---
name: "firewire"
section: "4"
platform: "linux"
package: "freebsd-manpages"
version: "6.0-5"
release: "Debian 4.0 (Etch)"
platforms: ["linux", "freebsd"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/firewire"
---

# firewire(4)

IEEE1394 High-performance Serial Bus

## NAME

**firewire** – IEEE1394 High-performance Serial Bus

## SYNOPSIS

**kldload firewire**

or

**device firewire**

**#include \<dev/firewire/firewire.h\>**

## DESCRIPTION

FreeBSD provides machine-independent bus support and raw drivers for **firewire** interfaces.

The **firewire** driver consists of two layers: the controller and the bus layer. The controller attaches to a physical bus (like [pci(4)](/pci/4.md)). The **firewire** bus attaches to the controller. Additional drivers can be attached to the bus.

Up to 63 devices, including the host itself, can be attached to a **firewire** bus. The root node is dynamically assigned with a PHY device function. Also, the other **firewire** bus specific parameters, e.g., node ID, cycle master, isochronous resource manager and bus manager, are dynamically assigned, after bus reset is initiated. On the **firewire** bus, every device is identified by an EUI 64 address.

## FILES

- */dev/fw0.0*

  - */dev/fwmem0.0*

  ## SEE ALSO

[fwe(4)](/fwe/4.md), [fwip(4)](/fwip/4.md), [fwohci(4)](/fwohci/4.md), [pci(4)](/pci/4.md), [sbp(4)](/sbp/4.md), [eui64(5)](/eui64/5.md), [fwcontrol(8)](/fwcontrol/8.md), [kldload(8)](/kldload/8.md), [sysctl(8)](/sysctl/8.md)

## HISTORY

The **firewire** driver first appeared in FreeBSD 5.0.

## AUTHORS

The **firewire** driver was written by Katsushi Kobayashi and Hidetoshi Shimokawa for the FreeBSD project.

## BUGS

See [fwohci(4)](/fwohci/4.md) for security notes.