News 

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers approved the new update to the IEEE 1394 standard this week, more commonly known by its Apple brand name, FireWire, and i.LINK, which is a Sony brand name.

The 2008 specification will bring two new standards, S1600 and S3200, which will provide theoretical data transfer rates of 1.6Gb/sec and 3.2Gb/sec respectively. Existing

ADVERTISEMENT

connections and cables will be used, helping to maintain backwards compatibility.

The 1394 Trade Association claimed last year that the S3200 specification would "make FireWire so fast that users will see no advantage from eSATA".

Current implementations of FireWire are either S400 or S800, which can only reach 400Mb/sec and 800Mb/sec. Both versions are still commonly found on a variety of devices, including camcorders.

Firewire has been overshadowed in recent years by USB, which is currently on version 2 and capable of 480Mb/sec transfers. The new 1394 standards will go some way to giving the format an advantage, although they will be overtaken by USB in 2010 when the 4.8Gb/sec USB 3 emerges as a standard.

However, FireWire remains a popular choice in certain niche categories. It is heavily used in aviation, for example, being deployed in both the F-22 Raptor and the Space Shuttle.