| Dictionary, Encyclopedia and Thesaurus - The Free Dictionary 3,592,269,672 visitors served. |
Dictionary/ thesaurus | Medical dictionary | Legal dictionary | Financial dictionary | Acronyms | Idioms | Encyclopedia | Wikipedia encyclopedia | ? |
PCI Express |
Also found in: Acronyms, Wikipedia | 0.01 sec. |
|
|
PCI Express A high-speed peripheral interconnect from Intel introduced in 2002. Note that although sometimes abbreviated "PCX," PCI Express is not the same as "PCI-X" (see PCI-SIG and PCI-X for comparison). As a result of the confusion, "PCI-E" or "PCIe" is the accepted abbreviation.Initially used for high-speed display adapters, and intending to eventually replace the PCI and AGP buses entirely, PCI Express was designed to match the higher speeds of today's CPUs. It can accommodate Gigabit and 10 Gigabit Ethernet and even support chip-to-chip transfers. Switched Architecture Rather than the shared, parallel bus structure of PCI, PCI Express provides a switched architecture using serial communications channels, each made up of two differential wire pairs that provide 2.5 Gbits/sec in both directions. Up to 32 channels ("lanes") may be combined in x2, x4, x8, x16 and x32 configurations, creating a parallel interface of independently controlled channels. The bandwidth of the switch backplane determines the total capacity of a PCI Express implementation. Internal in 2002, External in 2007 Similar in architecture to InfiniBand, PCI Express was initially designed for internal connections, whereas InfiniBand provides a true fabric architecture for external networks. However, enhancements that extended PCI Express outside of the box for several meters were developed in 2007. External PCI Express allows, for example, a laptop computer to hook up to an external display adapter and monitor, providing greater performance than the laptop's internal display adapter. Different Slots Originally called "Third Generation I/O" (3GIO), PCI Express is software compatible with PCI, but not plug compatible. It also uses slots of different lengths because of the combined lanes (see below). For a comparison of all PCI technologies, see PCI-SIG. See ExpressCard and PCI-X.
How to thank TFD for its existence? Tell a friend about us, add a link to this page, add the site to iGoogle, or visit webmaster's page for free fun content. |
|
| Encyclopedia |
| Free Tools: |
For surfers:
Free toolbar & extensions |
Word of the Day |
Help
For webmasters: Free content | Linking | Lookup box | Double-click lookup | Partner with us |
|---|