IEEE 1394 interface standard for a serial bus for high-speed communications

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, who called it FireWire. The 1394 interface is comparable to USB though USB has more market share.


FireWire can connect up to 63 peripherals in a tree or daisy-chain topology^[21] (as opposed to Parallel SCSI's electrical bus topology). It allows peer-to-peer device communication — such as communication between a scanner and a printer — to take place without using system memory or the CPU. FireWire also supports multiple hosts per bus. It is designed to support plug and play and hot swapping. The copper cable it uses in its most common implementation can be up to 4.5 metres (15 ft) long and is more flexible than most parallel SCSI cables. In its six-conductor or nine-conductor variations, it can supply up to 45 watts of power per port at up to 30 volts,^{[citation needed]} allowing moderate-consumption devices to operate without a separate power supply.