“Oxford Semiconductor is to benefit from Intel’s decision to design a FireWire high speed comms interface into its motherboards. ‘Intel has eventually seen the light and designed 1394b [FireWire 800] into their motherboard. They’re already starting to be manufactured in Taiwan,’ Jalil Oraee, founder and CTO of Oxford Semiconductor, told Electronics Weekly… Oraee sees Intel’s move as a positive one for Oxford Semiconductor: ‘Intel’s move is causing a lot of semiconductor companies to re-evaluate 1394b. It means the market is going somewhere,’ said Oraee,” David Manners reports for Electronics Weekly.
Full article here.
The 1394 digital link standard was conceived in 1986 by technologists at Apple Computer, who chose the trademark ‘FireWire’, in reference to its speeds of operation. The first specification for this link was completed in 1987. It was adopted in 1995 as the IEEE 1394 standard. Apple’s FireWire technology was honored by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, receiving a 2001 Primetime Emmy Engineering Award for FireWire’s impact on the television industry.
More info about FireWire here.
MacDailyNews Note: The Intel Desktop Board D955XBK product description does indeed mention 1394a (FireWire 400) and 1394b (FireWire 800) as features. More info here. Now about those FireWire cables that Apple stopped shipping with the latest iPods…
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Apple should include a combo FireWire and USB 2.0 cable in every iPod box – February 24, 2005
Apple disrespects its own Mac users with iPod’s FireWire fiasco – February 24, 2005
Griffin debuts Dock400 FireWire cable for Apple iPods – February 24, 2005
Petition to Apple for iPod FireWire support posted online – February 23, 2005
Apple knifing its own FireWire baby by pushing USB 2.0 as iPod’s primary connectivity option – February 23, 2005
So, does Apple see a direct income stream from Intel’s decision? How does the licensing work?
Hmm, does Apple get any royalties from this? I certainly hope so, otherwise it will be marketed as another Wintel innovation.
I can see it now: Dellfire.
Pfft.
AP – According to this result of a Google search,, Apple made licensing the name “FireWire” free after many years of charging a rather hefty $1-for-each-copy-of-a-product fee for it. This only refers to companies being able to label their products as “FireWire” rather than “1394.” If there is a fee still associated with using the actual protocol, rather than just the name, I’m too lazy to look it up…
So now PC users all get Firewire 800 as standard. Nice.
Well it’s nice to know that Firewire is “going somewhere”.
Apple gave away the Firewire technology to the standards board called IEEE…which assigned the name IEEE 1394 to the technology. Apple was only making money in the use of the name Firewire until they decided to stop charging for it.
Thanks Follower. I did a little legwork, and it looks like Apple doesn’t charge a fee for a developer license for the Firewire 1.1 protocol.
check this:
http://developer.apple.com/softwarelicensing/agreements/firewire.html
The only thing they seem to really agree to is to use the “Firewire” logo in accordance with Apple standards. Oh well – at least it looks as if Apple has managed to create another standard – that’s a good thing for Apple and everybody!
well since firewire is a ‘standard’ i don’t think there are royalties .. or are there ?
MDN,
That wretched Crazy Frog Axel-F music plays when my mouse hovers over the left-hand end of Safari’s bookmarks bar. Is this a bug in 10.4.1?
Hey maybe now Apple will bring back Firewire as the standard as it should be.
Hear hear! Maybe now we’ll start seeing FireWire 800 on something other than PowerMac towers…
it’s on powerbooks too
Intel, glad you finally decided to pull up a chair and join the rest of the hi-tech world. LOL!
This is fantastic news.
Mildly good for Apple, kinda neutral.
But great for consumers. Let’s see more FW800 accessories.
I was a little worried about FW800 up-take, given the different connector it uses to FW400. It would have been a better idea to use a single connector design, much like USB/USB2.
I guess with Intel now adopting FW the uptake of the higher speed spec will accelerate, and see a more rapid phasing out of the slower standard, which will make my concern a moot point.
Time will tell.
Does this mean that FW has won the high-speed connectivity battle?
Good for Intel, but I don’t exactly see why this belongs on a Mac platform BLOG.
Maybe iPods will ship with FireWire cables standard again.
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has anyone seen the new time magazine, where bill gates is playing the xbox360 with j allard. Both of them are laughing and playing the xbox. If you look carefully on the desk behind them, next to the phone, there is a Apple Powerbook lying right there. No doubt its a powerbook cause u can tell by the look of it. It has the wireless attenna on the side, and the opening lid botton. Funny stuff. How did he let that thing be in the picture. looks like a 12 inch PB with the slot load drive on the side. pg 44-45
What’s with the long time between development and implementation (1986 to 1995)? In this age of lightening fast technology, does it take 9 years to implement a great technology like FireWire?
I wonder what they are working on now?!?!?!?!
DrDude: “I wonder what they are working on now?!?!?!?!”
All I can say is that this is gonna be one hell of a summer at apple.
Why am I not surprised? Once again, where Apple leads, intel follows.
The 1394ta.org site keeps pushing the use of Firewire as a digital network connection to a display (instead of DVI, HDMI, etc). The CEA (consumer electronics trade association) made Firewire a standard for connecting to displays/tvs/etc, and has an active working group making Firewire standard for other uses. Firewire over UWB has been standardized as well. Toshiba and Sony have said they would use Firewire on displays. But it has not happened. And the MS/Intel-led DLNA has not shown Firewire in their interoperability list.
So now that Intel is adding it onto motherboards, what does that mean? Is it just to connect camcorders (so last century!) or something way more…
FireWire was conceived way back when Apple STARTED putting SCSI on Mac’s? What were they waiting for, Steve to return to Apple?
I don’t mean to be pessimistic but, are we doomed to always having two non-interchangeable FireWire connections? Having one 800 connection on my PowerBook means having only one 400 connection, not two like my two USB ports. Having the extra FireWire port would have come in handy.
I wonder why Intel is doing this.This was somthing they were against doing in the past and really wanted to push usb 2.
FireWire is called “iLink” at Sony’s