Chapter 1 Introduction; Description - Advantech PCI-COMM Series User Manual

Chapter 1 Introduction

1.1 Description

The PCI Local Bus is a high-performance bus that provides a processor-
independent data path between the CPU and high-speed peripherals. PCI
is a robust inter-connect mechanism designed specifically to accommo-
date multiple high performance peripherals for series communication,
SCSI, LAN, etc.
Advantech serial communication card leverages the " Plug and Play "
capability defined in the PCI 2.1/2.2 bus specification. The board requires
only one PCI slot within the personal computer and provides independent
serial channels. All channels are addressed in a continuous 32 byte I/O
block for simplified software access. And, all channels may also share
one PCI interrupt. An interrupt status register is available for determining
the interrupt source.
The Advantech PCI communication card comes standard with 16PCI952/
954 UARTs containing 128 byte FIFOs which are available as an option.
These upgraded FIFOs greatly reduce CPU overhead and are an ideal
choice for heavy multitasking environments.
16PCI952/954
The 16PCI952/954 is a high performance Twin/Quad UART with an on-
chip PCI interface. Targeted at PCI-based serial and parallel expansion
cards, PCI-architecture computer systems and embedded applications, the
16PCI952/954 integrates a PCI bus interface together with two/four of
16C950 high performance UARTs, a bi-directional parallel port and a
local bus bridge function. This single-chip solution replaces five or more
integrated circuits used in today products, giving performance, cost and
size advantages for new designs.
PCI-COMMUNICATION User Manual 2