NuBus

NuBus was a considerable step forward compared to other interfaces of the day. At the time most computer bus systems were 8-bit, as were the computers they plugged into. However NuBus decided on a 32-bit interface because it was clear the market was headed in this direction. In addition, NuBus was agnostic about the processor itself. Most buses up to this point were basically the pins on the CPU run out onto the backplane, meaning that the cards had to conform to the signalling and data standards of the machine it was plugged into (be ...

See also:

NuBus, NuBus - NuBus architecture, NuBus - NuBus implementations, NuBus - External link

Read more here: » NuBus: Encyclopedia II - NuBus - NuBus architecture

The PCIe link is built around a bidirectional, serial (1-bit), point-to-point connection known as a "lane". This is in sharp contrast to the PCI connection, which is a bus-based system where all the devices share the same unidirectional, 32-bit, parallel bus. At the electrical level, each lane utilizes two unidirectional low voltage differential signaling (LVDS) pairs at 2.5 gigabaud. Transmit and receive are separate ...

See also:

PCI Express, PCI Express - Hardware protocol summary, PCI Express - Form factors, PCI Express - Competing protocols, PCI Express - Outlook

Read more here: » PCI Express: Encyclopedia II - PCI Express - Hardware protocol summary

Work on PCI began at Intel circa 1990. PCI 1.0, which was merely a component-level specification, was released June 22, 1992. PCI 2.0, which was the first to establish standards for the connector and motherboard slot, was released on April 30, 1993. PCI was immediately put to use in servers, replacing MCA and EISA as the server expansion bus of choice. In mainstream PCs, PCI was slower to replace VESA Local Bus (VLB), and did not gain significant market penetration until late 1994 in second-generation Pentium PCs. By 1996 VLB was all ...

See also:

Peripheral Component Interconnect, Peripheral Component Interconnect - History, Peripheral Component Interconnect - Configuration, Peripheral Component Interconnect - Conventional PCI bus specifications, Peripheral Component Interconnect - Conventional PCI variants, Peripheral Component Interconnect - Other PCI variants

Read more here: » Peripheral Component Interconnect: Encyclopedia II - Peripheral Component Interconnect - History

Micro Channel architecture - Overview of the technology issues of that time. Micro Channel was an attempt to address, once and for all, the problems that had come to plague the PC bus (later known as ISA). The principal design problems of ISA were A slow bus speed. A limited number of interrupts, fixed in hardware. A limited number of I/O device addresses, also fixed in hardware A lack of bus-master support. Hardwired and complex configuration with no conflict resolution. Poor grounding. Undocumented ...

See also:

Micro Channel architecture, Micro Channel architecture - History, Micro Channel architecture - Why the interface was created, Micro Channel architecture - Overview of the technology issues of that time, Micro Channel architecture - ISA design issues, Micro Channel architecture - Marketshare issues, Micro Channel architecture - Design features, Micro Channel architecture - Data transmission features, Micro Channel architecture - Why MCA was not widely adopted

Read more here: » Micro Channel architecture: Encyclopedia II - Micro Channel architecture - Why the interface was created

ISA originated as an 8-bit system in the IBM PC in 1981, and was extended in 1983 as the XT bus architecture. The modern 16-bit standard was introduced in 1984. Designed to connect peripheral cards to the motherboard, the protocol also allows for bus mastering although only the first 16 MB of main memory is available for direct access. The 8-bit bus ran at 4.77 MHz, while the 16-bit bus operated at 8 MHz. In reference to the XT bus, it is sometimes referred to as the AT bus architecture. It was also available on some non-IBM compatible machines such as the ...

See also:

Industry Standard Architecture, Industry Standard Architecture - History, Industry Standard Architecture - 8-bit ISA XT bus architecture, Industry Standard Architecture - Technical data, Industry Standard Architecture - Current use

Read more here: » Industry Standard Architecture: Encyclopedia II - Industry Standard Architecture - History

As of 2005, PCI Express appears to be well on its way to becoming the new backplane standard in personal computers. There are several explanations for this, but the principal reason is it was designed to be completely transparent to software developers - an operating system designed for PCI can boot in a PCI Express system without any code modification. Other secondary reasons include its enhanced pe ...

See also:

PCI Express, PCI Express - Hardware protocol summary, PCI Express - Form factors, PCI Express - Competing protocols, PCI Express - Outlook

Read more here: » PCI Express: Encyclopedia II - PCI Express - Outlook

In computer architecture, a bus is a subsystem that transfers data or power between computer components inside a computer or between computers. Unlike a point-to-point connection, a bus can logically connect several peripherals over the same set of wires. Each bus defines its set of connectors to physically plug devices, cards or cables together. Early computer buses were literally parallel electrical buses with multiple connections, but the term is now used for any physical arrangement that provides the same logical functional ...

Including:

• Computer bus - History
• Computer bus - Description
• Computer bus - Bus topology
• Computer bus - Examples of internal computer buses
• Computer bus - Parallel
• Computer bus - Serial
• Computer bus - Examples of external computer buses
• Computer bus - Parallel
• Computer bus - Serial
• Computer bus - Proprietary
• Computer bus - Examples of internal/external computer buses

Read more here: » Computer bus: Encyclopedia - Computer bus

The Macintosh, or Mac, is a line of personal computers designed, developed, manufactured and marketed by Apple Computer that run the Macintosh operating system ("Mac OS"). Named after the McIntosh apple, the original Macintosh was released on January 24, 1984. It was the first commercially successful personal computer to use a graphical user interface (“GUI”) and mouse instead of the then-standard command line interface. Following the Macintosh's introduction, Apple continued production and development of its Apple I ...

Including:

• Apple Macintosh - Current product line
• Apple Macintosh - History
• Apple Macintosh - 1979–84: Development and introduction
• Apple Macintosh - 1985–89: The desktop publishing era
• Apple Macintosh - 1990–98: Growth and decline
• Apple Macintosh - 1999 to the present: new beginnings
• Apple Macintosh - Timeline of Macintosh models
• Apple Macintosh - Hardware
• Apple Macintosh - Processor Architecture
• Apple Macintosh - Expandability and connectivity
• Apple Macintosh - Software
• Apple Macintosh - Operating system
• Apple Macintosh - Software history
• Apple Macintosh - Advertising
• Apple Macintosh - Effects on the technology industry
• Apple Macintosh - Market share and demographics
• Apple Macintosh - Advantages disadvantages and criticisms
• Apple Macintosh - Notable litigation

Read more here: » Apple Macintosh: Encyclopedia - Apple Macintosh

PCI devices are plug and play. The system firmware examines each device's PCI Configuration Space and allocates resources. Each device can request up to six areas of memory space or I/O port space. They can also have an option ROM that can contain executable x86 or PA-RISC code, Open Firmware or an EFI driver. Interrupts are assigned to the device by firmware rather than being configured by the use of jumpers on the card as was common with ISA devices. While PCI devices are required to have level-triggered interrupts so they can share ...

See also:

Peripheral Component Interconnect, Peripheral Component Interconnect - History, Peripheral Component Interconnect - Configuration, Peripheral Component Interconnect - Conventional PCI bus specifications, Peripheral Component Interconnect - Conventional PCI variants, Peripheral Component Interconnect - Other PCI variants

Read more here: » Peripheral Component Interconnect: Encyclopedia II - Peripheral Component Interconnect - Configuration

The basic data rate of MCA was increased from ISA's 8 MHz to 10 MHz. This isn't a large signalling speed increase, but the communications were now driven by the bus controller utilizing burst modes instead of the CPU's individual transfers, so real throughput was greatly increased: up to five times over ISA. Around 40 MB/s, of throughput was observed (the theoretical maximum for MCA was 66 MB/s). With bus-mastering, each card could talk to another directly. This allowed performance that was independent of the CPU. One drawback of this ...

See also:

Micro Channel architecture, Micro Channel architecture - History, Micro Channel architecture - Why the interface was created, Micro Channel architecture - Overview of the technology issues of that time, Micro Channel architecture - ISA design issues, Micro Channel architecture - Marketshare issues, Micro Channel architecture - Design features, Micro Channel architecture - Data transmission features, Micro Channel architecture - Why MCA was not widely adopted

Read more here: » Micro Channel architecture: Encyclopedia II - Micro Channel architecture - Data transmission features

MCA was primarily a 32-bit bus, but the system also supported a 16-bit mode designed to lower the cost of connectors and logic in Intel-based machines like the IBM PS/2. The situation was never that simple, however, as both the 32-bit and 16-bit versions initially had a number of additional optional connectors for memory cards which resulted in a huge number of physically incompatible cards for bus attached memory. In time, memory moved to the CPU's local bus, thereby eliminating the problem. On the upside, signal quality was greatly ...

See also:

Micro Channel architecture, Micro Channel architecture - History, Micro Channel architecture - Why the interface was created, Micro Channel architecture - Overview of the technology issues of that time, Micro Channel architecture - ISA design issues, Micro Channel architecture - Marketshare issues, Micro Channel architecture - Design features, Micro Channel architecture - Data transmission features, Micro Channel architecture - Why MCA was not widely adopted

Read more here: » Micro Channel architecture: Encyclopedia II - Micro Channel architecture - Design features

Several communications standards have emerged based on high speed serial architectures. These include but are not limited to HyperTransport, InfiniBand, RapidIO, and StarFabric. There are industry proponents of each, and since significant funds have been invested in their development, each consortium tends to emphasize the advantages of its variant over others. Essentially the differences are based on the tradeoffs between flexibility and extensibility vs. latency and overhead. An example of such a tradeoff is adding complex header in ...

See also:

PCI Express, PCI Express - Hardware protocol summary, PCI Express - Form factors, PCI Express - Competing protocols, PCI Express - Outlook

Read more here: » PCI Express: Encyclopedia II - PCI Express - Competing protocols

8 bit ISA or XT bus architecture 16 bit ISA ...

See also:

Industry Standard Architecture, Industry Standard Architecture - History, Industry Standard Architecture - 8-bit ISA XT bus architecture, Industry Standard Architecture - Technical data, Industry Standard Architecture - Current use

Read more here: » Industry Standard Architecture: Encyclopedia II - Industry Standard Architecture - Technical data

The XT bus architecture is an eight-bit ISA bus architecture used by Intel 8086 and Intel 8088 systems in the IBM PC and IBM PC XT in the 1980s. It predates the 16-bit ISA architecture used on IBM PC AT machines. The XT bus has four DMA channels, of which three are brought out to the expansion slots. Of these three, two are normally allocated to machine functions: ...

See also:

Industry Standard Architecture, Industry Standard Architecture - History, Industry Standard Architecture - 8-bit ISA XT bus architecture, Industry Standard Architecture - Technical data, Industry Standard Architecture - Current use

Read more here: » Industry Standard Architecture: Encyclopedia II - Industry Standard Architecture - 8-bit ISA XT bus architecture

Although MCA was a huge technical improvement over ISA, it was not properly introduced and marketed by IBM. Implementation in products was limited mainly to a portion of IBM's PC, Midrange and Mainframe hardware with Apricot, Tandy and Olivetti making MCA machines only as part of their PC ranges and NCR using MCA on their entire computer line from PC's to clustered high-end servers. It was not co ...

See also:

Micro Channel architecture, Micro Channel architecture - History, Micro Channel architecture - Why the interface was created, Micro Channel architecture - Overview of the technology issues of that time, Micro Channel architecture - ISA design issues, Micro Channel architecture - Marketshare issues, Micro Channel architecture - Design features, Micro Channel architecture - Data transmission features, Micro Channel architecture - Why MCA was not widely adopted

Read more here: » Micro Channel architecture: Encyclopedia II - Micro Channel architecture - Why MCA was not widely adopted

Early computer buses were bundles of wire that attached memory and peripherals. They were named after electrical buses, or busbars. Almost always, there was one bus for memory, and another for peripherals, and these were accessed by separate instructions, with completely different timings and protocols. One of the first complications was the use of interrupts. Early computers performed I/O by waiting in a loop for the peripheral to become ready. This was a waste of time for programs that had other tasks to do. Also, if the program att ...

See also:

Computer bus, Computer bus - History, Computer bus - Description, Computer bus - Bus topology, Computer bus - Examples of internal computer buses, Computer bus - Parallel, Computer bus - Serial, Computer bus - Examples of external computer buses, Computer bus - Parallel, Computer bus - Serial, Computer bus - Proprietary, Computer bus - Examples of internal/external computer buses

Read more here: » Computer bus: Encyclopedia II - Computer bus - History

Soon after NeXT, Inc. was formed, Apple brought a lawsuit against the company. In an out of court settlement between the two parties, as of January 1986, NeXT was restricted to the workstation market. By the middle of 1986 it was clear that no existing operating system (OS) was capable of hosting the toolkit, at least not on a personal computer level. Instead of making and selling a toolkit, the business plan changed to making and selling complete machines running it on top of a Unix-like Mach-based OS. The latter would be created by ...

See also:

NeXT, NeXT - Prehistory, NeXT - NeXT Computer, NeXT - NeXT Software, NeXT - End of NeXT

Read more here: » NeXT: Encyclopedia II - NeXT - NeXT Computer

QuickRing started as an offshoot of the fabled Futurebus project, which started in the late 1970s under the aegis of the IEEE. Realizing Futurebus was doomed, several of the main designers left the effort in 1987 to try again on smaller projects, leading to both QuickRing and SCI. In the case of QuickRing the main proponent was Paul Sweazey of National Semiconductor, who had hosted Futurebus's cache coherency group. Sweazey left NatSemi and moved to Apple Computer's Advanced Technology Group ...

See also:

QuickRing, QuickRing - History, QuickRing - Description

Read more here: » QuickRing: Encyclopedia II - QuickRing - History

Digidesign offers systems depending on the needs and budget of potential customers: The professional-level Pro Tools|HD system uses expensive PCI cards to perform audio processing on DSP (digital signal processing) chips to reduce computing burden on the CPU. Similarly, it utilizes TDM (a proprietary plugin system, based on time-division multiplexing, thus the name) to communicate with external I/O devices and other DSP ca ...

See also:

Pro Tools, Pro Tools - Pro Tools systems, Pro Tools - Pro Tools timeline, Pro Tools - Pro Tools in culture

Read more here: » Pro Tools: Encyclopedia II - Pro Tools - Pro Tools systems

Apple Macintosh - 1979–84: Development and introduction. The Macintosh project started in early 1979 with Jef Raskin, an Apple employee, who envisioned an easy-to-use, low-cost computer for the average consumer. In September 1979, Raskin was given permission to start hiring for the project, and he began to look for an engineer who could put together a prototype. Bill Atkinson, a member of the Lisa team—which was developing a similar but higher-end computer—introduced him to Burrell Smith, a service technici ...

See also:

Apple Macintosh, Apple Macintosh - Current product line, Apple Macintosh - History, Apple Macintosh - 1979–84: Development and introduction, Apple Macintosh - 1985–89: The desktop publishing era, Apple Macintosh - 1990–98: Growth and decline, Apple Macintosh - 1999 to the present: new beginnings, Apple Macintosh - Timeline of Macintosh models, Apple Macintosh - Hardware, Apple Macintosh - Processor Architecture, Apple Macintosh - Expandability and connectivity, Apple Macintosh - Software, Apple Macintosh - Operating system, Apple Macintosh - Software history, Apple Macintosh - Advertising, Apple Macintosh - Effects on the technology industry, Apple Macintosh - Market share and demographics, Apple Macintosh - Advantages disadvantages and criticisms, Apple Macintosh - Notable litigation

Read more here: » Apple Macintosh: Encyclopedia II - Apple Macintosh - History