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IEEE 1394
Sign in to saveAlso known as FireWire, High Performance Serial Bus, i.LINK, Lynx, IEEE 1394-1995, IEEE 1394a-2000, IEEE 1394b-2002, IEEE 1394c-2006
serial bus interface standard
Key facts
- Type
- Serial
- Designer
- Apple (1394a/b), IEEE P1394 Working Group, Sony , Panasonic , etc.
- Designed
- 1986 ; 40 years ago ( 1986 )
- Standardized
- January 1995 ; 31 years ago ( 1995-01 )
- Manufacturer
- Various
- Produced
- 1994–current
- Superseded by
- Thunderbolt (and USB 3.0 for consumer use)
- Length
- 4.5 m (15 ft) maximum
- Hot pluggable
- Yes
- Daisy chain
- Yes, up to 63 devices
- Audio signal
- Yes (software encoding)
- Video signal
- Yes (software encoding)
- Pins
- 4, 6, 9
- Max voltage
- 30 V
- Max current
- 1.5 A
- Data signal
- Yes
- Bitrate
- 1394a, half-duplex 100–400 Mbit/s (12.5–50 MB/s) 1394b and later, full-duplex 800–3200 Mbit/s (100–400 MB/s)
via Wikipedia infobox
~28 min read
Encyclopedic overview
IEEE 1394 is an interface standard for a serial bus for high-speed communications and isochronous real-time data transfer. It was developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s by Apple in cooperation with a number of companies, primarily Sony and Panasonic. It is most commonly known by the name FireWire (Apple), though other brand names exist such as i.LINK (Sony), and Lynx (Texas Instruments). Most consumer electronics manufacturers phased out IEEE 1394 from their product lines in the 2010s.
The copper cable used in its most common implementation can be up to 4.5 m (15 ft) long. Power and data is carried over this cable, allowing devices with moderate power requirements to operate without a separate power supply. FireWire is also available in Cat 5 and optical fiber versions.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “IEEE 1394” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.