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How FireWire came to market and ultimately fell out of favor

arstechnica.com

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Re: How FireWire came to market and ultimately fell out of favor

#11

Post by DiabloD3 »

walterbell wrote: post #8
dsr_ wrote: post #6

I've used FireWire to connect external disks (verdict: as stable as eSATA, much better than USB2) and to pull video from a cable set-top-box (verdict: the cable box was crappy; no problems directly attributable to the FireWire connection.) The major problem with FireWire, shared with Thunderbolt, is that it offers DMA to external devices: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMA_attack

Doesn't USB-C have the same DMA problem? Did eSATA also lose to USB? I don't think it has the DMA problem.

USB-C refers to the connector, not the protocol standard.

USB 3.0 is what you actually meant, since it finally added Firewire-like device-initiated DMA.

Re: How FireWire came to market and ultimately fell out of favor

#12

Post by zkms »

dsr_ wrote: post #6

I've used FireWire to connect external disks (verdict: as stable as eSATA, much better than USB2) and to pull video from a cable set-top-box (verdict: the cable box was crappy; no problems directly attributable to the FireWire connection.) The major problem with FireWire, shared with Thunderbolt, is that it offers DMA to external devices: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMA_attack

Offering DMA to devices can be good actually if you care about performance, and the security issues can be eliminated with a properly set up IOMMU in the mix.

Re: How FireWire came to market and ultimately fell out of favor

#13

Post by jancsika »

> Speeds across networks of all sizes are now so high that there's also little need for something like FireWire. "The packets can arrive way before it's needed, because it's so fast," Sirkin noted. "So you don't need to worry about being synchronous any more."

For use cases where reliable low-latency transport is required (i.e., Firewire's main strength), what could possibly be meant by "packets arrive way before it's needed"?

Re: How FireWire came to market and ultimately fell out of favor

#15

Post by po »

walterbell wrote: post #8
dsr_ wrote: post #6

I've used FireWire to connect external disks (verdict: as stable as eSATA, much better than USB2) and to pull video from a cable set-top-box (verdict: the cable box was crappy; no problems directly attributable to the FireWire connection.) The major problem with FireWire, shared with Thunderbolt, is that it offers DMA to external devices: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMA_attack

Doesn't USB-C have the same DMA problem? Did eSATA also lose to USB? I don't think it has the DMA problem.

Thunderbolt has DMA and it's offered over USB-C so... kind of by proxy. It's not clear to me if a USB-C device doesn't support Thunderbolt (i.e. it only does the USB 3.1 part) if it also is clear of this potential issue.

Re: How FireWire came to market and ultimately fell out of favor

#16

Post by acomjean »

I've used it for hardrives and video cameras (it was the standard way to get Video off a minidv tape camera). I always found it worked well.

But on video I Remember the different names being bing used being confusing. And while all macs had it some pcs didn't. With USB being ubiquitous and USB 2 being good enough when it finally showed up.

Somewhat oddly mac was a big pusher of USB as that's what the original iMac used.

Had intel put it in its chipsets...

Re: How FireWire came to market and ultimately fell out of favor

#17

Post by NikolaeVarius »

throwaway2016a wrote: post #9

Since we're sharing our nostalgic Firewire stories... the first video camera I ever bought (almost 20 years ago) could only connect to computers via Firewire. I remember almost all digital cameras on the market only supported it. It seemed like a clear winner. It's interesting to see an article that explains why it died.

Yeah, I remember this time being strange. I had bought a good bit of Firewire equipment for my Cameras and even got a PCI-E card for my PC. It just seemed to vanish without a trace. I still have those cables and accessories somewhere.

Re: How FireWire came to market and ultimately fell out of favor

#18

Post by wtallis »

edzorg wrote: post #10

Great article - unbelievable really. Is USB-C by all measures now superior to FireWire? Or are we still paying for Jobs' mistake?

USB-C is just a connector. Some of the devices using that connector only support USB 2.0 signaling over that connector, so USB-C does not imply complete superiority over FireWire.

Re: How FireWire came to market and ultimately fell out of favor

#19

Post by dcosson »

One major thing not mentioned is that apprently not everyone bothered implementing FireWire the same. I never learned the technical reason, but if you bought certain digital audio recording interfaces circa 2007, you learned in the fine print/after you called customer service that it only worked with TI FireWire ports . These were the ones used on Macs at this point, I had a dell laptop which used a cheaper manufacturer so (perhaps combined with the fact that my recording interface itself was not a high end one and maybe cut some corners on its end too) the audio recording quality was staticy and uneven. I ended up having to return it and get a lower-bandwidth, noticeably higher latency USB powered one because at least USB ports were consistent.

I was always curious if some manufacturers were not implementing the full spec here (maybe because by this time according to the article FireWire was already on its last legs), or if this was due to flaws in the spec that left certain things optional or something and that ruined interoperability.

Re: How FireWire came to market and ultimately fell out of favor

#20

Post by walterbell »

wtallis wrote: post #18
edzorg wrote: post #10

Great article - unbelievable really. Is USB-C by all measures now superior to FireWire? Or are we still paying for Jobs' mistake?

USB-C is just a connector. Some of the devices using that connector only support USB 2.0 signaling over that connector, so USB-C does not imply complete superiority over FireWire.

What protocols are commonly implemented by Intel host chipsets which support the USB-C connector, e.g. on a 2017 laptop?
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