How The Intel I/O Solution Works With PCI & The CPU

The Intel I/O Solution, based on the i960® RP I/O processor, is a complete I/O subsystem on a chip. With an on-chip PCI-to-PCI bridge, the i960 RP I/O processor connects directly to the PCI bus without additional bridge chips. The I/O processor allows improved system performance by providing the intelligence to handle I/O interrupts at the subsystem level.

The PCI architecture provides for multiple bus masters, so I/O subsystems can send data to one another without involving the host CPU. With the I/O processor handling interrupts from devices like hard disk drives and LAN/WAN adapters, the host CPU is free to focus on data processing. The I/O processor decides which interrupts and data must be passed to the host CPU and which do not.

With the Intel I/O Solution, servers can scale do more data processing and achieve higher levels of CPU utilization, and can add new functionality, without saturating the PCI bus.

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