notebook port observations and predictions ...
As more people discover that a notebook is more computer than they'll ever need, that niche dominate the market. I work with people who are manipulating raw HD video clips on a daily basis, using mid-level to performance-level laptops. This gives me a sense for what people will need in the near future as laptops become visual communication and visual entertainment appliances.
I've been thinking about what ports and media are going to dominate.
Firewire lost. USB rules. (These two are competing serial interconnects for peripherals)
eSATA (very fast interconnect for external drives -- 1.5 or 3 Gbps) will gradually become a requirement in all but the most basic machines. ASUS has a USB/eSATA configurable port, and thereby shows the path to backward compatibility.
Bluetooth will be universal. It will replace the audio ports on very compact machines.
Networking is kind of pegged at Gig-E (1 Gbps), which won't be fast enough, eventually. The next step is unclear. Multiple links, with bonding?
HDMI (a digital audio/video interconnect used for HDTV and for computer displays) is showing up in machines from HP, ASUS, Sony, Toshiba. It will obsolete DVI-D, DVI-A, VGA, S-Video, YPrPb, composite, SCART. Apple and Dell are behind the curve on this one. The only thing better than HDMI (in the consumer/computer space) is HDMI 1.3.
Wifi g (local area wireless networking) will be ubiquitous. Wireless broadband (EVDO, WiMax, etc. for networking while away from the house and internet cafe) will be common.
SD card slot will be common, if not ubiquitous.
PCMCIA (aka PC Card) isn't dead yet. ExpressCard may gradually replace.
BlueRay will win (with backward compatibility for DVD/CD).
Related note: 3-disk RAID 5 (of 3 Gbps SATA) will become common in extreme performance notebooks. Flash-based drives will become common in extreme mobility notebooks.
Extreme mobility notebooks may have reconfigurable high speed serial ports, e.g. USB or 1394 or eSATA or Gig-E or PCIe or HDMI.
Interesting write up. I agree the firewire is most likely dead, but I think IEEE 1394c (a combination FireWire+Gigabit ethernet port) is pretty interesting. Especially for really small laptops where port space is scarce.
And I was just reading that eSATA is adding power (for external connections.) That will make it even more attractive on notebooks.
There seem to be different approaches to multi-faces. (New word?) One protocol can be stacked on top of another, eg SATA over ethernet. I don't know 1394c, but based on a blurb I read, this seems to be the approach they're taking.
The other is to look at the high-speed, multi-lane, differential links and build chips that has low level support (electrical) for different interfaces. No protocol stacking, just redefining the pins.
This is common in analog and digital video. Composite video, component video, and audio -- whether digital or analog -- to a large extent use a common physical interconnect. (Analog pro-audio is it's own world.)
A 75-ohm pro video cable can carry SDI (uncompressed digital video with embedded audio and ancillary), HD-SDI, ASI (a compressed MPEG stream), AES (serial digital audio, similar to S/PDIF),. The cable, connector, and many driver-receiver chips are multilingual.
The wide array of high speed serial digital could go that way. PCIe, SATA, Gig-E, etc. have much in common. The chips can (or could be made to) deal with it.
For what it's worth Firewire is still pretty popular for audio (but I guess it won't be if the computer makers stop putting Firewire ports in computers).
There is a plug-in host called Receptor that uses Ethernet.
I don't see it dying right away, but slowly fading. As new ports (e.g. eSATA) come along, something will fall by the wayside.
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As more people discover that a notebook is more computer than they'll ever need, that niche dominate the market. I work with people who are manipulating raw HD video clips on a daily basis, using mid-level to performance-level laptops. This gives me a sense for what people will need in the near future as laptops become visual communication and visual entertainment appliances.
I've been thinking about what ports and media are going to dominate.
Firewire lost. USB rules. (These two are competing serial interconnects for peripherals)
eSATA (very fast interconnect for external drives -- 1.5 or 3 Gbps) will gradually become a requirement in all but the most basic machines. ASUS has a USB/eSATA configurable port, and thereby shows the path to backward compatibility.
Bluetooth will be universal. It will replace the audio ports on very compact machines.
Networking is kind of pegged at Gig-E (1 Gbps), which won't be fast enough, eventually. The next step is unclear. Multiple links, with bonding?
HDMI (a digital audio/video interconnect used for HDTV and for computer displays) is showing up in machines from HP, ASUS, Sony, Toshiba. It will obsolete DVI-D, DVI-A, VGA, S-Video, YPrPb, composite, SCART. Apple and Dell are behind the curve on this one. The only thing better than HDMI (in the consumer/computer space) is HDMI 1.3.
Wifi g (local area wireless networking) will be ubiquitous. Wireless broadband (EVDO, WiMax, etc. for networking while away from the house and internet cafe) will be common.
SD card slot will be common, if not ubiquitous.
PCMCIA (aka PC Card) isn't dead yet. ExpressCard may gradually replace.
BlueRay will win (with backward compatibility for DVD/CD).
Related note: 3-disk RAID 5 (of 3 Gbps SATA) will become common in extreme performance notebooks. Flash-based drives will become common in extreme mobility notebooks.
Extreme mobility notebooks may have reconfigurable high speed serial ports, e.g. USB or 1394 or eSATA or Gig-E or PCIe or HDMI.
- mark 1-19-2008 11:47 am
Interesting write up. I agree the firewire is most likely dead, but I think IEEE 1394c (a combination FireWire+Gigabit ethernet port) is pretty interesting. Especially for really small laptops where port space is scarce.
And I was just reading that eSATA is adding power (for external connections.) That will make it even more attractive on notebooks.
- jim 1-19-2008 9:26 pm
There seem to be different approaches to multi-faces. (New word?) One protocol can be stacked on top of another, eg SATA over ethernet. I don't know 1394c, but based on a blurb I read, this seems to be the approach they're taking.
The other is to look at the high-speed, multi-lane, differential links and build chips that has low level support (electrical) for different interfaces. No protocol stacking, just redefining the pins.
This is common in analog and digital video. Composite video, component video, and audio -- whether digital or analog -- to a large extent use a common physical interconnect. (Analog pro-audio is it's own world.)
A 75-ohm pro video cable can carry SDI (uncompressed digital video with embedded audio and ancillary), HD-SDI, ASI (a compressed MPEG stream), AES (serial digital audio, similar to S/PDIF),. The cable, connector, and many driver-receiver chips are multilingual.
The wide array of high speed serial digital could go that way. PCIe, SATA, Gig-E, etc. have much in common. The chips can (or could be made to) deal with it.
- mark 1-20-2008 12:18 am
For what it's worth Firewire is still pretty popular for audio (but I guess it won't be if the computer makers stop putting Firewire ports in computers).
There is a plug-in host called Receptor that uses Ethernet.
- tom moody 1-20-2008 1:42 am
I don't see it dying right away, but slowly fading. As new ports (e.g. eSATA) come along, something will fall by the wayside.
- mark 1-20-2008 8:00 pm