<
hardware> (
PCI) A standard for connecting
peripherals to a
personal computer, designed by
Intel and released around
Autumn 1993.
PCI is supported by most major manufacturers
including
Apple Computer. It is technically far superior to
VESA's
local bus. It runs at 20 - 33 MHz and carries 32
bits at a time over a 124-pin connector or 64 bits over a
188-pin connector. An address is sent in one cycle followed
by one word of data (or several in burst mode).
PCI is used in systems based on
Pentium,
Pentium Pro, {AMD
5x86},
AMD K5 and
AMD K6 processors, in some
DEC Alpha
and
PowerPC systems, and probably
Cyrix 586 and {Cyrix
686} systems. However, it is processor independent and so can
work with other processor architectures as well.
Technically,
PCI is not a bus but a
bridge or
mezzanine.
It includes buffers to decouple the
CPU from relatively slow
peripherals and allow them to operate asynchronously.
(1997-12-07)