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http://www.macnn.com/articles/01/05/21/new.firewire/

New FireWire spec awaits approval

updated 05:45 pm EDT, Mon May 21, 2001

 
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The 1394 Trade Association has introduced the new 1394b specification, an updated version of the multimedia bus standard commonly known to Mac users as FireWire. 1394b provides significant bandwidth, speed, distance, and cost-efficiency improvements over the original IEEE 1394-1995 specification. The specification supports audio and video transfer at speeds ranging from 1.6 to 3.2 Gigabits per second on plastic optical fiber, and up to 3.2 Gigabits per second on glass optical fiber. Costs of products using the new specification are expected to be lower than those using the early versions, and the new specification retains backwards compatibility. The proposed 1394b specification is now in circulation for approval by members of the 'b' Committee.


by MacNN Staff

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  1. 0

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    05/21, 06:01pm | report spam | Reply | delete

    Ah, but I want USB 2.0!

    What's Intel's response to this? They're just getting USB 2.0 out the door, with all the challenges they are facing, and "FireWire-b" is already set to make it even more obsolete.

    P.S. Was that not one of the most difficult to read press releases?

  1. 0

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    05/21, 06:05pm | report spam | Reply | delete

    FireWire-b...

    ...would be a good name for a rapper.

    "Yo, I'm FireWire-b, yeah that's my name,
    an' I'm here to settle a score!
    USB dawg ain't got no game,
    it's all about the I to the triple-E to the 1394!
    32-bit word!"

  1. 0

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    05/21, 06:05pm | report spam | Reply | delete

    Optical?

    Hmmm... interesting on the switch to optical fibre. How are they going to retain backward compatibility with optical fibre - will there be a second connector for electrical.

    Electrical can carry those speeds, but you need better sheilded cable to do so. Though I'm surprised they made the switch.

  1. 0

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    05/21, 06:10pm | report spam | Reply | delete

    Firewire over USB anyday

    USB still requires the proc to know where to stick it's input. Firewire is completely peer to peer....and getting better all the time.

    To heck with USB 2.0. I'll stick with my lower latency firewire.

  1. 0

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    05/21, 06:23pm | report spam | Reply | delete

    It's about time!

    The FireWire proponents have been promising higher speeds since the day 1394 was introduced -- what, three years ago?

    I remember reading an article about FireWire in MacWorld, probably in '94, mayber earlier, and thinking to myself "Sounds cool. I won't buy another Mac [I was using a IIsi] until they're using FireWire."

    Ah, time flies, eh?

    ADeweyan

  1. 0

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    05/21, 06:36pm | report spam | Reply | delete

    3.2 Gigabits

    Hooobidy Jooobidy, that sounds great.

  1. 0

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    05/21, 07:14pm | report spam | Reply | delete

    backward compatibility

    This is very interesting. I work for a fiber optics company on high speed lasers but can only guess at what this might entail. The 1394b connector must have electrical and optical leads to achieve this compatibility (along with the new cables of course). They must have found a way to leave the electrical conductors where they are while adding the fiber to the connector. In this way the electrical conductors act as guides to ensure repeatable butt coupling for the fiber.

    Another interesting thing is that while firewire is going from 400 Mb/s to ~ 3.2 Gig the 'metro' market is upgrading from 2.5 Gig to 10 Gig systems. So the question is are LAN speeds going to catch up with the speed of the Metro network eventually? Probably not...but seems to be a bigger jump right now. 40 gig is down the road sometime in the future but there are significant upgrade costs associated with this move so don't expect 40 Gig to become mainstream for another 3 years at least.

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    05/21, 07:45pm | report spam | Reply | delete

    Ieee!!!!! 1394

    Now I see why the spec is called IEEE 1394. Ieee! 32 Gb/s? That's really fast! And here we all were wondering when FW was going to break 800 Mb/s!!

  1. 0

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    05/21, 08:26pm | report spam | Reply | delete

    Repeatable butt coupling

    ...heh, heh...heh, heh

  1. 0

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    05/21, 08:52pm | report spam | Reply | delete

    Backwards people.

    That first post here is hilarious! It's like the anti-post, in the parallel world!

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