APRIL 15--The 1394 Trade Association (TA; Grapevine, TX; www.1394ta.org) completed its Compliance and Interoperability Workshop in Tokyo, Japan, earlier this month, and expects that several new consumer and computer systems will earn the group's Compliance Logo once results are compiled. The Tokyo workshop was attended by almost two-dozen companies. It featured the latest semiconductor products, computer peripherals, consumer electronics, and industrial products, which were described by Richard Mourn, the Trade Association's compliance chairman, as "the widest variety of products we have seen to date. With all major market segments present, it is easy to see just how mainstream 1394 has become," said Mourn, who is president of Quantum Parametrics LLC (Colorado Springs, CO; www.quantumparametrics.com), a provider of test services to the 1394 Trade Association.
As final workshop results are compiled over the next few weeks, it appears several devices will earn the 1394 TA's compliance logo. At the Grand Melee, typically held at the end of the compliance testing sessions, participants connected a total of 63 devices, which is the maximum number that are allowed to operate simultaneously on a single 1394 bus. At the same time, video was streamed into an Apple Powerbook equipped with FireWire 800, the latest version of the IEEE 1394 standard.
The 1394 Trade Association will increase the number of compliance products at the next workshop, scheduled for Bellevue, WA, August 11--13, 2003. Because the logo indicates that a product has passed a robust suite of technical tests, the TA anticipates the number of participants to grow quickly as several new exams come on-line. These tests will allow compliance logo testing for DTV/HDTV, DVHS, D-STB, and AV-HDD products.
