SymWave Boosts FireWire Traffic to a Whooping 1.6 Gbps

FireWire might be less common than the mighty USB 2.0 standard, but is still is widely used in professional applications, such as video and audio editing. Symwave gives the port a new lease of life by announcing a new physical layer chip that doubles its data transfer rate capabilities to an impressive 1.6 Gbps.

Touted as the world's first IEEE 1394b S1600 Physical Layer (PHY) solution, the device preserves backwards compatibility with previous versions of the FireWire/1394 standard, including the 800 and 400 Mbps. Moreover, the new chip is competitively priced and offers two times the performance of the FireWire 800 specifications at exactly the same price.

The product is based on Symwave’s state-of-the-art, high speed SERDES technology, which is also the cornerstone for the upcoming USB 3.0 standard. The FirePHY-1600 processor is able to reach 2.0 GHz clock speeds and is fully compliant with the IEEE 1394b S1600 standard

"The FirePHY-1600 is a significant leap forward for us in ultra-high speed SERDES design and is a remarkable achievement for our mixed-signal engineering team. This ‘no-compromise’ solution offers our customers the ultimate combination of speed, cost and backwards compatibility," said Yossi Cohen, President and CEO of Symwave.

According to the company, the FirePHY-1600 chip is suitable for the next generation of Mac and PC platforms, and could bring a significant speed boost in the computers' interaction with the mainstream consumer applications, such as MP3 players, video cameras and external storage devices, or with professional devices, including PC add-in cards and ExpressCards, external storage devices/enclosures, high definition industrial cameras, FireWire hubs/repeaters and high speed Flash card readers.

"We are thrilled that Symwave is introducing the world’s first S1600 silicon solution today," said James Snider, executive director of the 1394 Trade Association. "Symwave’s innovative S1600 technology paves the way for a new breed of high speed applications and firmly establishes IEEE1394 (FireWireTM) as the interface technology of choice for next-generation products."

Unlike the USB standard, FireWire can support 45W power over 1394 cables, peer-to-peer networking and long distance networking over CAT-5, POF and Coax cables.

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