Product Description
PCI System Architecture is a detailed and comprehensive guide to the Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) Bus Specification, Intel's technology for fast communication between peripheral devices and the computer processor. This new edition has been thoroughly updated, reorganized, and expanded to cover the PCI Local Bus Specification version 2.2 and other recent developments, including the new PCI Hot-Plug Specification, changes to the PCI-to-PCI Bridge Architecture Specification, revisions to the PCI Bus Power Management Interface Specification, and the new features of the PCI BIOS Specification. This book provides clear and concise explanations of the relationship of PCI to the rest of the system and PCI fundamentals, including commands, read and write transfers, memory and I/O addressing, error handling, interrupts, and configuration transactions and registers. In addition, you will find specific information on such key topics as: *Hot-Plug Specification *Power management *CompactPCI *The 64-bit PCI Extension *66 MHz PCI Implementation *Expansion ROMs *PCI-to-PCI Bridge and the PCI BIOS *Add-in cards and connectors *Bus arbitration *Reflected-wave switching *Early transaction end *Fast back-to-back and stepping Changes from PCI 2.1 to PCI 2.2 and changes from PCI-to-PCI Bridge Specification 1.0 to 1.1 are visibly highlighted throughout the book so that those familiar with the previous versions can quickly get a handle on new features and functions. Anyone who designs or tests hardware or software involving the PCI bus will find PCI System Architecture, Fourth Edition a valuable resource for understanding and working with this important technology. The PC System Architecture Series is a crisply written and comprehensive set of guides to the most important PC hardware standards. Each title explains from a programmers perspective the architecture, features, and operations of systems built using one particular type of chip or hardware specification.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 3.5 based on 19 reviews)

Great for filling in the gaps!!!!!

I have recently had to undertake a PCI project that required detailed information on PCI configuration of devices, including P2P bridges. I have a couple of other resources, however, this book bridges the gap between software and hardware. Especially the chapters on configuration (Chaps 17, 18 and 19). I highly recommend it!!!!
February 16, 2005

Not for Software Developers

Basically, this book is very similar to the PCI SIG specification in many respects (without the hefty PCI SIG membership fee).

I was surprised to find that Hot-Plug PCI is given some treatment, but as with most of the material it was generalized and skewed towards the hardware design audience.

This book does do a good job of laying out the registers and explaining them. After I finished reading this book, I was able to do what I need to do, but didn't have a great idea of how the whole system worked.

There are plenty of timing diagrams and lots of good information, but most of it useless for a software developer. For example, the entire chapter of Hot-Plug PCI was well written, but it described what needed to be done to the various control lines-- something that would be implemented by the Hotplug PCI chipset controller. As a result, it is nice to know, but ultimately, useless.

Simply stated, if you are looking for a book to help write a device driver for a PCI-based device, this isn't it. On the other hand, if you are software developer looking for a primer on PCI, I would still look elsewhere.
June 08, 2003

Not too different from the PCI Spec from PCI-SIG

Hi,
Bought this book under the assumption that the coverage would be better than the PCI Specification from PCI-SIG, but the book is pretty much an exact copy of the specification document. If you can get your hands on the original PCI spec., you will be better off. The only saving grace for this book was that it covered all the stuff from the spec., so if you don't have access to the spec., the book does an ok job covering the whole PCI area.
May 27, 2003

Software engineer

I agree with other reviewers that said the book is not very helpful if you are writing a PCI device driver. It's full of register definitions and timing diagrams but I never got a feel for how to put it all together. This book may be useful for hardware designers but it is largely worthless for software engineers. If you're writing a driver and you want more info, don't waste your money here.
June 07, 2002

Great Introduction to the World of PCI

When I opened this book, I had maintained a few PCI drivers, and done off and on hacking at PCI support code, but I didn't fully understand the semantics of PCI. Within a few dozen pages, I had attained infinitely more clue on PCI, and having not even _finished_ the book yet, I can confidently say it's a great great text on PCI, and makes sense of what usually looks like a house of cards with spaghetti strewn over it in code form.
December 14, 2001

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