1394 White Paper This paper is written for business folks and end-users, not for engineers, who want to know about the 1394 technology and its impact to business. It gives a non-technical introduction to the 1394 technology, the impact of the technology to business, and, the AdvanSys 1394 products. Information provided herein are from the author's understanding of various 1394 technical specifications and from various web sites like 1394 Trade Association, Texas Instrument, Sony, and Symbios. INTRODUCTION 1394 denotes the technology connecting PC's and consumer electronics devices. It is the cable that moves digital data between PC's and consumer electronic devices. It replaces the analog cables connecting the TV, cable settop, VCR, CD and DVD players, amplifier, and speakers, and it connects all of them to one or more PC's. The technology is probably the most important one in this decade linking computer and consumer device industries together. For those who are terrified by the rats-nest like cables behind their stereos, VCR, and TV today, 1394 is a god sent relief. Like other digital computer connections, 1394 is a bus. This means the digital signal flows to all devices on a single connection. The digital TV signal from a settop box can be sent to TV, PC, and digital VCR on a single cable, not three separate cables. The bus-like connection allows each 1394 device with just a single connection to communicate with every device on the bus without the multiple cables required for the consumer electronic devices. On the same bus, up to 63 devices are connected. Typically, a 1394 device has one incoming connector and one or more outgoing connectors. However, it is normal for a camera or camcorder with only one incoming connector, and a PC with only several outgoing connectors. For a device without incoming connector, it is known as the root. From the root each outgoing connector is a branch which has one incoming and one or more outgoing connectors. A device with only one incoming connector is a leaf. A reader can now picture in his/her mind, the 1394 devices are connected like a tree, from root with one or more branches to other branches and stopping at the leaves. The maximum distance between two devices is 4.5 meters. Up to 16 devices can be strung together in a single branch for a maximum distance of 72 meters, a distance more than enough for homes and small offices. When there are more than 16 devices, just start a new branch. When there are more than 63 devices, there is a bridge connecting two trees together. Up to 1023 bridges can be in one connection for a total over 65 thousands devices. In the computer industry, the bridge is also known as a hub. The 1394 devices can run at speed of 100 megabits, 200 megabits, or 400 megabits per second today with 800 megabits available next year. This is more than ten times the speed of any USB device that has the theoretical limit of 12 megabits per second. Needless to say, a user should never connect a 100-megabit device between the root and a 400-megabit leaf. If he does so, the 400-megabit leaf will only run at the speed of 100 megabits. Because all devices are sharing the same connecting bus, only one device is transmitting data at any single instant at the speed of the device. Nonetheless, many devices can receive the same data at one instant. At completion of one transmission, another device starts transmission at a possibly different speed. The process of granting the bus to a single device for transmitting data at one time is known as bus arbitration scheme. Since a digital video camera only needs 28 megabits per second on the bus, there is plenty room on the bus for other devices. Because there are many devices sharing a single bus, there is a need to ensure the video or audio data not interrupted by busy activities on the bus. 1394 employs isochronous - as oppose to asynchronous -- data transfer to guarantee the delivery of multiple streams of time-critical video and audio data. And, the 1394 bus has a "fairness" arbitration scheme to ensure that all devices having information to send get a fair chance to use the bus. Isochronous means continuous and asynchronous means on demand. Isochronous data has priority over asynchronous transfer which is for non-time-critical data such as those from a scanner and to a printer. For the consumers, the most important features of the 1394 connection are its very low-cost, high-speed transmission, and hot-plug functions. Same as connecting speakers to stereos, a consumer can connect camera to computer without first shutting down the computer, hence the name hot-plug. With the PC running, it automatically recognizes the camera as soon as the connection is made. Even the required software - known to computer people as device drivers - for the camera is activated. A consumer need not go through the complicated installation procedure today to connect a new device or the uninstall procedure to remove a device. Of course, this is an ideal situation. A brand new device not known to the PC still requires software installation. In the early days, most 1394 devices are new to the PC. However, eventually, the PC will have pre-installed software for camera, camcorder, scanner, printer, digital VCR and TV, speaker, MPEG playing kit, DVD player, and writable DVD etc. The only thing a consumer needs to do is to connect or hot-plug a device into the 1394 bus. The low-cost 1394 bus interconnections are made with a 6-conductor cable containing two separately shielded twisted pair transmission lines for signaling, two power conductors, and an overall shield. The power conductors supply power to processing devices like MPEG playing kit that converts the MPEG data from CD or DVD devices to data known to digital TV or RGB monitor devices. The most important feature of 1394 is its peer-to-peer communication, i.e. every 1394 device can receive isochronous data on the bus, process the data, and retransmit the data to another device. Unlike other digital bus such as SCSI on a PC, 1394 supplies power to data processing cards. There is no need to place a data processing card inside the computer. The digital VCR receives data directly from TV and the printer receives data directly from camera. As result, the PC is relegated as a data processing device for data editing, publishing, or LAN, WAN, or Internet communication. This peer-to-peer communication links the computer and consumer electronics industries. A consumer can buy any number of devices without overloading the system bus on a PC. This introduction will not be complete without a comparison of 1394 to USB and SCSI busses. The main difference is both busses are only used in connecting computer peripherals to a PC. The 1394 bus connects not only consumer electronics devices to a PC but also to each other. While USB and SCSI can not function without a PC. USB is designed to eliminate the large number of connectors and tangled cables behind today's PCs. It is specifically intended to connect slow speed devices like keyboards, mice, tablets, modems, telephones, CD-ROM drives, and other slow to moderate peripherals. The primary objective of USB is little circuit implementation to minimize the premium for slow peripherals. USB uses a four-wire connector with a single twisted pair for signaling, plus 5-volt power and ground conductors. The data transfer rate is limited to 12 megabits per second to minimize EMI protection requirements. Isochronous communication is available for higher bandwidth devices, including CD-ROM drives, ISDN modems, and digital telephony. Unlike 1394, it is not peer-to-peer. Hubs are required for multiple connections to the host (root) connector. Hubs notify the host when nodes (called functions) attach or detach from the hub to provide the dynamic reconfiguration and device identification. Therefore, while USB devices are hot-pluggable, they must be connected to a PC. The speed of USB is so slow it should never even be considered as an alternative to 1394. It is not intended to connect high speed multimedia consumer devices. Like 1394, SCSI is a high-speed digital bus connecting computer devices such as hard disk, CD-ROM, scanner, printer, and camera, to a PC. It is also supporting peer-to-peer communication although very few devices implement such function. It does not support the hot-plug function that is very important to consumers. It is a technology almost 20 years old. The SCSI bus uses a 50-conductor or 68-conductor cable. Because the large number of conductors, it is known as parallel cable versus serial cable for 1394, meaning data bits are transmitted in parallel instead of serial. While SCSI bus does provide high-speed transmission, its biggest drawback is the length of the cable being limited to just 1.5 meter for devices moving data at 40 megabytes per second. Today, SCSI are mainly used by high-end workstations, servers, and disk arrays. With its hot-plug and longer cable, 1394 is ideal for hard disk arrays and storage upgrades. However, most disk drive manufacturers seem to wait for the availability of 800 megabit per second 1394 bus before joining the bandwagon. IMPACT TO BUSINESS 1394 is a digital bus. Peripheral devices connecting to the 1394 bus pass digital multimedia data to each other. The analog signal degrades with each transmission or recording. Digital signal not only keeps its integration in transmission and recording but also can be compressed to reduce transmission time and storage space. Like comparing LP to CD and stereo tape to DAT, digital devices will eventually replace the majority of their counterpart analogy devices. 1394 is the enabling technology for analog consumer devices migrating to digital. As stated earlier, 1394 probably is the most important technology in this decade linking computer and consumer electronics industries together. Why? The computer industry sold 100 million PC's a year worldwide. The PC industry envies the consumer electronics industry in one respect. It has a very high market penetration. Take televisions, for example. The number of homes in America with at least one TV is well over 95 percent. Less than 30% of the households in America own PC's. However, the PC industry enjoys a special scenario envied by consumer electronics industry. While a TV can be around in a household for 10 to 20 years, a PC is typically replaced in 3 to 4 years. No 486 computers today can run the fancy 3D games. Windows98 will run at choking speed on an earlier version of Pentium processor at 75 MHz that was the top of the line in 1994. Just imagine if consumers start to replace all their electronics devices every 3 to 4 years? Easy of use is the essential criterion for consumers to accept computer technology. 1394 brings both industries together with its low-cost and hot-plug function. It is the magic formula for high-tech folks who can hardly wait to introduce high-resolution digital TV's to consumers. No consumer can refuse a newer and better digital TV with same or lower price. Microsoft and many other PC industry leaders have realized that they must make the PC more like other electronics devices to increase the PC sales. Part of this is accomplished by making more user-friendly PCs, as proposed with the Simply Interactive PC. However, another strategy is putting a familiar surrounding on the PC. If a consumer starts to use the television screen in lieu of a computer monitor for his enjoyment, one has taken a giant psychological step forward in user friendliness. Once the PC is integrated into an entertainment system network and the industry starts developing applications for this network, it has unlocked the business potential. In the next two years, 1394 will be used mainly for connecting digital peripheral devices to a PC. The prevailing 1394 devices in the year of 1999 will be DVC's and digital cameras. Early prototypes for printers, scanners, digital VCR's and TV's, DVD's, CD-ROM's, MO's, hard disks, and removable hard disks should appear on the market in the 1999. Devices for peer-to-peer communication will appear on the market in the 2000 when a consumer can buy a storage device and connect it to a TV similar to the way he buys a VCR today. Thereafter, if our prediction is right, the consumer will buy a new storage device or DVD players every three to four years because of the continuous improvement of digital technology. AdvanSys and 1394 The 1394 opportunities available to AdvanSys are 1394 host adapters and 1394 device chips. The 1394 host adapter connects a PC, the host, to 1394 peripheral devices. By the 4th quarter of 1998, AdvanSys will deliver to market sample 1394 host adapters with speed of 400 megabits per second. With the expertise in SCSI host adapters, AdvanSys' core competency is in both software and hardware development of host adapters for the PC market. AdvanSys ensures the operability or compatibility of its host adapters with different PC motherboards, peripherals, and operating systems. Because of this core competency, AdvanSys was selected by Fujitsu as a partner to provide 1394 host adapters for the Japanese consumer electronics device companies. The AdvanSys 1394 host adapter integrates LINK and PHY with its Open Host Controller Interface (OHCI) design as a low-cost single-chip host adapter solution. The OHCI driver support is already embedded in Windows 98, NT 5.0, and Mac OS 8.0. Therefore, the host adapter will be functional in these three operating systems without installing the device driver for the adapter. However, to ensure the operability of all the 1394 devices, AdvanSys ships its host adapter with a CD containing the Super1394 program with device drivers for different 1394 devices. For example, it has the Sony DVC driver - not embedded in the OS's - needed for the DVC devices. The Super1394 installation program will automatically copy the required device drivers to the PC. A consumer only has to insert the CD into the CD-ROM device and the driver installation will happen automatically. In addition to install device drivers, the Super1394 software also provides diagnostic, control, and monitor functions for the 1394 bus just in case if the bus is not connected correctly. It will tell the consumer that a 400-megabit device is connected after the 100-megabit device. It will issue a bus reset so the consumer does not have yank the cable. Last, but not the least, the Super1394 software comes with a simple video capturing and editing program to allow a consumer to save video clips from a camera or DVC and perform cut and paste with his video clips. After completing its host adapter development, AdvanSys will be actively engaged in developing 1394 device chips that support the 1394 peer-to-peer communication. In this development, each 1394 device must acquire additional knowledge that is currently residing inside the PC. As a company with intimate knowledge of the operations of 1394 devices, AdvanSys will port the knowledge into the 1394 device chips to support peer-to-peer communication. For example, to allow the direct storing of video clips from a camera, the storage device must know where to store the video clips. This knowledge of where to store the clips today resides in the PC today, known as file system management. The file system software understands the free space in a storage device and allocates the space for the video clip, a new file in a storage device. Ultimately, with its expertise in host adapters today, AdvanSys has the competency to support peer-to-peer communication.