IEEE new Firewire S3200 to rival USB 3.0
The 1394 Trade Association announced a new standard of firewire with speed quadruples current spec of 800Mbit/s to 3.2Gbit/s . It wouldn't be named alphabetic order like they have for 1394a, 1394b to 1394c. The new spec known as S3200 preserves all the advantages from existing firewire 800 or 1394b including the peer-to-peer protocol, bus-powered capability even with works the same cable and connector. One major different is major performance boost with S3200.
The 1394 Trade Association spokesman Richard Davis told InformationWeek that the S3200 will first find it ways to storage device then consumer goods such as HDTV set top box or Hi-Def media player. On the other hands, another major peripheral interface leaded by Intel and Promoters Group members Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Texas Instruments, NEC and NXP Semiconductors are coming out with USB 3.0 first quarter next year.
The next generation on the ubiquitous Universal Serial Bus technology is even faster with the fiber optic cable. The 3rd Generation will have 10 times transfer rate, make it 4.8Gbit/s faster than USB 2.0. It will maintain the same Master – Slave protocol, backward compatibility to USB 1.1. There were no mention of similar feature on IEEE side but we can only assure it capability since the architecture to physical cable and connector remain compatible. Despite the spec difference in slower speed, the new FireWire release will likely be compared to USB 3.0 due to better throughput in Peer-to-Peer protocol. Either one will compliment to the existing 3.0 Gbit/s ESATA/SATA II.