GLOSSARY

The brand name FireWire was originally limited to Macintosh models by Apple Computer but meanwhile its use can be licensed with the 1394 Trade Association by other firms too. In the PC sector, FireWire is also known as the IEEE 1394 standard, which had been defined in 1995. Sony has used the term i.LINK for the FireWire interface since April 1997, and integrated a FireWire interface into the PlayStation 2 and other devices.




FireWire is primarily used for high speed data exchange between a computer and multimedia or other peripheral devices, but it is also employed in industrial or automobile electronics. Originally developed as a successor to SCSI, thanks to its high transfer bandwidth, FireWire can also be used as an alternative to Ethernet (IP over Firewire).