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reece_james wrote:

Gipetto wrote:

My sister's Dell has firewire. My sister is not tech savvy and bought a computer with price first, features 2nd mentality. That tells me its probably more common than we think.

I doubt that it's 6 pin. Then again, saw a Dell display with composite in the other day, that was a pleasant surprise.

6 versus 4 pins don't change anything except that 4 pin isn't powered, but in the end, there really aren't many FW devices that are powered by the bus. Camcorders and hard-drives for instance, are just as glad with 4 pins.
Anyway, just a side note.

pirloui wrote:

reece_james wrote:

Gipetto wrote:

My sister's Dell has firewire. My sister is not tech savvy and bought a computer with price first, features 2nd mentality. That tells me its probably more common than we think.

I doubt that it's 6 pin. Then again, saw a Dell display with composite in the other day, that was a pleasant surprise.

6 versus 4 pins don't change anything except that 4 pin isn't powered, but in the end, there really aren't many FW devices that are powered by the bus. Camcorders and hard-drives for instance, are just as glad with 4 pins.
Anyway, just a side note.

Older iPods are not.

Jasoco wrote:

God, you mean like the whole High Definition movie fiasco? And we all see how well that turned out.

Based on Bat's posts, this sounds even worse. With Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD, the two formats at least had different names. With this, they're both called the same name yet are incompatible.

That didn't take long.

AMD and NVIDIA say Intel won't share its USB 3.0 open host controller specs

The USB 3.0 specification is expected to be out in 2009 and will significantly upgrade the bandwidth of the current USB 2.0 ports and products that all computer users are familiar with. The body responsible for the support and promotion of the USB specifications going back to USB 1.1 is the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF).

The USB-IF was founded by Intel in 1995 along with other industry players including Microsoft, HP, Texas Instruments, NEC and NXP Semiconductors. Currently, the USB-IF and its members are working to bring the USB 3.0 specification to market. USB 3.0 is also being called “PCI Express over cable” because the USB 3.0 specification uses intellectual property that was sourced from the PCI SIG. USB 3.0 will increase the bandwidth offered by USB 2.0 by 10 times with a data throughput of about 5 gigabits per second.

Despite the fact that much of the intellectual property behind the USB 3.0 specification wasn’t developed by Intel, AMD and NVIDIA both assert that Intel is keeping crucial information concerning the open host controller to itself. According to NVIDIA and AMD, Intel has working silicon, meaning the open host controller portion is mature and working, yet Intel is refusing to give the specifications to other processor and chipset makers.

AMD and NVIDIA say that by withholding the open host controller specifications that Intel is basically giving itself a market advantage of six to nine months because of the time lag between receiving the host controller specifications by other CPU and chipset makers and getting product to the marketplace.

We'll share if you don't compete with us. (Not like that's misuse of monopoly power or anything...)

AMD, NVIDIA to Create Second Open Host Controller For USB 3.0


ed spacing

Last edited by Bat (2008-06-09 8:29 pm)

Good news.

USB3.0 xHCI spec released
Unforked

IT LOOKS LIKE the USB3.0 forking has been defused today with AMD, Dell, Microsoft and NEC all signed up for the new spec. Intel is releasing the Extensible Host Controller Interface (xHCI) today as well.

If you recall, there was going to be a fork on USB3.0, but it appears that several of the forkers are on board now. We wonder what late night negotiations were done to prompt that. In any case, it looks like all the major players are on board at last, so the forked spec will likely die at the current v.5.

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/ … c-released

Then again, the unified spec seems to increase the likelihood of USB3.0 hoopla drowning out any buzz around next-gen FW. Omelettes and eggs.

Edit: Forker NVidia seems conspicuously missing so far.

Last edited by Bat (2008-08-14 3:39 am)