The 1394 Trade Association, which develops the FireWire cable transmission protocol, announced a new specification to quadruple the speed of FireWire to reach 3.2 gigabits per second – without users needing to update their FireWire 800 cables or connectors.
The current standard, FireWire 800, can move over 90 megabytes per second. The new standard S3200 will be able to transmit nearly 400 megabytes per second.
S3200 will also enhance FireWire’s strong position in consumer electronics A/V devices such as camcorders and televisions. Currently, all set top boxes provided by cable companies have FireWire ports as do many high definition TVs.
According to the 1394 Trade Association, FireWire is the only separable interface today that can record HD programs in their full digital quality while also meeting the content protection requirements of copyright holders.
Technology development is also nearing completion to permit FireWire to operate over cable television coaxial cables, without disrupting the existing program content. With S3200, FireWire becomes fast enough to move even uncompressed HD signals over long distances at lower cost than solutions such as HDMI.
“The S3200 standard will sustain the position of IEEE 1394 as the absolute performance leader in multi-purpose I/O ports for consumer applications in computer and CE devices,” said James Snider, executive director, 1394 Trade Association.