I guess the title of this thread should now be 'It appears Universal Audio has done it'.
Rumour has it there is a Uad-2 Satellite comming that is Firewire for their bigger cards (duo and quad). I'm sure UA knew they had to figure out a way to make their bigger cards portable since so many musicians prefer portability. The laptop is the area where dedicated dsp's are needed the most since they have no dual processor versions and generally are much weaker then desktops.
I find it strange UA chose firewire since they spoke so badly about Firewire when they released their uad-1e card in 2007. Maybe they had no choice but to try it since expresscard did not work for them and they probably figured it never would. I guess since they make all the money they could afford to pay a expert to design the firewire interface for them to a good enough standard. Here's a quote and a link with UA comments on Firewire and Expresscard from 2007;
UA QUOTE: "The PCIe bus and ExpressCard system interfaces are vastly superior to other high-speed interconnects, and allow us to run many more channels (up to 254 channels per card), operate reliably at higher sample rates, and offer much more powerful DSP expansion than alternatives using FireWire or EtherNet. Put simply, PCIe is the professional solution." END QUOTE
Link-
http://www.uaudio.com/press/releases/20 ... AD-1E.html
This Satellite is a big move by UA and does mean Sonic Core are not alone with large dsp power for Laptop studios anymore. I still prefer expresscard since several dsp companies have had problems with firewire (SSL, TC). Firewire to my knowledge tends to have a little extra added latency aswell.
The Uad-2 Quads for desktops are very expensive and i'm sure the Satellite Laptop version will cost even more, so the market that loves uad and want this new device will likely get taxed heavily with no mercy. The Satellite Firewire device still is not as portable as XITE-1 since it has no mic pre's, converters, i/o's but none-the-less a big move from UA. Here's a link to the Gearslutz thread talking about the new Uad Satellite (wich is just a rumour ATM).
http://www.gearslutz.com/board/new-prod ... llite.html
EDITED