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BackgroundExpansion buses are much more than the simple electrical connections you make when plugging in a lamp. Through the bus circuits, your computer transfers not only electricity but also information. Like all the data your computer must deal with, that information is defined by a special coding in the sequence and pattern of digital bits. The bus connection must flawlessly transfer that data. To prevent mistakes, every bus design also includes extra signals to control the flow of that information, adjust its rate to accommodate the speed limits of your computer and its expansion accessories, and adjust the digital pattern itself to match design variations. Each different bus design takes it own approach to the signals required for control and translation. Some use extra hardware signals to control transfers across the bus. Others use extensive signaling systems that package information into blocks or packets and route them across the bus by adding addresses and identification bytes to these blocks. Expansion bus standards define how your computer and the cards you add to it negotiate their data transfers. As a result, the standard that your computer's bus follows is a primary determinant of what enhancement products work with it. Nearly all of today's computers follow a single standard, the oft-mentioned Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI), which ensures that the most popular computer cards will work inside them. Older computers often had two expansion buses: a high-speed bus (inevitably PCI) that was the preferred expansion connection and a compatibility bus to accommodate older add-in devices that frugal-minded computer owners refused to discard. The compatibility bus followed the Industry Standard Architecture design, often called the PC bus. In addition, most new computers have an accelerated graphics port (AGP) for their video cards. Although AGP is a high-speed variation on PCI, it is not compatible with ordinary expansion cards. PCI replaced ISA because of speed. PCI was about eight times faster than ISA. But time has taken its toll, and engineers are now eyeing higher-performance alternatives to PCI. Some of these, such as PCI-X, are straightforward extrapolations on the basic PCI design. Others, such as HyperTransport and InfiniBand, represent new ways of thinking about the interconnections inside a computer. Notebook computers have their own style of expansion buses that use PC Cards rather than the slide-in circuit boards used by PCI. This design follows the standards set by the Personal Computer Memory Card International Association (PCMCIA). The basic PC Card design allows for performance and operation patterned after the old ISA design, but the CardBus design expands on PC Card with PCI-style bus connections that are backward compatible. That means a CardBus slot will accept either a CardBus or PC Card expansion card (with one exception—fat "Type 3" cards won't fit in ordinary skinny slots), so your old cards will happily work even in the newest of computers. Unlike those of desktop computers, the expansion buses of notebook machines are externally accessible—you don't have to open up the computer to slide in a card. External upgrades are, in fact, a necessity for notebook computers in that cracking open the case of a portable computer is about as messy as opening an egg and, for most people, an equally irreversible process. In addition, both the PC Card and CardBus standards allow for hot-swapping. That is, you can plug in a card or unplug it while the electricity is on to your computer and the machine is running. The expansion slots inside desktop computers generally do not allow for hot-swapping. Expansion board technology is mature, at least for now. The necessary standards are in place and stable. You can take it for granted that you can slide a PCI expansion board in a PCI slot and have it automatically configure itself and operate in your computer. You can even select from a wealth of PC Card and CardBus modules for your notebook computer—all without any concern about compatibility. Although those statements sound so obvious as to be trivial, reaching this point has been a long journey marked by pragmatism and insight, cooperation and argument, and even battles between industry giants. At least 11 major standards for computer expansion have been the result, as summarized in Table 9.1. The PC bus, so called because it was the expansion bus used by the first IBM personal computer, was little more than an extension of the connections from the 8088 microprocessor, with a few control signals thrown in. The AT bus was IBM's extrapolation on the PC bus, adding the signals needed to match the 80286 microprocessor used in the IBM personal computer AT (for Advanced Technology). Compaq Corporation altered the design by moving memory to a separate bus when the company introduced its Deskpro 386 in 1987. This basic design was made into an official standard by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers as Industry Standard Architecture. Micro Channel Architecture represented IBM's take on a new, revolutionary bus design, but did not survive poor marketing. EISA, short for Enhanced ISA, was an industry response to Micro Channel, which found little acceptance. Neither of the new buses (Micro Channel nor EISA) made a visible improvement on performance. The VESA Local Bus (or VL Bus, created by the Video Electronics Standards Association) did offer a visible improvement because it allowed for faster video displays. It was a promising new bus standard, but it was out-promoted (and out-developed) by Intel's Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI), which became the most popular expansion bus ever used by the computer industry.  |
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