Soon we shall see PCI with a higher bus speed (66 MHz) a

nd greater width (64 bit). However alternative buses are also marketed. An example is the high speed AGP video bus (

Accelerated Graphics Port

) and the

FireWire Bus

.

AGP

is fundamentally a 66 MHz PCI bus (version 2.1) which has been enhanced with other technologies making it suitable for the graphics system.

PCI-X

Another new initiative is the so-called PCI-X (also called "Project One" and Future I/O). Companies like IBM, Mylex, 3COM, Adaptec, HP and Compaq want to launch a special high speed server version of the PCI bus. This new bus (also mentioned as PCIX)

allows a bandwidth of up to 1 GB per second (with a 64 bit bus running at 133 MHz). Intel is not cooperating on this project, and neither is Dell. It is going to be interesting to follow.

Intel's NGIO (Next-Generation I/O)

NGIO server architecture is ano

ther initiative by the companies Dell Computer, Hitachi, NEC, Siemens, Sun Microsystems and Intel to produce a new architecture for I/O on servers. This is clearly an answer to the Project One mentioned above.

FIO to merge with NGIO

On August 31, 1999 se

ven of the leading companies (Compaq, Dell, Hewlett-Packard Company, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Sun) announced the intent to merge the best ideas of the Future I/O (FIO) and Next Generation I/O (NGIO). The new open

input/output architecture

will find use in se

rvers. The bandwidth will be up to 6 GByte/sec.

The new standard NGIO will hardly go into production before 2001.

KarbosGuide.com. Module 2c.1