though I can hardly imaging why they would try to do it.
As much as FireWire is better than USB, latter has huge advantage over former: price. And we all know that price rules PC market.
Also, there is a misconception about speeds. Modern USB 2.0 devices on average are faster that FireWire 400 devices. Reasons is simple: USB is more widespread and more people are looking into how to improve it. And it did improve in recent yeas greatly, while FireWire still refused to address its main issue: price...
Pure technically FireWire as bus-master capable, asynchronous interconnect is superior to primitive USB. But do not forget that Intel CPUs are also started as primitive 4 bit calculators. "Price" is keyword to win in PC market.
Have it on my laptop and desktop tower. never used it.
You know you can plug in a firewire cable between that laptop and desktop and voila you've got a network!
Doesn't need anything but a standard cable.
Why waste ports.
because I have wifi?
How many of those 1 million ports are attacked to iMACs and eMACs in public schools all over the USA?
And I would venture to sat that 95% of those machines have never once seen a FireWire device plugged into them.
There are some cases where FireWire makes alot of sense, but this press release is pure nonsense.
Thats what I get for posting on cold meds.
attacked = attached
venture to sat = venture to say
This is what you get for typing under the influence...