Peripheral Component Interconnect

Peripheral Component Interconnect definition

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)