The 1394 trade association, the boffins behind the FireWire standard, have announced the next generation of IEEE 1394 standard. Named S3200, the interface is four times faster than FireWire 800, at 3.2 Gigabits per second (SATA, today's internal hard drive interface, runs at up to 3 Gigabits per second).
The cables will look and work just like the existing FW800 connectors, and will be backward compatible, just like USB 1 and 2. And because FireWire delivers a big jolt of power across the bus, hard drives don't need extra AC cables to run them. These blistering speeds should be available next year; 1394 expects to have the new standard ratified by February.
Press release [1394]
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