PERIPHERAL COMPONENT INTERCONNECT

Domain	Definition
Computing	Peripheral Component Interconnect (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). Source: The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing.
Post & Telecom	An internal PC high speed communications bus developed by Intel. Source: European Union. (references)
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

Specialty Definition: Peripheral Component Interconnect

The Peripheral Component Interconnect standard (in practice almost always shortened to PCI) specifies a computer bus for attaching peripheral devices to a computer motherboard (a so-called local bus). These devices can take the form of:

integrated circuits fitted on the motherboard itself (called planar devices in the PCI specification); or
expansion cards that fit in sockets.

PCI occurs commonly in PCs, where it has displaced ISA as the standard bus, but it also appears in other computer types. Unlike ISA buses, the PCI bus enables dynamic configuration of a peripheral device. At boot up time the PCI card's BIOS and the system BIOS interact and negotiate the resources that the PCI card requests. This enables allocation of IRQs and port addresses through a dynamic process, unlike the ISA bus case which required manual configuration of IRQs using external jumpers. Apart from this, the PCI bus provides a detailed description of all the connected PCI devices through the PCI Configuration Space.

The PCI specification covers the physical size of the bus (including wire spacing), electrical characteristics, bus timing and protocols. The PCI Special Interest Group (PCISIG) sells copies of the specification at http://www.pcisig.com/.

Basic PCI Bus Specifications

33MHz clock with synchronous transfers
peak transfer rate of 133MB per second
32-bit bus width
32-bit address space (4G bytes)
3.3 volt or 5 volt signalling
reflected-wave switching

Basic PCI Variants

PCI 2.2, allows for 64-bit bus widths and/or 66MHz signalling (peak transfer 533 MB/s)
PCI-X, 64-bit version of 2.2 that increases the data rate to 133MHz (peak transfer 1066 MB/s)
PCI-X 266 (or PCI-X DDR), "double-pumped" PCI-X for 266MHz rates (peak transfer 2133 MB/s)
Mini PCI
Compact PCI, uses Eurocard-sized modules using PCI as a backplane

Other PCI Variants

PCI-Express (or 3GIO), a serial bus using PCI signalling and programming concepts

See also:

Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP)
Extended Industry Standard Architecture (EISA)
Industry Standard Architecture (ISA)
Micro Channel Architecture
XT bus architecture

Frequency of Internet Keywords: PERIPHERAL COMPONENT INTERCONNECT

Modern Translation: PERIPHERAL COMPONENT INTERCONNECT

Language		Translations for "PERIPHERAL COMPONENT INTERCONNECT"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses.
Danish		PCI-bus, PCI. (various references)

Dutch		peripheral component interconnect, PCI-bus. (various references)

Finnish		PCI-väylä. (various references)

French		bus PCI. (various references)

German		Peripheral-Component-Interconnect-Bus. (various references)

Greek		PCI, διασύνδεση περιφερειακών εξαρτημάτων. (various references)

Pig Latin		eripheralpay omponentcay interconnectay

Portuguese		barramento local PCI. (various references)

Spanish		interconexión de componentes periféricos. (various references)
Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references.

PERIPHERAL COMPONENT INTERCONNECT

Specialty Definition: PERIPHERAL COMPONENT INTERCONNECT

Computing

Post & Telecom

Specialty Definition: Peripheral Component Interconnect

Basic PCI Bus Specifications

Basic PCI Variants

Other PCI Variants

Crosswords: PERIPHERAL COMPONENT INTERCONNECT

Frequency of Internet Keywords: PERIPHERAL COMPONENT INTERCONNECT

peripheral component interconnect

Modern Translation: PERIPHERAL COMPONENT INTERCONNECT

Danish

Dutch

Finnish

French

German

Greek

Pig Latin

Portuguese

Spanish

INDEX

Expression	Frequency per Day
peripheral component interconnect	8
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.