800Mbps FireWire Enclosures At Manufacturers, Native FW CDRWs Coming


IGM sources have revealed that Macpower, the Taiwan-based maker of the Oxford 911-based IceCube FireWire enclosure, are commencing manufacture of 800Mbps FireWire cases this month.

Taiwanese electronics manufacturers - the makers of a large proportion of Apple product, including PowerBook, iBook and iMac - are the main drivers behind the push to 1394b, the next-generation FireWire standard. Indeed, Taiwanese electronics manufacturers underpin much of global computer industry.

Computex, the big Taipei trade show, was held last week and sported a 'FireWire hall', where every permutation of FW digital devices could be seen. Major CDRW manufacturers Sony and Yamaha have already committed to building FW-native CDRWs (current FW CDRWs use a FW bridge chip and an IDE CDRW), which will permit vastly superior performance, provided burner speeds themselves can keep up.

Analysis: What are your bets for 800Mbps FireWire at MWNY? And what of USB 2.0? Intel's major marketing push hasn't come yet, and it will be a tough sell for them to tout a technology that is half the speed of the dominant DV and high-speed peripheral technology. Still, even 800Mbps' worth of bandwidth won't convince Intel to put FireWire onto its motherboards.