The scalability of Firewire 800

wrong robot

From what I understand, firewire 800 can scale upwards to 1.6 gbps and even 3.2 in the not-to-far-future, are these scalings merely imprving on the standard or introducing a revised version of the standard? would a firewire 1.6 be back-wards compatible with a firewire 800?



Does anyone know anything about adaptors that let you plug firewire 800 stuff into firewire 400 ports?(to transfer at 400 speed)



Obviously firewire 800 is very new stuff, and not many companies have announecd products yet, but there always seems to be one company that is ahead of the game, or at least the typical provider of certain acessories.

hmurchison

There will be FW800 9pin to FW400 6 pin adapters.



I'm hoping the current 9pin will support up to 3.2Gbps but I can't find any confirmation of that.

eugene

FireWire 800 supports the obvious, nothing more. If it supported more, it wouldn't have been termed FireWire 800. This isn't speculation.



[ 02-14-2003: Message edited by: Eugene ]</p>

wrong robot

But couldn't it have easily been dubbed firewire2?

or are you suggesting that because it was called Firewire 800, that is making the statement that Firewire 1600 will be a totally different thing(more pins or whatever)

wmf

Certainly current machines only support 800Mbps. The question is whether FireWire 1600 will use the same connector or not. FireWire 3200 is fiber-only.

i-bent-my-wookie

[quote]Originally posted by Eugene:

<strong>FireWire 800 supports the obvious, nothing more. If it supported more, it wouldn't have been termed FireWire 800. This isn't speculation.



[ 02-14-2003: Message edited by: Eugene ]</strong><hr></blockquote>



or is it...



Actually I read that FW800 in the new Powermacs are able to scale to 1.6Gb RIGHT NOW with the existing chipset. It only requires speical fibre or copper cabling. I will endeaver to find the article again...





"close your doors, not your minds"

- me (now)

wmf

[quote]Originally posted by I-bent-my-wookie:

<strong>Actually I read that FW800 in the new Powermacs are able to scale to 1.6Gb RIGHT NOW with the existing chipset. It only requires speical fibre or copper cabling. </strong><hr></blockquote>



That makes no sense; why would Apple not tell us about that if it exists?



Also, there's no way to attach fiber to the copper 1394b ports on the new Macs. Fiber requires a different connector.

jll

[quote]Originally posted by wmf:

<strong>FireWire 3200 is fiber-only.</strong><hr></blockquote>



No:

eugene

[quote]Originally posted by Wrong Robust:

<strong>But couldn't it have easily been dubbed firewire2?

or are you suggesting that because it was called Firewire 800, that is making the statement that Firewire 1600 will be a totally different thing(more pins or whatever)</strong><hr></blockquote>



No, the connectors and cabling will be exactly the same.

foad

One thing to also note is that only in highend situations will you truely see firewire 800 and above really shine.



As it stands right now, DV25 cameras(most, if not all DV cams currently on the market) don't even use the the bandwidth of Firewire 400. So from a purely consumer standpoint Firewire 800 is still just too new. You will mostly see some performance gains from harddrive related devices. Even the iPod doesn't use the total Firewire 400 bandwidth. DV50, which is pretty new, and the next couple generations of media will utilize the huge amount of bandwidth in the future. I don't think most consumers are editing High-Definition or film stuff from the home offices.



Firewire 800 and above will really shine when Apple gets more and more serious in the pro market. With the bandwidth of the higher Firewire connections you will be able to do High-Def work with no problems at a fairly reasonable price.



I am doing more and more research into this stuff because we are starting to do more HD based work at work, so if anyone has any other comments that would be great.



Just my 2-cents.

wrong robot

Well I think its pretty obvious why firewire 800 is important right now(with so few products supporting it)



to spank USB 2.0 and put it back in its place!



seriously...before USB 2.0 came out, firewire was the undisputed champ, but as soon as it did, everyone was like "why would you want firewire???" even though neither mediums reach their theoretical speeds in real-world applications...that always annoyed the hell out of me.



thanks for the info guys, its cleared up many things.

i-bent-my-wookie

[quote]Originally posted by I-bent-my-wookie:

<strong>



or is it...



Actually I read that FW800 in the new Powermacs are able to scale to 1.6Gb RIGHT NOW with the existing chipset. It only requires speical fibre or copper cabling. I will endeaver to find the article again...





"close your doors, not your minds"

- me (now)</strong><hr></blockquote>





Could not find the article I referenced above. I thought it was on MacNN and found a similar article but not the one I had found earlier. Anyways, I did some more research and could not back up the claims I made above... plus who can say if the article I read was even close to being correct. Its shocking but not everything on the internet is true



Perhaps I was a little confused after talking to Bob <img src="graemlins/cancer.gif" border="0" alt="[cancer]" />



[ 02-16-2003: Message edited by: I-bent-my-wookie ]</p>

scott2

Uh, in response to foad, I have not been able to download movies from a DV camera to an external hard disk through the same firewire 400 port (w/Oxford chipset). True, this is not proof that the firewire port is overloaded, but having an OS that can do multi-tasking combined with multiple devices on a single port seems like the receipe to do so. Like SCSI, it is (was) quite common to have a scanner, external HD, etc. all daisy chained.