17 Jun
2013
17 Jun
'13
11:41 a.m.
On 06/16/2013 01:19 PM, Tony Duell wrote:
For many of the things I do the data transfer rate is less important that
(for want of a better term) the latency. In other words, an interface
that transfers 10kbps and starts doing it within 1ms is more use than one
that transfers 1Gbps but might take a second to get started.
Since 4Gbits is comparable to all the storage I
have on all my computers,
I do wonder why on earth I would want to pass all that data donw one cable
in a seconmd or so.
Well, that's the burst rate anyway. But with online storage even for the home computer user running into the multi-terabyte
range, I can see
an application for a very high-speed interface.
Sure. There are many applications for such interfaces. That does not mean
that such an inteface is the ideal choice when you don't have several
gigabytes (ro even megabytews) to move around.
Most of the complexity is in the host, not the peripheral. Indeed, even
without the FTDI-style interface chips, it's still possible to
inexpensively create a device-level interface to USB using nothing more
than an AVR ATTiny MCU--see the VUSB project list for minimalist interfaces.
You can implementasync serial or IEEE388 in <20 MSI chips. I would love
to see you do any form of USB that way. And when things don't work, it's
a lot harder to make sense of the signals on a USB cable than those on an
RS232 or IEEE488 cable.
-tony