1. IEEE 1394 The Cable Connection to Complete the Digital Revolution By: Jay Webb

2. Developed by Apple Computers, Inc. in the mid 1980’s. Apple uses the Trademarked name IEEE produced the standard in 1995 calling it IEEE Standard 1394

3. The initial standard IEEE 1394-1995 called for serial data transfer at speeds of 100 Mbps – 200 Mbps. The second standard, IEEE-1394a- 2000, upgraded this speed to 400 Mbps. The most recent standard, IEEE- 1394b-2002 made Firewire the fastest serial data communication bus to date at 800 Mbps. Speed

4. The Connection

5. The Connector Modeled after the Gameboy Connector Durable and safe Easily inserted into low visibility ports Can be inserted in only one direction

6. The Cable

7. Power capability from 8 to 40 Volts at up to 1.5 Amps 2 data pair lines Single cable just a few mm in diameter

8. Peripheral Devices Firewire can be used to connect up to 63 devices on a single serial bus. Single port provides power for peripherals as well as extremely fast data transport

9. Applicability Firewire is a true “Plug and Play” serial data communication port. Any Firewire device can be connected at any time to any other Firewire compatible device even during full data bus operation. Uses asynchronous (information) and isochronous (real time A/V) data transfer modes.

10. Data Transfer Uses NRZ with DS encoding One pair of data wires is the clock, while the other is the raw data. Data is sent as packets containing 3 parts: 10-bit bus ID 6-bit physical ID 48-bit storage area for address registers and memory

11. Since all data is sent as packets, there is no need to constantly poll the devices. The maximum packet size for 200 Mbps communication is a mere 1KB. Data is received at nodes, at which all of the other possible 62 devices may receive the data from a single device’s output.

12. Serial Bus Management Process

13. 200 Mbps single packet

14. Future of Firewire The maximum cable length for Firewire is 100 meters with glass optical fiber cable, while normal cabling is good only up to 4.5 meters. Researchers are constantly looking for ways to extend cable length. Due to the high bandwidth capabilities of Firewire, it can handle hundreds of channels of digital audio. Soon, Firewire could be used as the major interconnection method for home audio and video, allowing a simple cable connection between audio/video components and computers without the use of expensive video conversion components.

15. References http://www.faculty.iu-bremen.de/birk/lectures/PC101- 2003/13firewire/applications.htmhttp://www.faculty.iu-bremen.de/birk/lectures/PC101- 2003/13firewire/applications.htm http://www.skipstone.com/compcon.html http://www.skipstone.com/ss21st.html http://www.skipstone.com/newspap.html http://www.apple.com