Upcoming FireWire to hit 3.2 gigabits per second
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Dec 16, 2007 at 4:39pm
Don’t count out Firewire out just yet. The 1394 Trade Association, a worldwide organization dedicated to the advancement and enhancement of the IEEE 1394 audio video standard (better known as Firewire to Mac users) has announced a new specification to quadruple the speed of Firewire to reach 3.2 gigabits per second.
The new electrical specification, known as S3200, builds upon the IEEE 1394b standard, preserving all the advantages of Firewire while offering a major and unprecedented boost in performance, the Association (of which Apple is a member) says. The new speed uses the cables and connectors already deployed for Firewire 800 products.
Because the 1394 arbitration, data, and service protocols weren’t modified for S3200, silicon and software vendors can deploy the faster speed FireWire quickly and with confidence that it will deliver its full potential performance, says James Snider, executive director of the 1394 Trade Association. The S3200 specification is expected to be ratified by early February. Firewire 800 hard drives today can move over 90 megabytes per second. S3200 preserves 100 percent of the 1394b design efficiency and will deliver extremely high payload speeds reaching nearly 400 megabytes per second, Snider says. Other interface technologies struggle to deliver half their advertised bit rate to the user, even under optimal conditions, he adds.
The S3200 specification brings Firewire to this new performance level without compromising existing features, Snider says. For example, Firewire provides much more electrical power than any other interface, freeing users from inconvenient AC power adapters, he explains. Firewire products built using S3200 will directly connect to every previously released Firewire product. Alternative cable options are available to carry FireWire over long distances—100 meters or more—even at high speeds.
The best hard drives with FireWire 800 can move data almost three times as fast as the best hard drives with USB 2.0, Snider says. Also, Firewire provides much more electrical power than USB, so FireWire-equipped hard drives can operate without an AC adapter, and at high rotational speeds, he adds. USB hard drives can fail to work from USB power, or require a second USB cable for power, or use the lowest-performance drive mechanisms because so little power is available, according to Snider. With S3200 this power advantage for Firewire is fully preserved. S3200 also makes Firewire so fast that users will see no advantage from eSATA, he continues.
Both interfaces are much faster than any modern hard drive mechanism, but eSATA doesn’t provide electrical power to operate a drive. On a computer, an eSATA port is far less flexible than a FireWire port, because many more devices can connect to FireWire, Snider says.
The Silicon Working Group developed the S3200 specification within the 1394 Trade Association, with participation by industry leaders including Symwave, Texas Instruments, LSI Corporation, and Oxford Semiconductor. S3200 specifies the electrical operation of the 3.2 Gigabit mode first specified by IEEE 1394b-2002, without changing any connector, cable, protocol, or software requirements. Based on the working group’s progress, the Trade Association has set a January 2008 date for the specification to enter a ratification process.
-hh Says:
I’m not familiar with FW1600 to know if it had all of the backwards-compatibility aspects that this announcement talks about for FW3200, but the degree to which this announcement talks about them (as advantages) kind of suggests not.
Overall, I think the point of this is that FW3200 very specifically aims to compete with eSATA, as this makes the two into throughput equals. Setting aside backwards-compatibility and power, FW also holds two other advantages that aren’t mentioned here, namely single plug design (external SATA isn’t the same as eSATA) and an interface plug that doesn’t wear out. The latter is a complaint that’s just starting to emerge from the home enthusiasts who were early adopters.
-hh
Posted on December 17, 2007
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Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
dave Says:
What exactly is the point of this? FW1600 already is a ratified standard with zero implementations… USB needs help, just because it’s overhead and implementation make it inherently slower than FW, but this just seems to be a ‘me too’ kind of thing.
Posted on December 16, 2007