Recognising the trend towards PCI bus migration in 10 Mbps Ethernet, 3Com South Africa has taken action to better serve the 10 Mbps PCI network interface card (NIC) market by reducing the price of its award-winning EtherLink XL PCI NIC by 46%. The price cut is expected to accelerate the growth and deployment of 3Com`s EtherLink XL PCI NIC primarily in the small business and corporate legacy networks where standard Ethernet satisfies bandwidth requirements. "The 10 Mbps NIC market, estimated at 16 million units this year, has matured but still continues to grow particularly in the small business, emerging markets and corporate legacy network sectors," says 3Com SA`s product marketing manager, Gavin Levin. "Through this price reduction, 3Com fills the need for these markets which require a highly reliable connection coupled an aggressive price." The PCI Future With 50% worldwide market share in 10 Mbps Ethernet NICs, Levin says that 3Com is clearly paving the way for continued growth in the PCI- bus segment as new 10 Mbps installations require PCI NICs. Microsoft and leading PC OEMs are expected to cause a major market shift this year as the PC98 specifications require networking to be implemented in the PCI slot. Today, many top PC manufacturers are releasing systems with PCI as the standard expansion bus due to the distinct advantages including: Speed - The PCI bus has 32-bit data path, vs. 16-bit for ISA. PCI is also a faster bus, running at 33 MHz vs. ISA`s 8 MHz. These differences mean that the PCI bus processes data faster across the bus to the subsystem memory, resulting in optimised system performance; Ease-of-use - PCI provides true plug and play. Through the bus, the NIC can automatically identify itself to the PC and automatically configure its own memory address allocation and IRQs dramatically minimising installation issues; Low CPU Utilisation- a clear advantage over older technologies, PCI NICs are designed as bus master devices. With bus mastering, a PCI NIC can request control of the bus to initiate data transfers into system memory with no system CPU intervention. As a result, the CPU is free to focus on other computing tasks during network transfers, providing faster and more responsive system performance. EtherLink XL PCI NICs Delivers Performance, Reduced Cost of Ownership and Reliability In 1996, 3Com launched its EtherLink XL family of PCI adapters. Incorporating 3Com Parallel Tasking technology, the EtherLink XL PCI cards offer superior system performance. In a comparison of PCI NICs offered by major manufacturers, the 3Com EtherLink XL PCI NIC achieved significantly higher performance efficiency rating than competing NICs. "This, combined with new low pricing and 3Com`s high quality found in all of its NICs, make the EtherLink XL PCI NIC perfect for the new 10 Mbps Ethernet customer," says Levin.
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