FireWire, IEEE 1394, IEC 1883. These titles refer to a high-speed serial bus that is literally a new standard for transmitting data between PCs and consumer electronics. FireWire, as named by its inventors at Apple Computer Inc., is designed for applications where large amounts of digital audio and video data are recorded, edited, stored, and transferred between devices. The performance, flexibility, and ease of use of the firewire serial bus have caught the attention of engineers at Keysight Technologies. As a result, IEEE 1394 has been implemented as an I/O interface between external PCs and C-size VXI mainframes.

This paper describes the adaptation of IEEE 1394 to VXI systems from hardware, software, and programming perspectives.