RS/6000 Introduction 15
1.6.4 IEEE 1394
IEEE 1394 is a transport protocol standard for a high performance serial bus
(also known as FireWire) that is a bus technology for the digital age. More
than 50 companies are supporting this standard. FireWire was originally
developed by Apple Computer. It was started as a specification for the
transmission of digitized video and audio quickly, reliably, and at low cost.
The architecture is scalable and hot-pluggable. Industry consortiums are
moving toward a 1 gigabit data transfer rate.
Like USB, 1394 enables plug-and-play peripheral connectivity and supports
isochronous data transfers. The major difference is data rate. USB ideally
supports slow-speed devices like keyboards. IEEE 1394 is able to handle all
I/O, including printers, DASD, PCI, and IDE devices, as shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4. IEEE 1394 Connections
1.7 Workgroup Conferencing
Workgroup Conferencing Version 1.1.0 for AIX (commonly referred to as
Workgroup) is IBM’s first interoperable and industry standards-based desktop
conferencing product that unleashes the real-time videoconferencing