Features
Integrated Physical Layer
- Supports provisions of IEEE 1394-1995 Standard for High Performance Serial Bus and the P1394a Supplement 4.0.
- Fully interoperable with IEEE Std 1394-1995 devices
- Three IEEE Std 1394a-2000 fully compliant cable ports at 100M bits/s, 200M bits/s, and 400M bits/s
- Low-cost 24.576-MHz crystal provides transmit and receive data at 100M bits/s, 200M bits/s,
and 400M bits/s
- Cable power presence monitoring.
-- Separate cable bias (TPBIAS) for each port
- Programmable node power class information for system power management
- Fully Compliant P1394a 4.0 PHY register map
Link Layer and PCI Interface
Embedded 1394 Link Core
- On-chip isochronous and asynchronous receive and
transmit FIFOs.
- 4 isochronous transmit / receive contexts
OHCI Compliant Programming Interface
- Compliant with 1394 Open HCI Specifications v1.0
and v1.1
- Descriptor based isochronous and asynchronous DMA channels for receive / transmit packets
32-Bit Power-Managed PCI Bus Interface
- Compliant with PCI specification v2.2
- High-performance bus mastering support
- Compliant with PCI Bus Power Management Specification v1.1
Configuration Serial EEPROM
Low Power Dissipation Circuitry
External power (+12V) connector
PCB Design
The FireBoard-Blue card is a four-layer printed circuit PCI board. Two of the layers provide the signal interconnections (signal layers) while the remaining two layers provide the required power and ground interconnections (plane layers).
EMI, EMC testing
FireBoard-Blue OHCI has successfully passed the EN 55022 (Emissions Environment) and EN 55024 (Immunity Environment) EMI test procedures. Subsequently, this product is fully CE compliant and assigned with the CE mark. Moreover the board is FCC compliant.
Performance
Networking
The Fireboard-Blue card has excellent performance as a network card used with Unibrain’s FireNet™ application.
Extensive tests have been performed using workstation PCs equipped with Pentium 4 at 1,7GHz, with 256MB SDRAM, ASUS P4B 266-C motherboard and Western Digital 40GB HDs. TCP/IP protocol was used for the network interconnection of the PCs.
All the benchmarks were conducted in the Windows 2000 environment.
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Two kinds of tests were performed:
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The first group of tests consisted of various
real-time file copies between two computers. These tests demonstrated the real-life performance that a user can expect from the Fireboard-Blue and FireNet™.
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The other group of tests used network benchmark utilities (netio), which measure true network
throughput without using the HDD.
a). The data transfer of real time copying of big files
are as follows:
Read: (reading a big file from an other PC)
20M bytes/sec
Write: (writing a big file to an other PC)
21,5M bytes/sec
b). netio: This test involved two PCs in a
point-to-point connection while netio benchmark run in both machines. The following list presents the results of the netio benchmark for various file packet sizes:
1k packets: 27600 k bytes/sec
2k packets: 30300 k bytes/sec
4k packets: 32700 k bytes/sec
8k packets: 34600 k bytes/sec
16k packets: 40400 k bytes/sec
32k packets: 41200 k bytes/sec
Digital Imaging
The Fireboard-Blue has optimum performance when used to control and display IEEE-1394 digital cameras. Due to its four (4) isochronous transmit / receive contexts, provides the exceptional feature to control and display simultaneously up to four (4) IEEE-1394 digital cameras.
Extensive tests have been performed using one workstation PC equipped with Pentium 4 at 1,7GHz, with 256MB SDRAM, ASUS P4B 266-C motherboard and Western Digital 40GB HDs. All the configurations were conducted in the Windows 2000 environment using Unibrain’s Fire-i™ application. Moreover no external power was needed for the cameras or the Fireboard-Blue cards.
- Four (4) IEEE-1394 digital cameras (Unibrain’s consumer Fire-i cameras) connected to a PC equipped with the Fireboard-Blue. Three cameras started at YUV configuration 4:2:2, with resolution 320x240 at 30 frames per second (fps) and the forth camera started at the same resolution but with 3,75 fps. All cameras displayed simultaneously.
- Four (4) IEEE-1394 digital cameras (Unibrain’s industrial Fire-i-400 cameras) connected to a PC equipped with the Fireboard-Blue. Three cameras started at YUV configuration 4:2:2, with resolution 320x240 at 30 frames per second (fps) and the forth camera started at the same resolution but with 3,75 fps. All cameras displayed simultaneously.
- In one PC equipped with four (4) FireBoard-Blue cards we connect eight (4) cameras per card giving a total of 16 cameras per PC (4 industrial cameras Fire-i-400 and 12 consumer cameras Fire-i). All cameras started at YUV configuration 4:4:4, with resolution 160x120 at 30 frames per second (fps) and all cameras displayed simultaneously.
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