. Editor: Charles Severance, Michigan State University, College of Engineering, 112 Engineering Bldg., East Lansing, MI 48824; voice (517) 353- 2268; fax (517) 355-7516;
[email protected]; http://www.egr.msu.edu/~crs Apple’s blessing, it has since been devel- oped by the IEEE 1394 working group, Linking which is part of the IEEE Microprocessor and Microcomputer Standards Committee activity. Much like Appletalk, Firewire is designed as an easy-to-maintain local area Computers network for the consumer. It supports an Standards Bianry Critic extremely flexible daisy-chain- or tree- based topology for complete flexibility in wiring layouts. and Consumer Firewire operates at 100, 200, or 400 Mbps. A gigabit version is also on the horizon. At 400 Mbps, Firewire can sus- tain an uncompressed high-quality digital Electronics video stream using roughly 50 percent of its bandwidth. The standard’s protocols are called isosynchronous. With isosyn- chronous protocols, devices can negotiate for guaranteed bandwidth across a 1394 Charles Severance, Michigan State University connection. The remaining bandwidth can be used for asynchronous data trans- fers, which are more typical of computer data traffic. Asynchronous data transfers occur during periods not reserved for syn- he capabilities of our personal HERITAGE AND OPERATION chronous traffic. This approach allows computers have increased dra- Much of Firewire’s heritage comes from reliable delivery of audio, video, and com- matically over the past 15 years, Appletalk networking. In the late 1980s puter data on the same medium. and so has the number of con- Apple began developing Firewire as its Tnectors on the back of our sys- next generation of Appletalk.