Here are some tips to some more specs that were divulged somewhat quietly by VSL on another thread from early January:
http://community.vsl.co.at/forums/t/17788.aspx
Dietz wrote on January 9th:
Regarding your question: No, we won't use a "classical" audio-connection between MIR-host and VI-slaves, although it is clear that you will need audio-outputs on the MIR in almost all imaginable setups. The system we have now is a proprietary driver-stucture for FireWire-connections, theoretically enabling us to bring in up to 64 stereo-channels into the MIR-machine from up to 64 slave-machines. - But for some guys within the VSL this is not enough, so maybe we will see yet another solution for the final product.
cm wrote on January 14th:
some things to consider:
ethernet has been invented for reliably receiving data, firewire for realtime streaming, ethernet needs configured identity of hosts (IPs), firewire is autoconfiguring (deviceIDs), ethernet puts a tic more load on the processor than firewire, ethernet packages can collide (get dropped and resent), firewire works basically *timesliced*
128 tracks 44.1/24 need 16 MB/s which is below the limit of both connection types and it depends on the circumstances beyond which load dropouts will occur.
last but not least: ethernet support or resolving connection problems can be tricky, firewire works or not.
on the other hand: if the issues with firewire continue as they came up lately maybe we should drop it ....