Fire wire

Fire wire

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  FireWire Introduction FireWire is amethod of transferring information between digital devices, especially audio and video equipment. Also known as IEEE 1394, FireWire is fast -- the latest version achieves speeds up to 800 Mbps. At some time in the future, that number is expected to jump to an unbelievable 3.2 Gbps when manufacturers overhaul the current FireWire cables. We can connect up to 63 devices to a FireWire bus. Windows operating systems (98 and later) and Mac OS (8.6 and later) both support it. Let's say you have your digital camcorder connected to your home computer. When your computer powers up, it queries all of the devices connected to the bus and assigns each one an address, a process called enumeration. FireWire is plug-and-play, so if you connect a new FireWire device to your computer, the operating system auto- detects it and asks for the driver disc. If you've already installed the device, the computer activates it and starts talking to it. FireWire devices are hot pluggable, which means they can be connected and disconnected at any time, even with the power on. FireWire is the name given to the external wired interface specified by the IEEE standard 1394. It is also known as i.Link or IEEE 1394 (although the 1394 standard also defines a backplane interface). It is a personal computer (and digital audio/digital video) serial bus interface standard, offering high-speed communications and isochronous real-time data services. FireWire has replaced Parallel SCSI in many applications due to lower implementation costs and a simplified, more adaptable cabling system. Almost all modern digital camcorders have included this connection since 1995. Many computers intended for home or professional audio/video use have built-in FireWire ports including all Macintosh, Dell and Sony computers currently produced. FireWire was also an attractive feature on the Apple iPod for several years, permitting new tracks to be uploaded in a few seconds and also for the battery to be recharged 1
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  concurrently with onecable. However, Apple has eliminated FireWire support in favor of Universal Serial Bus (USB) 2.0 on its newer iPods due to space constraints and for wider compatibility. The FireWire icon The 6-pin and 4-pin FireWire Connectors History According to Michael Johas Teener, original chair and editor of the IEEE 1394 standards document, and technical lead for Apple's FireWire team from 1990 until 1996: The original FireWire project name was "Chefcat", the name of Michael Teener's favorite coffee cup. The standard connectors used for FireWire are related to the connectors on the venerable Nintendo Game Boy. While not especially glamorous, the Game Boy connectors have proven reliable, solid, easy to use and immune to assault by small children. FireWire is a trademark of Apple Computer, Inc. The trademark was filed in 1993. The "FireWire" name was chosen by a group of engineers socializing before Comdex 1993, just before the project was about to go 2
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  public. IBM, Apple,Texas Instruments, Western Digital, Maxtor and Seagate were all showing drives, systems and other various FireWire support technology. The marketing forces behind the FireWire project had originally considered a name like "Performa". FireWire won the "most significant new technology" award from Byte Magazine at the Comdex 1993 show. During the period they participated with the IEEE p1394 working group, Apple proposed licensing all of their blocking patents for US$3,000, a one time fee only for "the point of first use" or the integrated circuits that implement the protocols. Furthermore, there was a discount if a contribution was made to the IEEE undergraduate scholarship fund. Under that agreement, the IEEE agreed to include the appropriate patents in the standard. Apple never intended to charge for the use of the name "FireWire". It could be used by any party signing an agreement to use the name for a product that was compliant with IEEE 1394-1995, the original version of the standard. Steve Jobs was convinced that Apple should ask for US$1 per port for the patents that became part of the standard. The argument was that it was consistent with the MPEG patent fees. The fallout from charging US$1 per FireWire port was significant, particularly from Intel. Intel had sunk a great deal of effort into the standard with the improved 1394a-2000 standard being partially based on work contributed by Intel. A group within Intel used this as a reason to drop 1394 support and bring out the improved USB 2.0 instead. Simultaneously, Sony and the other backers of the technology noted to Apple that they all had patents too and were entitled to per-port royalties. Under these circumstances, Apple would have to pay roughly US$15 per port to the other FireWire technology developers. The end result was the 3
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  creation of the"1394 Licensing Authority", a body which charges everyone US$0.25 per end-user system (like a car or computer) that uses any 1394 technology. Standards and versions A 6-Pin FireWire 400 connector FireWire is Apple Computer's name for the IEEE 1394 High Speed Serial Bus. It was developed by the IEEE P1394 Working Group, largely driven by contributors from Apple, although major contributions were also made by engineers from Texas Instruments, Sony, Digital Equipment Corporation, IBM, and SGS Thomson (now STMicroelectronics). Apple intended FireWire to be a serial replacement for the parallel SCSI bus while also providing connectivity for digital audio and video equipment. Apple's development was completed in 1995. IEEE 1394 is currently a composite of three documents: the original IEEE Std. 1394-1995, the IEEE Std. 1394a-2000 amendment, and the IEEE Std. 1394b-2002 amendment (there is a 1394c amendment that provides support for 800Mbit/sec operation over 100m of Category 5 unshielded twisted pair cable that will be published soon). Sony's implementation of the system is known as i.Link, and uses only the four signal pins, discarding the two pins that provide power to the device in favor of a separate power connector on Sony's i.Link products. The system is commonly used for connection of data storage devices and digital video cameras, but is also popular in industrial systems for machine vision and professional audio systems. It is used instead of the more common USB due to its faster 4
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  effective speed, higherpower-distribution capabilities, and because it does not need a computer host. Perhaps more importantly, FireWire makes full use of all SCSI capabilities and, compared to USB 2.0 High Speed, has higher sustained data transfer rates, a feature especially important for audio and video editors. However, the small royalty that Apple Computer and other patent holders have initially demanded from users of FireWire (US$0.25 per end-user system) and the more expensive hardware needed to implement it (US$1–$2) has prevented FireWire from displacing USB in low-end mass-market computer peripherals where cost of product is a major constraint. A 4-Pin FireWire 400 connector. This connector is not powered. FireWire can connect together up to 63 peripherals in an acyclic topology (as opposed to Parallel SCSI's Electrical bus topology). It allows peer-to-peer device communication, such as communication between a scanner and a printer, to take place without using system memory or the CPU. FireWire also supports multiple hosts per bus. It is designed to support Plug-and-play and hot swapping. Its six-wire cable is more flexible than most Parallel SCSI cables and can supply up to 45 watts of power per port at up to 30 volts, allowing moderate-consumption devices to operate without a separate power supply. As noted earlier, the Sony-branded i.Link usually omits the power wiring of the cables and uses a 4-pin connector. Power is provided by a separate power adaptor for each device. 5
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  A 9-pin FireWire800 (IEEE 1394b) connector. FireWire 400 can transfer data between devices at 100, 200, or 400 Mbit/s data rates (the actual transfer rates are 98.304, 196.608, and 393.216 Mbit/s, respectively). These different transfer modes are commonly referred to as S100, S200, and S400. Although USB 2.0 can theoretically operate at 480 MBits/s, tests indicate that this speed is rarely attained. This is possibly caused by the client-server architecture of USB, as opposed to the peer-to-peer network operation of FireWire, and the support for memory- mapped devices in the latter, which allows high-level protocols to run without forcing numerous interrupts and buffer copy operations on host CPUs. Cable length is limited to 4.5 metres (about 15 feet), although up to 16 cables can be daisy chained using active repeaters, external hubs, or internal hubs often present in FireWire equipment. The maximum cable length for any configuration is limited to 72 meters in the S400 standard. FireWire 800 (Apple's name for the 9-pin "S800 bilingual" version of the IEEE1394b standard) was introduced commercially by Apple in 2003. This newer 1394 specification and corresponding products allow a transfer rate of 786.432 Mbit/s with backwards compatibility to the slower rates and 6-pin connectors of FireWire 400. The full IEEE 1394b specification supports optical connections up to 100 metres in length and data rates all the way to 3.2 Gbit/s. Standard category-5 unshielded twisted pair supports 100 metres at S100, and the new p1394c technology goes all the way to S800. The original 1394 and 1394a standards used data/strobe (D/S) encoding (called legacy mode) on the signal wires, while 1394b adds a data encoding scheme called 6
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  8B10B (also referredto as beta mode). With this new technology, FireWire, which was arguably already slightly faster, is now substantially faster than Hi-Speed USB. FireWire devices implement the ISO/IEC 13213 "configuration ROM" model for device configuration and identification, to provide plug-and-play capability. All FireWire devices are identified by an IEEE EUI-64 unique identifier (an extension of the 48-bit Ethernet MAC address format) in addition to well-known codes indicating the type of device and protocols it supports. How It Works There are two levels of interface in IEEE 1394, one for the backplane bus within the computer and another for the point-to-point interface between device and computer on the serial cable. A simple bridge connects the two environments. The backplane bus supports 12.5, 25, or 50 megabits per second data transfer. The cable interface supports 100, 200, or 400 megabits per second. Each of these interfaces can handle any of the possible data rates and change from one to another as needed. The serial bus functions as though devices were in slots within the computer sharing a common memory space. A 64-bit device address allows a great deal of flexibility in configuring devices in chains and trees from a single socket. IEEE 1394 provides two types of data transfer: asynchronous and isochronous. Asynchronous is for traditional load-and-store applications where data transfer can be initiated and an application interrupted as a given length of data arrives in a buffer. Isochronous data transfer ensures that data flows at a pre-set rate so that an application can handle it in a timed way. For multimedia applications, this kind of data transfer reduces the need for buffering and helps ensure a continuous presentation for the viewer. The 1394 standard requires that a device be within 4.5 meters of the bus socket. Up to 16 devices can be connected in a single chain, each with the 4.5 meter maximum (before signal attenuation begins to occur) so theoretically you could have a device as far away as 72 meters from the computer. 7
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  Another new approachto connecting devices, the Universal Serial Bus (USB), provides the same "hot plug" capability as the 1394 standard. It's a less expensive technology but data transfer is limited to 12 Mbps (million bits per second). Small Computer System Interface offers a high data transfer rate (up to 40 megabytes per second) but requires address preassignment and a device terminator on the last device in a chain. FireWire can work with the latest internal computer bus standard, Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI), but higher data transfer rates may require special design considerations to minimize undesired buffering for transfer rate mismatches. FireWire Specifications The original FireWire specification, FireWire 400 (1394a), was faster than USB when it came out. FireWire 400 is still in use today and features: 1. Transfer rates of up to 400 Mbps 2. Maximum distance between devices of 4.5 meters (cable length) The release of USB 2.0 -- featuring transfer speeds up to 480 Mbps and up to 5 meters between devices -- closed the gap between these competing standards. But in 2002, FireWire 800 (1394b) started showing up in consumer devices, and USB 2.0 was left in the dust. FireWire 800 is capable of: 1. Transfer rates up to 800 Mbps 2. Maximum distance between devices of 100 meters (cable length) The faster 1394b standard is backward-compatible with 1394a. Working Of Firewire Connections The designers of the Universal Serial Bus (USB) had several particular goals in mind when they created the USB standard: 1. Low implementation cost, so that USB could be used in cheap peripherals like mice and game controllers 2. Low cabling cost 8
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  3. Lots ofdevices on the bus 4. Good speed characteristics for things like printers The idea was to create a system that would replace all of the different ports on computers (parallel ports, serial ports, special mouse and keyboard ports, etc.) with a single standard. USB achieved all of these goals very effectively, and there will come a day in the not-too-distant future when computers will have nothing but a set of USB connectors on the back. FireWire, originally created by Apple and later standardized as IEEE-1394, actually preceded USB and had similar goals. The difference is that IEEE-1394 was originally intended for devices working with lots more data -- things like camcorders, DVD players and digital audio equipment. IEEE-1394 and USB share a number of characteristics and differ in some important ways. Here's a summary: 1. Like USB, IEEE-1394 is a serial bus that uses twisted-pair wiring to move data around. 2. However, while USB is limited to 12 megabits per second, IEEE-1394 currently handles up to 400 megabits per second. 3. USB can handle 127 devices per bus, while IEEE-1394 handles 63. 4. Both USB and IEEE-1394 support the concept of a isochronous device -- a device that needs a certain amount of bandwidth for streaming data. This mode is perfect for streaming audio and video data. 5. Both USB and IEEE-1394 allow you to plug and unplug devices at any time. Most digital video cameras have an IEEE-1394 plug. When you attach a camcorder to a computer using IEEE-1394, the connection is amazing. With the right software the computer and the camera communicate, and the computer can download all of the scenes on the tape automatically and with perfect digital clarity. As prices fall, home video production will become trivial! 9
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  Sending Data viaFireWire FireWire uses 64-bit fixed addressing, based on the IEEE 1212 standard. There are three parts to each packet of information sent by a device over FireWire: 1. A 10-bit bus ID that is used to determine which FireWire bus the data came from 2. A 6-bit physical ID that identifies which device on the bus sent the data 3. A 48-bit storage area that is capable of addressing 256 terabytes of information for each node The bus ID and physical ID together comprise the 16-bit node ID, which allows for 64,000 nodes on a system. Data can be sent through up to 16 hops (device to device). Hops occur when devices are daisy-chained together. Look at the example below. The camcorder is connected to the external hard drive connected to Computer A. Computer A is connected to Computer B, which in turn is connected to Computer C. It takes four hops for Computer C to access the camera. Assuming all of the devices in this setup are equipped with FireWire 800, the camcorder can be up to 400 meters from Computer C. Now that we've seen how FireWire works, let's take a closer look at one of its most popular applications: streaming digital video. Networking over FireWire FireWire, with the help of software, is well-suited for creating ad-hoc (terminals only, no routers) computer networks. Specifically, RFC 2734 specifies how to run IPv4 over the FireWire interface, and RFC 3146 specifies how to run IPv6. 10
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  Linux, Windows XPand Mac OS X are popular operating systems that include support for networking over FireWire. A network between two computers can be created without a hub, much like the scanner to printer example above. Using one FireWire cable, data can be transferred quickly between the two computers with minimal networking configuration. Due to unpopularity, Microsoft Windows Vista has removed support for networking over FireWire. Security issues Devices on a FireWire bus can communicate by direct memory access, where a device can use hardware to map internal memory to FireWire's "Physical Memory Space". The SBP (serial bus protocol) used by FireWire disk drives use this capability to minimize interrupts and buffer copies. In SBP, the initiator (controlling device) sends a request by remotely writing a command into a specified area of the target's FireWire address space. This command usually includes buffer addresses in the initiator's FireWire "Physical Address Space", which the target is supposed to use for moving I/O data to and from the initiator. On many implementations, particularly those like PCs and Macintoshes using the popular OHCI, the mapping between the FireWire "Physical Memory Space" and device physical memory is done in hardware, without operating system intervention. While this enables extremely high-speed and low-latency communication between data sources and sinks without unnecessary copying (such as between a video camera and a software video recording application, or between a disk drive and the application buffers), this can also be a security risk if untrustworthy devices are attached to the bus. For this reason, high- security installations will typically either purchase newer machines that map a virtual memory space to the FireWire "Physical Memory Space" (such as a G5 Macintosh, or any Sun workstation), disable the OHCI hardware mapping between FireWire and device memory, physically disable the entire FireWire interface, or do not have FireWire at all. This feature can also be used to debug a machine whose operating system has crashed, and in some systems for remote-console operations. On FreeBSD, the dcons 11
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  driver provides both,with using gdb as debugger. Under Linux, firescope and fireproxyexist. Node hierarchy FireWire devices are organized on the bus in a tree topology. Each device has a unique self-id. One of the nodes is elected root node and always has the highest id. The self-ids are assigned during the self-id process that happens after each bus-reset. The order in which the self-ids are assigned is equivalent to traversing the tree in a depth-first, post-order manner. Hot Plug precautions Although FireWire devices can be hot-plugged without powering down equipment, there have been a few reports of cameras being damaged if the pins of the FireWire port are accidentally shorted while swapping. This was especially true for some early FireWire devices. However, modern FireWire devices have eliminated this problem. Furthermore, FireWire 800 ensures even greater safety when hot-swapping. Because any hot-pluggable computer device has a risk of short-circuiting, a user may wish to power off both the camcorder and computer before connecting a FireWire cable. Commercial grade equipment is less sensitive to being hot-plugged, although care should still be taken with any electronic device. Operating system support Full support for IEEE 1394a and 1394b is available for FreeBSD, Linux and Apple Mac OS X operating systems. Microsoft Windows XP supports 1394a and 1394b, but as of service pack 2 the default speed for all types of FireWire is S100 (100 Mbit/second). A download and registry modification is available from Microsoft to 12
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  restore performance toeither S400 or S800. Microsoft Windows Vista will initially support 1394a, with 1394b support coming later in a service pack. To use FireWire target disk mode Description and requirements FireWire target disk mode allows a Macintosh computer with a FireWire port (the target computer) to be used as an external hard disk connected to another computer (the host). Once a target computer is started up as a FireWire hard disk and is available to the host computer, you can copy files to or from that volume. Important: The computer will not go into FireWire target disk mode if "Open Firmware Password" has been enabled. Host computer requirements Host computers must meet the following requirements: • Built-in FireWire port, or a FireWire port on a PC card • FireWire 2.3.3 or later • Mac OS 8.6 or later How to use FireWire target disk mode Important: Unplug all other FireWire devices from both computers prior to using FireWire target disk mode. Do not plug in any FireWire devices until after you have disconnected the two computers from each other, or have stopped using target disk mode. Tip: If you will be transferring FileVault-protected home directories (Mac OS X 10.3 or later only), log in as the FileVault-protected user and temporarily turn off FileVault. 13
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  After transferring homedirectory contents to the target computer, enable FileVault protection again if desired. To use FireWire target disk mode 1. Make sure that the target computer is turned off. If you are using a PowerBook or iBook as the target computer, you should also plug in its AC power adapter. 2. Use a FireWire cable (6-pin to 6-pin) to connect the target computer to a host computer. The host computer does not need to be turned off. 3. Start up the target computer and immediately press and hold down the T key until the FireWire icon appears. The hard disk of the target computer should become available to the host computer and will likely appear on desktop. (If the target computer is running Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, you can also open System Preferences, choose Startup Disk, and click Target Disk Mode. Then restart the computer and it will start up in Target Disk Mode.) 4. When you are finished copying files, drag the target computer's hard disk icon to the Trash or select Put Away from the File menu (Mac OS 9) or Eject from the File menu (Mac OS X). 5. Press the target computer's power button to turn it off. 6. Unplug the FireWire cable. If the target computer's hard disk does not become available to the host computer, check the cable connections and restart the host computer. FireWire Target Disk Mode works on internal ATA drives only. Target Disk Mode only connects to the master ATA drive on the Ultra ATA bus. It will not connect to Slave ATA, ATAPI or SCSI drives. FireWire Advantages FireWire provides many advantages over other peripheral interconnection technologies. The cables are as simple to connect as a telephone cord--there is no need for screws or latches. And, unlike SCSI technology, FireWire is autoconfiguring--so it eliminates SCSI device ID conflicts and the need for terminators. FireWire is also a hot plug-and-play technology, which means that a device can be disconnected and then 14
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  reconnected without theneed to restart the computer. FireWire is fast--it can transfer digital data at 200 megabits per second, with a planned increase to 400 megabits per second and beyond. And, the FireWire technology supports expansion--up to 63 devices can be attached on the same FireWire bus. Finally, FireWire includes support for isochronous data transfer, which provides guaranteed bandwidth for real-time video and audio streams. 1. Real-time data transfer for multimedia applications 100, 200, & 400Mbits/s data rates today; 800 Mbits/s and multi-Gbits/s upgrade path 2. Live connection/disconnection without data loss or interruption 3. Automatic configuration supporting "plug and play" 4. Free form network tool allowing mixing branches and daisy-chains 5. No separate line terminators required. 6. Guaranteed bandwidth assignments for real-time applications 7. Common connectors for different devices and applications One of the most important uses of FireWire as the digital interface for consumer electronics and AV peripherals. FireWire is a peer-to-peer interface. This allows dubbing from one camcorder to another without a computer. It also allows multiple computers to share a given peripheral without any special support in the peripheral or the computers. 15
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  Conclusion FireWire is amethod of transferring information between digital devices, especially audio and video equipment. We can connect up to 63 devices to a FireWire bus. Windows operating systems (98 and later) and Mac OS (8.6 and later) both support it. FireWire provides many advantages over other peripheral interconnection technologies. The cables are as simple to connect as a telephone cord--there is no need for screws or latches. 16