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The local bus, which is an extension of the microprocessor's data and address bus architecture offering greatly increased data throughput, has taken the PC world by storm. The perception of its benefits were so widespread and immediate that there are now two competing standards: VESA-VL, offered by the Video Electronics Standards Association and PCI (Peripheral Connect Interface) promulgated by Intel.
But neither of these standards addresses a large and potentially lucrative market: ISA passive backplane systems. These systems, supporting a wide variety of Intel-based single-board computers (SBCs) and associated peripherals, play a central role in many OEM-developed systems for such real time applications as medical instrumentation, telecommunications, shop floor control, voice processing, and the like. According to John Krill, vice president of sales and marketing at IBus PC Technologies (San Diego, CA), "There are probably 2.5 million passive backplane ISA slots out there, and none of them can make any use of either VESA-VL or PCI--you've got to rip the backplane out and replace it with one that supports these standards."
That's why I-Bus developed what they call Open Local Bus Architecture (OLBA)--yet another PC local bus standard. At first glance, this merely seems like a particularly dramatic form of marketing hubris, throwing I-Bus square into the Path of the Intel juggernaut. But OLBA is different: unlike either of the other local bus standards it is implemented as a physical attachment to an ISA-compatible SBC. Cards designed to the OLBA standard are thus daughterboards to an SBC...