Peripheral Component Interconnect


peripheral component interconnect

[pə‚rif·ə·rəl kəm‚pō·nənt ′in·tər·‚kə·nek] (computer science) A bus standard for connecting additional input/output devices (such as graphics or modem cards) to a personal computer. Abbreviated PCI.

Peripheral Component Interconnect

(hardware)(PCI) A standard for connecting peripherals to apersonal computer, designed by Intel and released aroundAutumn 1993. PCI is supported by most major manufacturersincluding Apple Computer. It is technically far superior toVESA's local bus. It runs at 20 - 33 MHz and carries 32bits at a time over a 124-pin connector or 64 bits over a188-pin connector. An address is sent in one cycle followedby 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 Alphaand PowerPC systems, and probably Cyrix 586 and Cyrix 686 systems. However, it is processor independent and so canwork 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 slowperipherals and allow them to operate asynchronously.