Bus IEEE 1394 Firewire

Firewire is the name used in the late 1980s by Apple, its original designer, to designate the serial, digital, high-speed communication bus defined by the IEEE 1394-1995 standard and its derivatives. Firewire has thus become the name used by manufacturers of consumer products. Initially designed for multimedia applications, Firewire is now used for a number of other applications, particularly in the industrial sector. In fact, its high performance, architecture and communication model make it potentially usable for many applications in a wide variety of fields.

Despite this, Firewire initially had to battle for many years against older data buses such as Small Computer System Interface (SCSI), before finally gaining a firm foothold. Firewire also faced stiff competition from the USB bus (see the article "Universal Serial Bus USB" [S 8 150] ). For example, USB 1.1 has a strong presence in areas where performance is of little importance, and USB 2.0 in applications where large, unexpected variations in performance are tolerable. Since Firewire has none of these shortcomings, it has found justification in a wide range of applications, notably in the field of video editing, making it a permanent fixture for many years to come.

This document deals with the original IEEE 1394 standard. However, the accompanying extensions or standards are detailed in the sections where they present notable differences or significant improvements. The term Firewire will be used in this document to designate the collection of IEEE 1394 standards (IEEE 1394, IEEE 1394a, IEEE 1394b, etc.).