New spec frees embedded designers from ISAbus

A PC/104 Embedded Consortium product story

Edited by the Electronicstalk editorial team Mar 26, 2004

The PC/104 Embedded Consortium has published its PCI-104 specification.

The PC/104 Embedded Consortium has published its PCI-104 specification.

PCI-104 is identical to the popular PC/104-Plus combined ISA/PCI embedded standard except that the PC/104 ISA expansion connector is removed.

By eliminating the large ISAbus connector, PCI-104 yields an additional 10% of board area for larger CPU chipsets, higher levels of integration and/or I/O connectors.

The PCI-104 specification still maintains the small 3.550 x 3.775in size, rugged design, and self-stacking architecture for embedded applications set by the PC/104 and PC/104-Plus standards.

Whereas the current PC/104 and PC/104-Plus standard will maintain the ISAbus and support the large existing base of ISA-only PC/104 addon modules, the PCI-104 specification defines a standard with PCI-compatible I/O features such as video, audio, Ethernet and communications.

In addition, all major FPGA vendors offer PCIbus cores to simplify development and speed up time to market for custom PCI peripheral designs.

"The adoption of the PCI-104 specification supports the continuous evolution of embedded computing technology", said Jim Blazer, President of the PC/104 Embedded Consortium.

"The ISA-free industry standard form factor allows engineers to develop the even more rugged and reliable CPU and I/O boards using PCI technology, which is required for today's complex embedded systems".

Another benefit of the new PCI-only format is processor independence.

Whereas ISA and PCI are primarily used as x86 expansion buses in PC compatible systems, PCI can be used with other processor families, including PowerPC, ARM, X-Scale and others.

Vendors of boards using these processors can now create new designs using PCI-104, offering their customers more compact alternatives to existing larger formats.

By migrating to PCI-104, vendors and customers using any PCI-compatible processor can now achieve the same benefits of small size, rugged design and easy expandability that x86 users have obtained for over a decade with PC/104.