High-Speed Exchange: USB 2.0 Arrives

There's a new battle set to stage on the desktop. This one involves how fast, and with which standard, your peripherals will talk to the PC.

The gloves came off last week in this scuffle over next-generation interfaces as Japanese vendors unveiled a wider range of FireWire-based products while also debuting the first devices that support the new USB 2.0 interface at the World PC Expo show, held just outside of Tokyo.

Old and New Face Off

The IEEE 1394 standard, also known as FireWire or iLink, has been around for some time although it is only now beginning to gain support as a wider range of peripherals and PCs that support the standard come on the market. USB 2.0, which counts chip giant Intel as one of its primary backers, is the new kid on the block and is expected to start being built into PCs and peripherals from later this year or early next year.

In terms of performance, the jury is still out on which has the edge but in terms of basic numbers, USB 2.0's 480 megabits per second maximum data transfer rate exceeds the 400 mbps of IEEE1394. Vendors are also yet to pass judgment. The exhibition showed a growing number of peripherals from a selection of companies, both large and small, supporting both standards.

Preview of What's to Come

IO Data Device unveiled a broad lineup of products supporting each technology. In the USB 2.0 corner were a DVD-RW drive and a portable 24-speed CD-RW drive. The company also showed off a USB 2.0 PC Card interface card to allow the new drives to be connected to notebook computers until USB 2.0 connectivity becomes more common. Its new IEEE 1394 peripherals included a pair of external magneto optical disk drives that support 640MB and 1.3GB disks.

Other companies unveiling FireWire-based devices included Matsushita Electric Industrial, better known as Panasonic, which was displaying an upgraded version of its external DVD-RAM drive, now with added support for DVD-R disks. The drive will go on sale next week in Japan.

For the USB 2.0 camp, Yamaha was showing CD-R/RW drive that will be available from mid-October and Melco had a pair of external hard disk drives, with capacity of 40GB and 60GB, that will be available in late September. U.S. pricing and availability was not announced.

There were some products on display that support both standards. Nagase offered somewhat of a compromise with its DVD-RAM/R drive, which offers both a USB 2.0 and IEEE1394 interfaces while Melco has a CD-RW drive that supports both FireWire and the current USB 1.1 interface.