14 RS/6000 43P 7043 Models 150 and 260 Handbook
techniques will continue to bring significant enhancements to the
PowerPC.
• The POWER3 architecture provides a significant impact to the market by:
• Providing SMP scalability not found with POWER2
• Redefining the versatility of a departmental computing solution by
providing outstanding float-point performance with solid integer
performance
• Providing an affordable entry-level 32-bit and 64-bit solution
1.6.2 Universal Serial Bus
The Universal Serial Bus (USB) is a plug and play peripheral connection for
devices such as keyboards, mice, joysticks, scanners, tablets, printers, and
digital cameras, to name a few. USB could replace the serial and parallel
ports with a single bus.
USB supports many peripherals at one time. Special USB hubs will allow
devices to be daisy-chained together. USB also distributes power to the
attached devices, eliminating the need for dedicated peripheral power
supplies.
Data flow in a USB is bidirectional. Devices can make use of this two-way
communication to report status, or control other peripherals.
1.6.3 The Accelerated Graphics Port
The Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) is a high-bandwidth 32-bit PC bus
architecture introduced in 1997 by Intel. It provides up to 528 MB/s memory
access to a graphics controller, yielding the bandwidth necessary for complex
tasks such as texturing directly from system memory. AGP is physically
different from the PCI bus and does not replace PCI. AGP uses a
combination of frame-buffer memory local to the graphics controller, as well
as system memory for graphics data storage.
Although the AGP interface is very popular in the PC world, it has not become
a standard. However, the importance of images, video, and graphics is
growing. The next step in this evolutionary path is visual computing.
Visual computing is the convergence of high-performance 3D graphics, video,
and digital imaging technologies to deliver a new class of interactive, intuitive,
and life-like computing experiences to users.