Add-in card refreshes legacy PCs

5 October 2005 Computer/Embedded Technology

How many legacy PCs become useless simply because they lack up-to-date I/O connectivity? Sometimes all it takes to bring new life to an old PC is to add USB 2.0, Firewire or Ethernet connectivity.

This is easily accomplished with a PCI Combo Card, says PLX Technology, a supplier of I/O interconnect silicon to the communications, embedded-control industries and consumer markets. These cards make it easy to add today's connectivity to old PCs. A single add-in card can have several I/O devices; but they all cannot connect directly to the system PCI bus, so some kind of bridge is required. A classic example is the USB 2.0/Firewire/Ethernet combo card. However, these low-end PCs and their add-in cards are usually quite cost-sensitive, and the standard PCI-to-PCI Bridge adds too much to the BOM cost.

Solution

PLX Technology's 32-bit FastLane PCI Bridge card, the PCI 6140, greatly simplifies the connectivity upgrade. On PCI combo cards, there are normally two to four PCI devices behind the bridge on the card. These PCI devices include USB, Firewire, and Ethernet I/O chips as in this example; other combo cards include RS232, MIDI, SPDIF, TV tuners, MPEG decoders and encoders, audio processors, and other multimedia devices. The PCI Specification allows each PCI slot only one device load. In order for multiple devices to reside on the card, the PCI 6140 provides the lowest-cost isolated PCI bus on its secondary. This bus can handle up to four PCI devices at 33 MHz.

Bandwidth

Is there enough bandwidth with 32-bits/33 MHz PCI? The 32-bit, 33 MHz PCI bus allows a maximum throughput of 125 MBps, (or 1000 Mbps). Compare this with the maximum rates for USB 2.0 (480 Mbps), Firewire (400 Mbps) or 10/100 Ethernet (100 Mbps). You can see there is ample bandwidth for the devices behind a 32-bit bridge like the PCI 6140.

The PCI 6140 is optimised for these applications: PCI latency-sensitive systems; PCI-retry penalty sensitive systems; PCI slave access intensive bridging functions; Low power systems; CompactPCI systems using hot swap.

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