Next-gen Firewire blazes to 3.2 gigabits per second!
One of the sweetest things about being a Mac owner is that we all are allowed in on this little niche of technology known as Firewire without any additional trouble beyond simply owning the Mac. If you’re currently using either Firewire 400 or 800, get excited: the next iteration of Firewire technology will be clocked at a rather zippy 3.2 gigabits per second.
The 1394 trade association announced S3200, or the newest member to the Firewire family, earlier this month; it should be cleared for take-off by early next February. Aside from the obvious excitement of the actual speeds that S3200 claims to deliver, the new technology is built upon the existing cables and connectors of 1394b standards (better known as Firewire 800), so users won’t have to buy new machines, cables and storage devices to utilize the new speeds.
For those of you not familiar with Firewire, there’s a lot to appreciate about the technology that quietly sits outside the limelight of USB: Firewire delivers almost every iota of speed it claims (approximately 97%), where USB fails at times to deliver even half of its promised performance.
This is mainly due to the high software and processor requirements of USB; essentially, your USB speed is largely related to the quality and power of your platform and your hardware. Firewire can operate largely on its own, and isn’t hampered by outside factors; thus, when Firewire is said to deliver 3.2 gigabits per second, you can really expect nearly all of that power to be at your fingertips.
Again, no word on an exact release date of the next Firewire technology, but you can safely bet on sometime next year.
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