News

posted on 01 August 2008 10:35

Faster FireWire interconnects are coming from the IEEE but, even though FireWire will be faster than USB 3.0 it shouldn't start replacing USB any time soon if at all.

The IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) 1394 working group is publishing the S1600 (1.6Gbit/s) and S3200 (3.2Gbit/s) FireWire specifications and has formally approved them. The final specs will be published in October. Product using the new standards could follow in a year or more.

The new standards complement and follow on in sequence from the existing FireWire 400 and 800 standards.

The USB 3.0 standard specification should be due at the end of the year and is expected to run at 3Gbit/s. However the wide use of USB and the difficulty of switching to FireWire indicates that there will be no significant conversion from USB to FireWire 3200. FireWire will likely remain a relatively niche video camera and Mac-specific interconnect.

^{[Martin Edwards, news writer.]}