Firewire receives new spec, speed boost

Thrax

<p>With the recent announcement of a new IEEE 1394 specification, the IEEE has fired another shot in the perennial arms race between Firewire and USB. Yesterday's introduction of IEEE 1394-2008 promises speeds of up to 3.2Gbps with S3200-enabled devices.
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<div class="figure"><img src="/draco/images/news/2008/07/firewirelogo.gif" alt="" /></div><p>
The new standard also calls for backwards-compatibility with today's S800 and S400 Firewire ports. This gracious accommodation assures that new cables and devices will not be required when the standard slowly creeps into our desktops within the next 18 months. While the new standard does not surpass the 4.8Gbps to be offered by the impending USB 3.0 specification, a four-fold enhancement in Firewire throughput will leave few scoffing.</p>

photodude

Anyone heard what has happened to the s3200?

I had heard that it was going to be ratified in February 2008 but has since fallen off the map, Most of the information about S3200 firewire is from 2007 maybe a little from 2008, But nothing on any products that are s3200 compliant.

Does anyone think this will really compete with USB3........ or is it dead in the water?

It would be great to see s3200 firewire take off as it will be faster then USB3 just like firewire400 and firewire800.....I can see s3200 networks running at near the full 3.2GBits/s.....super fast card readers and scanners. and External drives (at least until eSATA3 comes out with 6Gbits/s external storage)

Snarkasm

Firewire had a hard time of it when Apple dumped them and everything in the world got a mini- or micro-USB jack.

photodude

I don't think apple has totally dumped Firewire, a lot of the high end stuff, macpro, macbookpro still carry Firewire. I would agree it does seem apple has reduced it's support of firewire.

Firewire hurt it's self a lot when it changed to the beta connector in the move to Firewire800. I've always wondered why I'm seeing more and more firewire400 ports on consumer computers after firewire800 had come out. It's very common to find PC motherboards with FW400 but only a few server boards with FW800. it's like the market is complaining about FW800, mostly due to the connector change....and continuing the grudge with FW-S3200......many consumers and even computer sales people couldn't grasp that FW400 was faster then USB2 even though the USB2 theoretical limit was slightly higher.

I guess it doesn't hurt that USB2 was less costly to license then any Firewire
I'm thinking Firewire has priced itself out of the market, so the future is USB3 and eSATA3 (if eSATA get's their powered port going)