Peripheral Component Interconnect

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, AMD5x86, AMD K5 and AMD K6 processors, in some DEC Alpha

and PowerPC systems, and probably Cyrix 586 and Cyrix686 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)