CUBE has addressed the IEEE 1394 standard.
Bright Prospects Revive the IEEE 1394 Bus
Bearing all the right features for wedding PCs to digital consumer electronics, the IEEE 1394 serial interface may have found its moment.
by Gil Bassak
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Against the present-day backdrop of expanding data and telecommunications networks uniting the worlds of computing and communications, the IEEE 1394 serial bus, known as Firewire, is building a different bridge--one bringing computers together with digital consumer equipment. Because IEEE 1394's potential for sparking high-volume sales has attracted widespread interest from IC makers, macrocell vendors, and their customers, the interface may well be destined to join the Universal Serial Bus (USB) and the Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) bus as a major factor on the intellectual property (IP) scene.
"The personal computer and consumer markets are on a collision course, and 1999 will be the time of first impact," predicts Mark Kirstein, director of research for converging markets and technologies at In-Stat, Scottsdale, Ariz. "That's the year when PCs will try to enter the living room," and products for the consumer market, spurred on by sales of digital television sets, will start making the leap from analog to digital. Not coincidentally, Kirstein also predicts that in 1999, the number of PCs and consumer electronics products sporting IEEE 1394 interfaces will explode (Figure 1).
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