Lucent Technologies has announced a new
chip that will make it easier for manufacturers of storage devices such as
disk drives and CD-ROM drives to adapt current products to the upcoming
high-speed FireWire standard, also known as "1394."
FireWire/1394 technology offers high-speed connections between PCs and
peripheral computer equipment. To date, 1394 has been targeted mostly as a
data transfer technology for consumer products such as digital camcorders
and VCRs. But Lucent hopes that its chip will spur storage device
manufacturers to adopt 1394 also.
Lucent's "Instant 1394 ATA" is a single, high-performance chip that can be
built into a storage device to provide the circuitry necessary for 1394
compatibility. Integrating several, previously discrete components into a
single processor, it supports transfer rates up to 33 MB/sec.
This makes the 1394 chip speedy enough to handle full-motion video and
other high-bandwidth data types.
By contrast, the Universal Serial Bus, another data transfer technology
that is currently being introduced on new PCs by most manufacturers, is
designed for lower-bandwidth devices such as mice, keyboards, and
scanners.
This 1394 chip also obviates the need for device manufacturers to develop
special operating software to produce a 1394-compatible product.
The new chip is being introduced at the 1394 Developers Conference, being
held in San Jose, California, this week.
The Instant 1394 ATA, bundled with its software, will be sold to peripheral
manufacturers at $9.50 in
quantities of 1,000. Samples of the chip will be available in November, and
production quantities should ship in early 1998.