Peripheral Component Interconnect Or PCI is a type of computer hardware which is embedded in the motherboard. The PCI cards are really helpful in enhancing the performance of your PC. PCI cards are portable and they have unlimited uses.
Purpose of the PCI card
PCI is a type of PC hardware which is installed in the mother board in order to serve many purposes. Different kinds of PCI cards can increase the efficiency of your computer. PCI cards are adaptable to be used for various applications. Different kinds of PCI cards comprise of USB ports, audio cards, Ethernet ports, wireless networking and video ports. The use of the wireless network cards can be helpful for many small businesses like small motels, restaurants and net cafes etc. the PCI cards is helpful in deploying various other hardware technologies to your computer like sound cards and graphic cards. PCI cards does not affect the speed of the PC it, besides it increases its efficiency to add some additional hardware. Therefore, PCI cards are a simple way to upgrade your system without bearing the additional expense to replace the motherboard. PCI cards are like tiny circuits boards which can be helpful in attaching additional hardware with your laptop and PC. This can increase capability of the PC to communicate with the other hardware devices.
PCI Development Over time
The first PCI 1.0 was released in 1992; it was designed merely for a component level arrangement. PCI 2.0 was released in 1993; it was used to set standards for the mother board and the connector slot. The release of PCI 2.1 allows for the signaling of 66MHz at 3.3 volt; however at 33 MHz it can operate ate 5volt as well as 3 volt power supply. PCI 2.2 and 2.3 provides up to 3.3 volts power supply. PCI 3.0 is the ultimate official regularity of the bus which totally discarded the 5 volt potential. Mini PCI is a type of 2.2 PCI and is primarily used in laptops. Card bus is a card form used for 32-bit to 33MHZ. on the other hand compact PCI uses euro card plugged in PCI(peripheral component interconnect) back plane. PCI/104 PLUS is known as an industrial bus which is used to send PCI signal line with variable connectors. The latest development includes PCI –X which is an extended version to 64 bit PCI, initially used in servers. PCI –X 1.0 has increased the signal frequency to about 133MHZ. whereas PCI –X 2.0 allows for 299MHz. some common types of PCI cards include PCI fire wire, video 4-input PCI card, TV tuner and PCI USB2 card.
PCI Configuration
PCI cards are capable of providing separate I/O memory address space for X 86 processors and 64 bits. The software assigns the addresses to these address spaces. However it is the PCI configuration which allows for the calculation of the amount of I/O space needed by each individual space. With the help of the configuration registers each device can use up to six areas of memory or I/O port. Typically the operating system it investigates buses at start up time to see which device requires what percentage of system resources. The PCI configuration has tiny device information, which guides the OS to recommend and chooses the device drivers. The devices typically contain an on board Rom which posses a code for the x 86 processors. This memory is used when the system is busy loading the device drivers during start up. Moreover there are Peripheral Component Interconnect latency timer which help the devices to share the bus moderately. This makes sure that no single device is capable of sharing or consuming PCI bandwidth than what is needed.