Intel victory: PCI Group backs license exchange

Electronic News, Nov 22, 1993

LAS VEGAS--The Peripheral Component Interconnect Special Interest Group (PCI SIG) last week put to rest lingering industry concerns over Intel's proprietary interest in the PCi local bus by disclosing a royalty-free licensing agreement which also meets Intel's requirement for some form of reciprocation on PCI-based designs.

In addition, the PCI SIG group attempted to beef up the local bus for full-motion video and video conferencing by revealing multimedia design specifications; PCI will support a concurrent, multi-master bus environment for video support. PCI expansion capabilities were defined to allow up to four functions to be integrated on add-in cards; PCI will also be used as a secondary bus on expansion cards, with a peak bandwidth of 264MB/s.

To ensure interoperability between PCI-based products, the group also unveiled a compliance plan. Component suppliers would conform to electrical and physical layer parameters, ASIC vendors would ensure compliance to BIOS/configuration and add-in card makers would be required to support at least four vendors of their choice.

The PCI SIG disclosures at the Fall Comdex here came amidst Pentium-based PC introductions supporting PCI, among them IBM's Ambra Computer Corp., Advanced Logid Research (ALR) and Dell Computer. Also, a slew of new chipsets emerged to support PCI, including:

* PLX Technology, Mountain View, Calif.--the PCI 9060 interface chip jointly defined with Intel.

* Mentor ARC, Fremont, Calif.--a PCI chipset for the R4000 platform.

* Avance Logic, Fremont, Calif.--a DRAM-based PCI graphics accelerator chipset, the ALG2301, which includes a 24-bit RAMDAC plus dual programmable clock.

* AT1 Technologies (ATI), Thornhil, Ontario, Canada--several new PCI implementations, including graphics accelerators, multimedia video cards and PCI controller chips. ATI is Intel's partner in developing new multimedia specs to compete with the VESA media channel.

* Logic Modeling, Beaverton, Ore.--a new design aid, the PCI Test Suite, consisting of a set of 16 master and 10 slave scenarios, each designed to test compliance with a specific bus-cycle protocol contained in the spec.

PCI SIG now represents about 225 companies; its Steering Committee includes Adaptec, Advanced Micro Devices, Apple Computer, ATI, Compaq, DEC, IBM, Intel, National Semiconductor and NCR. Intel said, "The resolution of current and future PCI intellectual property issues is a watershed event for the PC industry, providing the foundation for the broad adoption of the PCI specification."

SIG members who sign the agreement will license royalty free any PCI-related patent claims to other SIG members who agree to the same terms, including any PCI-related patent claims necessary to make, use or sell any implementation of the 32/64-bit PCI spec in a PCI-compliant system, subsystem or component. All licensed patent claims will remain under the arrangement even for any future PCI spec revisions. SIG members can still charge royalties or choose not to license a patented technology used in non-PCI applications.

Also approved was a design guide with a set of recommendations for development of PCI-based multimedia devices that are interoperable at the component, board and systems level. The guidline's implementations are each targeted at specific markets.

"Additionally, all PCI multimedia implementations are based on the same PCI silicon, which means a single family of silicon building blocks will allow OEMs to develop a range of cost-effective, high-performance multimedia systems," the Steering Committee said.

The functions defined for PCI expansion capabilities integrated onto a single add-in card include a PCI-to-PCI bridge for a secondary PCI bus dedicated exclusively for video and audio data throughput. It is designed as an upgrade solution to operate on PCI-, VL- or standard I/Os. PCI can also be used as a secondary bus on an expansion card for professional multimedia.

Requirements for a PCI Cardtop Connector are also under evaluation by PCI SIG. This extension of the secondary PCI bus concept would allow a mechanical connection of the video PCI bus along the top of the PCI expansion cards.

Finally, the compliance plan designed to support interoperability between all PCI products consists of a three-part evaluation process: checklists involving electrical, mechanical, protocol and BIOS/configuration parameters; adherence to the PCI BIOS and configuration requirements, and passage of interoperability tests with a specified number of PCI-compliant products. A special test card is being developed to exercise the motherboard BIOS and add-in card configuration registers (expected to be available by Q194) and PCI SIG will sponsor interoperability testing workshops during Q194 (third-party test houses will monitor this activity).

The Steering Committee said the licensing agreement, multimedia design guide and compliance plan are being distributed to all members for a requisite 30-day feedback cycle prior to ratification by the Steering Committee.