USB was originally seen as a complement to FireWire (IEEE 1394), which was designed as a high-speed serial bus which could efficiently interconnect peripherals such as hard disks, audio interfaces, and video equipment. USB was designed for simplicity and low cost, while FireWire was designed for high performance, particularly in time-sensitive applications such as audio and video. USB and FireWire had different design goals when they were first developed. Technical Differences between USB and FireWire USB 3.0 (released November 2008) gives a theoretical speed of 4.8 Gbit/s, which is about 5 times faster than FireWire 800, substantially faster than any of its competitors or predecessors until the next one is released. For example, the FireWire host interface supports memory-mapped devices, which allows high-level protocols to run without loading the host CPU with interrupts and buffer-copy operations.īesides throughput, other differences are that it uses simpler bus networking, provides more power over the chain, more reliable data transfer, and uses fewer CPU resources.įireWire 800 is substantially faster than Hi-Speed USB, both in theory and in practice. This is due to USB's reliance on the host-processor to manage low-level USB protocol, whereas FireWire delegates the same tasks to the interface hardware (requiring less or no CPU usage).
Typical USB PC-hosts rarely exceed sustained transfers of 280 Mbit/s, with 240 Mbit/s being more typical. Its maximum transfer rate is up to 10 times faster than the USB 2.0 release.Ī Fire Wire hub from Medusa (click to enlarge)Īlthough high-speed USB 2.0 (theoretical speed 400 Mbit/s) nominally runs at a higher signaling rate than FireWire 400 (theoretical speed also 400 Mbit/s), data transfers over S400 FireWire interfaces generally outperform similar transfers over USB 2.0 interfaces. The USB 3.0 specification was released on Novemby the USB 3.0 Promoter Group.
Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Alcatel-Lucent, Microsoft, NEC, and Philips jointly led the initiative to develop a higher data transfer rate than the 1.0 specification (480 Mbit/s vs 12 Mbit/s). The USB 2.0 specification was released in April 2000 and was standardized by the USB-IF at the end of 2001. USB was created by a core group of companies that consisted of Compaq, Digital, IBM, Intel, Northern Telecom, and Microsoft.
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It was intended to replace the multitude of connectors at the back of PCs, as well as to simplify software configuration of communication devices. The USB 1.0 specification was introduced in 1996.
On June 12, 2008, all amendments to the standard were incorporated into a superseding standard IEEE Std. Apple's development began in the late 1980s, later presented to the IEEE, and was completed in 1995. Tiny Dinosaur USBs (click to enlarge) History and Development of FireWire vs USB History of FireWireįireWire was developed by the IEEE P1394 Working Group, largely driven by contributions from Apple, although major contributions were also made by engineers from Texas Instruments, Sony, Digital Equipment Corporation, IBM, and INMOS/SGS Thomson (now STMicroelectronics).Īpple intended FireWire to be a serial replacement for the parallel SCSI bus while providing connectivity for digital audio and video equipment.
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