=Computer architecture=

The picture below illustrates general computer structure. There are three subsystems: CPU, Memory, IO ports(periferal devices).
 

• fetching the instruction from memory,
• decode the instruction,
• execute command and write the result data back to the memory or to I/O device.

The table below illustrates Intel x86 CPU family

	8088	80286	80386	80486	Pentium II
CPU clock,MHz	8	12.5	20+	25+	500+
Transistors	29K	134K	275K	1.2M	8.2M
address bus	20 bit	24 bit	32 bit	32 bit	32 bit
data bus	8 bit	16 bit	32 bit	32 bit	64 bit
Physical memory	1MB	16MB	4GB	4GB	64GB
Cache	-	-	-	L1 8K	L1 32K,L2 512K
Floating point unit	ext	ext	int	int	int

 
First steps after powering up.
After Powering Up Reset signal is activated and CPU starts fetching and execute instructions. The first instruction is always located 16 locations below the very top of the memory address space FFFFFF0h (all x86 based computers).This location belongs to BIOS ROM. BIOS contains software, that provides memory test,initialization of peripheral devices,creates interrupt vector table, boots operation system. Later on this information can be overridden when PLAG-and-PLAY software starts working.
 
 
Pentium architecture.
 

 
This is a modern Pentium III based computer . CPU bus has a clock speed 100 - 133 MHz. Memory and IO devices can't work at this speed.
In order to separate slower devices and relieve the CPU there are North and South bridges. They are named according to their location to the PCI bus (to the north of PCI and to the south).
North bridge dispatches CPU commands to SDRAM , cashe (level2), IO devices through PCI bus and video through AGP interface (abbreviation of AGP is Accelerated Graphics Port). Once CPU sets the address and control lines to define what type of transaction it wants like WR or RD, North bridge knows where to forward the command and reports back to CPU when it is done.
South bridge contains USB,IDE controllers and ISA interface. IDE is an interface to CDROM and hard drives. ISA devices are kept for compatibility with older computers. Parallel , serial port devices work through slow (8 MHz) ISA bus. BIOS ROM is connected to ISA bus too.
  PCI bus was developed by Intel for high performance peripheral devices, such as graphic accelerators, disk controllers, data acquisition boards. PCI was supposed to overcome limitations of existing ISA bus . 16 bit ISA bus with clock speed of 10 MHz with theoretical bus throughput 2M transfers/sec but practically not more than 500k. PCI bus is much faster: in burst mode PCI can transfer 32 or 64 bit data with 33 MHz or 64 MHz clock, that yields transfer rates from 132 MB/sec to 538 MB/sec
PCI supports huge address range: 32/64 bit address bus instead of 16 bit ISA
It is a burst oriented bus designed for large transfers; hidden bus arbitration among multiple musters is provided on each bus.
In theory upto 32 logical devices can reside on PCI bus. But practically,a PCI bus is more likely to have maximum 10 devices because of it's low-powered, reflected wave-swithching . If more devices is desired PCI to PCI bridge is used.
PCI devices are automatically configured in software (Plug and Play option). This eliminates earlier problems with ISA configuration using fixed addresses or user configured switches and jumpers.
In recent years some peripheral devices have gotten faster and PCI became too slow for CD and hard disks. Then new interfaces appeared : IDE,SCSI.
AGP port.When 3D graphics applications became common, graphic devices were still found on the PCI bus. AGP port provides high speed access to the memory and allows to share it with local video memory. AGP is not a bus ( no competition between devices sitting on the same bus), but port with a dedicated connection between North bridge and graphic accelerator. Speed is 264 MB/s - 1 GB/s.
ISA bus first appeared in PC based on 80286 CPU. The idea was to put a standard in interfacing with peripheral devices.In our days this bus is kept for compatibility with "legacy" peripheral devices such as BIOS ROM,Parallel and Serial Ports,Sound and Modem devices. These devices have historical fixed address range (no Plug and Play option) and aren't hurt by low speed of ISA bus (8/16 bit data bus with 8 MHz clock speed). Most modern PCs don't even have extra ISA slots since most peripheral components moved to PCI and USB. ISA bus requires 4 bus cycles for each data transfer .
USB bus has lots of advantages in comparison with ISA and PCI bus:

• Add-in slots are limited on internal PC buses while USB allows up to 127 devices.
• Add-ins require opening PC, inviting new problems while USB has standard external connector.
• External peripheral connectors (printer,keyboard,mouse,etc.) vary, while USB has one type of connection.
• USB connector has just 4 signals - cost saving on board design and cables. For example parallel port uses 25 pins connector.
• Peripheral interrupts are limited - sharing required. USB is using polling mechanizm instead.
• USB has power line. Peripherals can be powered directly from USB cable in the range of 100 - 500mA.
• USB supports hot auto configuration while PCI devices can only get identified during boot time.
• USB supports data rates upto 12Mb/s, new standard is going to extend it to 480 Mb/s.

• PC Platform Mindshare class (Jan 2001)
• Understanding PCI-Bus subtleties optimizes system performance, Paul Schreier,EE Feb 2000
• Quenching processor thirst , Patrick Gelsinger, Electronics World, May 2001
• USB architecture, http://www.usb.org
• PCI SIG web site http://www.pcisig.org