Can Apple's iMacs keep FireWire burning?

By Stuart Corner
Thursday, 09 August 2007 18:25

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The industry body behind the FireWire (Aka IEEE1394) interface technology has seized on the fact that it features in the new iMacs to counter a market researcher's claims that the technology is in 'slow decline'.

"Apple's introduction of new iMacs with 1394b this week demonstrates that the 1394b standard, also known as FireWIre 800, is gaining significant momentum," the 1394 Trade Association said.

The two new members of the iMac line include two 1394 ports, one using 1394a (FireWire 400) and the other 1394b. At their launch, Apple CEO Steve Jobs highlighted the presence of FireWire 800 and noted that 1394b is now on all iMacs.

"Apple's decision to incorporate 1394b into all of its iMacs is another indication of increasing momentum for the 'b' version of FireWire," said James Snider, executive director of the 1394 Trade Association. "The storage product designers set the pace by adopting FireWire 800 for hard disk drives, and now, with this announcement from Apple, 1394b is in the mainstream."

1394b delivers 800Mbps bandwidth and can operate over cables up to 10 metres in length. According to the 1394 Trade Association, "It has been adopted by all of the leading providers of high end storage products this year, with high end hard drives from Seagate, Western Digital, La Cie and others gaining market share worldwide."

The Association added: "1394b silicon is now available at favourable prices. Texas Instruments offers a complete variety of 1394b devices, the TSB81 PHY and TSB82 Link series, including a mil-spec version. Oxford Semiconductor earlier this year introduced its OX936 series of devices that supports 1394b and hardware RAID with a peak performance of 250MBytes/s.