Could USB ever take over PCI Post: 302866839

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Special Forums Hardware Could USB ever take over PCI Post 302866839 by Corona688 on Tuesday 22nd of October 2013 07:15:16 PM

10-22-2013

Registered User

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lost in Cyberia

So if USB is such a mediocre protocol for electricity, transfer rates, and lack of DMA, why/how is it the most universal and popular?

Please understand that we're not saying USB is bad. I like it, it has a lot of things going for it.

USB and Firewire have these handy features:

They're electrically simple. Power, ground, a shielded pair for data -- that's it. That lets them use simple connectors and work well on long thin cheap cables. They can be protected from static well enough to be handled by humans without special precautions.
Very isolated and robust. It won't cause things to crash or explode if you unplug it by accident. If an error happens, the computer can retry.
They have appealing plug-and-play features. It's convenient for a hardware manufacturer to make custom devices for them.

These features are a trade-off. PCIE is fast, but a 12-foot PCIE cable would need to be as thick as your fist. PCIE is direct, meaning, if you unplugged it while your computer was on, your computer would either crash or become a smoking wreck! And the same features which make USB handy make it less efficient.

Quote:

Why isn't firewire, or thunderbolt made standard? Proprietary reasons?

Firewire is a standard, and if you really want it you can get it. It's not popular, though.

I think USB became more popular because it entered the market as a cheap keyboard connector. Everyone had it. Not everyone had firewire, since that was higher-end -- if you didn't have a digital video camera, you had no use for it. Its faster speed made its cables more expensive too (inevitable). When USB started getting used for disks and things they made it faster.

People use USB because it's reliable, available, and good enough. (Also, a firewire video card is just as silly as a USB one.)

Thunderbolt is something new.

Last edited by Corona688; 10-22-2013 at 08:49 PM..

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LEARN ABOUT CENTOS

ehci

EHCI(4)                                                    BSD Kernel Interfaces Manual                                                    EHCI(4)

NAME

     ehci -- USB Enhanced Host Controller driver

SYNOPSIS

     device ehci

DESCRIPTION

     The ehci driver provides support for the USB Enhanced Host Controller Interface, which is used by USB 2.0 controllers.

     EHCI controllers are peculiar in that they can only handle the USB 2.0 protocol.  This means that they normally have one or more companion
     controllers (i.e., ohci(4) or uhci(4)) handling USB 1.x devices.  Consequently each USB connector is electrically connected to two USB con-
     trollers.  The handling of this is totally automatic, but can be noticed since USB 1.x and USB 2.0 devices plugged in to the same connector
     appear to connect to different USB busses.

SEE ALSO

     ohci(4), uhci(4), usb(4)

HISTORY

     The ehci device driver first appeared in FreeBSD 5.1.

BUGS

     The driver is not finished and is quite buggy.

     There is currently no support for isochronous transfers.

BSD                                                               March 20, 2005                                                               BSD