What are the relative merits of USB and FireWire as serial links in computer?based systems?
What will be an ideal response?
If you compare FireWire and USB 2.0, FireWire has a maximum data rate of 400 Mbits/s and USB 2.0 is slightly
faster at 480 Mb/s. However, the sustained read data rate of FireWire is 38 MB/s compared with USB’s 33 MB/s
(note Mbytes/s). In practice, FireWire is faster than USB 2.0.
FireWire has a peer?to?peer topology whereas USB 2.0 has a point?to?point topology, giving FireWire the
advantage. Two FireWire devices can be connected together without a host computer. However, later versions of
USB have removed that advantage. In practice, USB has a much wider reach than FireWire (it’s virtually universal
on all computers and is the preferred interface of most MP3 players and digital cameras).
Both FireWire and USB have been updated. USB has been updated to USB 3.0 with a theoretical maximum speed
of 5 Gb/s. FireWire has been updated to FireWire 3200 with a maximum speed of 3.2Gb/s. Both systems are
backward compatible with previous systems. Again, the actual speed of USB 3.0 is 3.6 Gb/s which is close to
FireWire 3200.
It may be argued that FireWire has small theoretical advantages over USB 3.0 (largely because of its topology).
However, there is little to distinguish between them. FireWire has remained largely a creation of Apple and its
main niche is digital video. USB is, well, universal
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