Expansion Slots

An expansion slot is used to add an adapter to the motherboard, and it has rules
that control how many bits can be transferred at a time to the adapter.
Expansion slots used in PCs are usually some form:
PCI-E
PCI (peripheral component interconnect)
AGP (accelerated graphics port)
Older PC Expansion Slots:
ISA(industry standard architecture)
EISA (extended industry standard architecture)
MCA (micro channel architecture)
ISA (Industry Standard Architecture)
ISA is the oldest expansion slot. ISA allows 16-bit transfers to adapters installed in
ISA slots. The number of expansion slots available depends on the motherboard
manufacturer. ISA is also referred to as the AT bus. Because computer
manufacturers want customers to be able to use their old adapters in an upgraded
motherboard or a new computer, ISA is still available on the market.
ISA operates at 8MHz, although some vendors reliably achieve 10MHz throughput.
Some vendors have achieved 12MHz, but the industry pronounced 10MHz the
maximum speed for ISA.
With todays microprocessor speeds, its easy to see how the ISA architecture can
be a detriment. Adapters that require high-speed transfers, such as network
memory and video, are hampered by the slowness of the ISA standard.
ISA was designed to be backward compatible with IBMs first two computer models,
the PC and the XT, which had an 8-bit external data bus. The only adapters that
worked in the PC and the XT computers were 8-bit adapters. The ISA architecture
allows an 8-bit adapter to fit and operate in the 16-bit ISA slot. Today, motherboards
normally do not come with ISA slots.

PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect)

An upgrade to the PCI bus is called PCI-X. PCI-X can operate at 66, 133, 266, 533,
and 1066MHz. The PCI-X bus is backward compatible with the previous versions of
the bus, but it allows faster speeds. A chip called the PCI bridge controls the PCI
devices and PCI bus. With the PCI-X bus, a separate bridge controller chip is added.
Figure 2.20 shows how the PCI-X bus integrates into the system board.

PCI-X adapters are more often found in network servers or high-end gaming
workstations to control video, network adapters (such as gigabit Ethernet), and SCSI
adapters (that control hard drives, tape drives, CD/DVD drives, scanners, and other
internal and
Tech Tips
PCI cards in PCI-X slots Remember that older PCI cards can fit in a PCI-X expansion
slot, but a PCI-X adapter requires a PCI-X expansion slot. Todays motherboards have
a limited number of PCI or PCI-X expansion slots because of a newer standard called
PCI Express or PCIe.
AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port)
AGP(accelerated graphics port) is a bus interface for graphics adapters developed
from the PCI bus. Intel does the majority of the development for AGP and the
specification was originally designed around the Pentium II processor. AGP speeds
up 3-D graphics, 3-D acceleration, and full-motion playback.
With AGP, the processor on the video adapter can directly access RAM on the
motherboard when needed. This helps with video-intensive applications. 3-D
graphics, for example, are resource-intensive and use a lot of memory. Software
developers can produce better and faster 3-D graphics using AGP technology. The
best performance is achieved when applications use the RAM on the AGP adapter.
However, because more memory than the amount on the adapter is needed,
motherboard RAM is the next best option. Previous video adapters have been
limited by the bottleneck caused by going through an adapter and a bus shared
with other devices. With AGP, the video subsystem is isolated from the rest of the
computer. The different versions of AGP are known as 1X, 2X, 4X, and 8X. All
versions transfer 32-bits at a time. Table 2.9 summarizes the differences between
the AGP versions.

Figure 2.21 shows an illustration of an AGP slot compared with PCI and ISA
expansion slots. All of the expansion slots previously covered are being replaced by
PCIe (covered next).
Figure 2.22 shows various expansion slots.

PCIe (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express)

The PCI bus has almost reached its limit in terms of speed. PCI, PCI-X, and AGP are
being replaced with PCIe(PCI Express), which is also seen as PCI-E. PCIe is better
than the other types of PCI expansion slots. PCIe 3.0 allows transfers up to 1GBps
per lane in one direction with a maximum of 32 lanes. PCIe 2.0 has a transfer rate
from 2.5GT/s (gigatransfers per second) to 5.0 GT/s, and version 3.0 increases it to
GT/s. This allows a 16-lane PCIe link to transfer data at a rate up to 32GBps.
Competing tech-nologies to PCIe include Rapid IO, HyperTransport, InfiniBand, and
StarFabric. These are great types of technologies to research if you are interested in
hard-ware development. The older PCI standard is half-duplex bidirectional, which
means that data is sent to and from the PCI or PCI-X card, but in only one direction
at a time. PCIe sends data full-duplex bidirectionally; in other words, it can send and
receive at the same time. Figure 2.23 shows this concept.
The older PCI standard including PCI-X uses a parallel bus where data is sent with
multiple 1s and 0s simultaneously. PCIe is a serial bus and data is sent one bit at a
time.
Another difference is that PCIe slots come in different versions depending on the
maximum number of lanes that can be assigned to the card inserted into the slot.
For example, an x1 slot can have only one transfer lane used by the x1 card
inserted into the slotx4, x8, and x16 slots are also available. An x16 slot accepts
up to 16 lanes, but fewer lanes can be assigned. An x16 slot accepts x1, x4, x8, and
x16 PCIe adapters. Figure 2.24 shows the concepts of PCIe lanes. Figure 2.25 (on
page 50) shows some sample PCIe slots.

AMD has a different method of interfacing with PCI and PCIe interfaces than the
traditional FSB. AMD uses a technology called HyperTransport, which is a high-speed
bus used to connect multiple CPUs, interface an AMD CPU with input/output devices,
interface the CPU with PCI, PCI-X, and PCIe slots, and interface the CPU with RAM.
Figure 2.26 shows how the HyperTransport bus connects various technologies.
HyperTransport is a feature of AMDs Direct Connect architecture. With Direct
Connect, there are no front side buses. Instead, the CPUs, memory controller, and

input/output functions directly connect to the CPU at CPU speed.

PCI, PCI-X, AGP, and PCIe are important for connectivity in both workstation and
portable computers. Traditional PCI connectivity will need to be supported for
several more years in new machines for backward compatibility and in computers
already in use. PCIe is the bus of the future for internal and external device
connectivity. Figure 2.32 shows how AMD and Intel connect PCI and PCIe cards to
other motherboard components.