Increased Performance

Intel’s i960® RP I/O processor can increase overall system performance by offloading the routine I/O functions ordinarily handled by the host processor. It also creates a secondary PCI bus to move I/O activity off the primary PCI bus, thus preventing saturation.

In a conventional system without an I/O processor, the host processor must handle every I/O interrupt, often wasting clock cycles waiting for slow I/O devices like hard disk drives to return data.

An Intelligent I/O subsystem with an Intel I/O processor relieves the host processor from the burdens of handling I/O interrupts. So the power of Pentium® Pro processors becomes free to concentrate on calculations and transaction processing.


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