IEEE 1394

IEEE 1394 is a cross-platform connection type for high-speed serial data input and output. It is commonly used for interconnection of digital devices such as digital cameras and camcorders to computers. There are four versions of 4, 6, 9 and 12 pins. In the domestic market, its popularity has decreased among hardware manufacturers, and it has been replaced by the USB interface in its versions 2.0 and 3.0, or the Thunderbolt interface, although it is widely used in industrial automation, the military industry, and for the professional environment.

Features

• It reaches a speed of 400 megabits per second, keeping it fairly stable.
• Flexibility of connection and ability to connect up to 63 devices.
• Accepts cable lengths up to 425 cm.
• Answer at the moment. FireWire can guarantee a distribution of data in perfect synchrony.
• Food by bus up to 25 VDC. There is a type of Firewire port that does not supply power, only provides data communication service. This port has only 4 contacts, instead of the 6 that has a powered Firewire port.
• Plug and ready connections, known as plug & play.
• Hot Connection (allows to connect devices with PC on).

FireWire 800 (IEEE 1394b-2000)

Published in 2000. Approximately double the speed of FireWire 400, up to 786.5 Mbit/s with half-duplex technology, covering distances of up to 100 meters over cable. Firewire 800 reduces handshaking delays by using 8b/10b (code that encodes 8 bits into 10 bits, which was developed by IBM and allows for sufficient clock transitions, control signal coding, and error detection. The code 8b/10b is similar to FDDI's 4B/5B (which was not adopted due to poor DC balance), which reduces signal distortion and increases transfer speed, thus for applications that require the transfer of large volumes of information, it is far superior to USB 2.0.It is backward compatible with Firewire 400 using hybrid cables that allow connection to the 6-pin Firewire400 connectors and the 9-pin Firewire800 connectors.In 2003 Apple released the first device of commercial use of Firewire800.

FireWire s1600 and s3200 (IEEE 1394-2008)

Announced in December 2007, they enable 1.6 and 3.2 Gbit/s bandwidth, four times the speed of Firewire 800, while using the same 9-pin connector. It is ideal for use in storage and multimedia applications such as camcorders, hard drives, and optical drives. His popularity is low.

FireWire s800T (IEEE 1394c-2006)

Announced in June 2007. It brings technical improvements that allow the use of the interface with RJ-45 ports over CAT 5 cable, thus combining the advantages of Ethernet with Firewire800.

General characteristics

• Supports the connection of up to 63 devices with cables of a maximum length of 425 cm with tree topology.
• Compatible with plug " play ".
• Compatible with communication peer-to-peer which allows the link between devices without using the system memory or the microprocessor.
• Compatible with hot connection.
• All IEEE 1394 devices are identified by an exclusive IEEE EUI-64 identifier (an extension of MAC Ethernet addresses).
• It is an isochronous means of transmission, that is, it was intended to transmit real-time data from one point to another. This is fundamental in applications that need to keep constant monitoring (e.g. video surveillance, where we care more about being able to keep an eye on an area than the fact that we can momentarily get the image).

Speed comparison

Connections of external devices

• Firewire 400: 50 MB/s
• Firewire 800: 100 MB/s
• Firewire s1600: 200 MB/s
• Firewire s3200: 400 MB/s
• USB 1.0: 0.19 MB/s
• USB 1.1: 1.5 MB/s
• USB 2.0: 60 MB/s

High Speed External Device Connections

• USB 3.0: 600 MB/s
• USB 3.1: 1225 MB/s
• Thunderbolt 1: 1200 MB/s
• Thunderbolt 2: 2400 MB/s
• Thunderbolt 3: 4800 MB/s

Connections for expansion cards

• PCI Express 1.x (x1): 250 MB/s
• PCI Express 2.0 (x1): 500 MB/s
• PCI Express 3.0 (x1): 1000 MB/s
• PCI Express 1.x (x8): 2000 MB/s
• PCI Express 2 (x8): 4000 MB/s
• PCI Express 3 (x8): 8000 MB/s
• PCI Express 1.x (x16): 4000 MB/s
• PCI Express 2 (x16): 8000 MB/s
• PCI Express 3 (x16): 16000 MB/s

Internal storage connections

• ATA: 100 MB/s (UltraDMA 5)
• PATA: 133 MB/s (UltraDMA 6)
• SATA I: 150 MB/s
• SATA II: 300 MB/s
• SATA III: 600 MB/s
• SATA 3.2: 2 GB/s

Applications

Digital Video Editing

Digital video editing with IEEE 1394 has enabled the incorporation of FireWire into low-cost, high-quality video cameras, enabling professional video creation on both Macintosh and PC platforms. The IEEE 1394 interface allows video capture directly from digital video cameras with built-in FireWire ports, and from analog systems via audio/video converters.