The IEEE announced this week that it has approved the 1394-2008 standard. The new standard includes the complete specifications for S1600 and S3200, which provides speeds of up to 3.2 Gigabit/second.
Commercially known under the brand names of FireWire™ and i.LINK™, the IEEE 1394™ standard provides specifications for a high-speed serial bus which supports both asynchronous and isochronous communication and integrates well with most IEEE standard 32-bit and 64-bit parallel buses. More than 500 million IEEE 1394 ports have been produced since the standard was first published in 1995.While not as fast as USB 3.0, which is expected to top out at 4.8Gbps, these new specifications builds upon the IEEE 1394b standard and uses the same cables and connectors already deployed for FireWire 800 products. If you'd like to read more, the IEEE's entire press release can be found here.
"The new standard includes all of the amendments, enhancements and more than 100 errata which have been added to the base standard over the last 12 years," said Les Baxter, chair of the working group which developed the standard. "This update provides developers with a single document they can rely upon for all of their application needs."
The 1394-2008 standard updates and revises all prior 1394 standards, including 1394a™, 1394b™, 1394c™, enhanced UTP, and the 1394 beta plus PHY-Link interface. It also incorporates the complete specifications for S1600 (1.6 Gigabit/second bandwidth) and for S3200, which provides 3.2 Gigabit/second speeds.
