Peripheral Component Interconnect

Most computers made today contain primarily Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) slots. They are easily recognizable as they are short (around 3" long) and usually white. PCI slots can usually be found in any computer that has a Pentium-class processor or higher. 

PCI Abbreviation for Peripheral Component Interconnect. A specification introduced by Intel that defines a local bus that allows up to 10 PCI-compliant expansion cards to be plugged into the computer. One of these 10 cards must be the PCI controller card, but the others can include a video card, network interface card, SCSI interface, or any other basic input/output function. The PCI controller exchanges information with the computer s processor as 32- or 64-bits and allows intelligent PCI adapters to perform certain tasks concurrently with the main processor by using bus mastering techniques. 

C. Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) is a bus type commonly used with Pentium class computers. This bus type supports 64- and 32-bit data paths and can be used in 486 and Pentium-class computers. See Chapter 5 for more information. 

PCI (peripheral component interconnect) is a good example of such a bus. It is not as sophisticated as the Fu-turebus P896, but its adequate set of features has spread its usage on the PCs and workstations of the late 1990s. Transfer speed is up to 120 MBytes/s on a 32-bit wide... 

For 3-D modeling and FEA applications, a Pentium 100 MHz processor running on a 32-bit Windows NT operating system works significantly better. The minimum memory requirement for Windows NT is 32 MB and the operating system requires 160 MB of hard-drive space. The system should have a 16-K internal cache with 256 K to 512 K of external cache for increased performance. The monitor for these applications should be 21 inch with 0.25 ultrafine dot pitch, high resolution (1600 x 1280), and 65,536 colors Peripheral component interconnect (PCI) local bus (a high-bandwidth, processor-independent bus) and a minimum 1-GB SCSI-2 hard drive are also required. 

When a PC is used in a measurement apphcation, one of the standard interfaces available with the PC is used for transfer of measurement data to the PC. Common standard interfaces in a PC are PC bus, parallel port, serial port, and USB. Internal PC bus, parallel port, and serial port have been used in many measurement apphcations. PC buses such as Industry Standard Architecture (ISA), Extended Industry Standard Architecture (EISA), NuBus, VME bus extensions for instrumentation (VXI), Versa Module Eurocard (VME), SBus, Micro Channel Architecture (MCA), and different versions of Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) buses were des ped for intercormection of computer subsystems and peripheral circuits within a computer. The buses are also made available for expansion of features of PCs, and connectors are provided on the motherboard. 

The use of lead (Pb) has been widely accepted in the electronics industry (utilized in a variety of applications for more than five decades), but most notably the use of eutectic tin-lead (Sn-Pb) solders to attach discrete components to printed circuit boards (PCBs). These attachments typically also serve as the electrical interconnection between the attached components and the PCB. Lead-based solders are also used as a coating or finish on metal terminations on PCBs, and on the peripheral leads of components. 

Lead has been used in var3ring amounts electronic assemblies since their inception. Lead is utilized in the body of some electronic components such as capacitors (lead titanate, lead zirconate), in their interconnections that provide both an electrical pathway and method of attachment to a component carrier, and as a protective finish on the printed circuit boards (PCBs) and component leads. It is also found in peripheral hardware such as batteries, monitors, cables, power supphes, motors, etc. In changing over to lead-free technology, there are several other important considerations aside from just the eUmination of elemental lead (Pb) from components or an assembly. For example, one has to consider the mechanical implications of the alloy replacement... 

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